Social Security is not broken. That is a "Republican" talking point. Don't fall for it.

[jtuck004]

An economist with the following credentials...

"From 1981 to 1982, Galbraith served on the staff of the Congress of the United States, eventually as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee.<1> In 1985, he was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.<1>

Galbraith is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith heads up the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP), which has been described by economic historian Lord Skidelsky as "pionering inequality measurement". UTIP is also noted for replacing the established Gini coefficient with the Theil index as the measurement of choice for comparing inequality between groups, regions and countries."

(James Galbraith is no slouch)

...makes it abundantly clear that:

1) The money is there
2) There is more than enough
3) The numbers used to lay the foundation for the thought that the fund is empty, or that
it will bankrupt us simply projections and thus say anything anyone wants them to say.

in this testimony to the CC.

In addition...
--43% of Americans have less than $10,000 for retirement, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual Retirement Confidence Survey here, perhaps because
--66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans. according to Harvard Magazine, which may explain why
--61% percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007, according to this Careerbuilder.com poll.

If someone was TRULY concerned about our deficit and the future, they would suggest we quit financing our housing bubbles, hedge fund expansions, and 2 wars with foreign debt from China and other countries (but mostly China) by buying their low-cost goods. They would advocate that we invest in the American people, our neighbors, and rebuild our manufacturing sector which would provide good jobs, pensions, and tax revenue to run the kind of country that has real security, not bluster.

And they damn sure wouldn't advocate cruelty and poverty for seniors so hedge funds can get an increase in the $36 billion in bonuses, funded by taxpayer money, in 2008.

Using data from the Congressional Budget office, the report at this link shows that we may not be able to expect unemployment to drop to 5% until 2021.

Even that may be too optimistic because we have not yet approached even half the numbers of jobs that will need to be created to make that projection work.

        2021

That means there are millions of people who have worked the last job they will ever have. And even if others
need jobs, please don't ask them to leave their job and depend on SS. You might as well ask them to live in a box.

It is a death sentence for some to lose that pitiful amount of support from Social Security. For some it may be
a death sentence to have to depend on it.

Don't let people suggest we pull the rug out from under our neighbors like that.

Although they have been posted before these 10 myths about social security are worth being aware of.

[rocktivity]

1. More important, the most cost-efficient way to fix it

is to raise or remove the salary cap.

:headbang:
rocktivity

[mmonk]

2. Recommended.

Tell Alan Simpson and the Deficit Commission to let the bush tax cuts expire, cut the overgrown Pentagon budget, or just take a hike.

[Oceansaway]

3. K&R...n/t

[murphyj87]

4. Canada Pension Plan vs Social Security

Canadians can qualify for Canada Pension Plan at age 60 and Old Age Security Pension at age 65. CPP survivor benefit is $2500 whereas US Social Security Survivor Benefit is $255, about 10% of what Canadians get. With my company pension, CPP and OAS, my income is about $45,000 a year. Most Canadians retire at ages between 55 and 60, but while we're working we average 6 weeks vacation with pay a year and average 1800 hours of work a year.

[MAcciard]

5. The problem with this article is...

that it talks of the "treasury securities" that the "trust funds" hold as if they were the publicly traded treasury bonds that everyone knows about, and that ARE the safest security in the world, currently paying about 2.3%

Instead the bonds "securing" the trust funds are a special class of non- traded treasuries, that are no more than IOU's for the money Congress has spent over 50 years.

SS, over the past 30 years has averaged 1.2% interest on the money invested. And as long as Congress can continue to spend the SSsurplus, while putting these treasuries into their account their will be no security in the program.

What Galbraith refuses to acknowledge is that in 2018, when the cash flow goes negative and they have to draw on the "trust funds" there IS NO MONEY IN THE TRUST FUNDS TO DRAW FROM!!!

It will have to be provided by the very Congress that spend in a manner that would embarrass drunken sailors! Where do you think they are going to get that money?

[mmonk]

9. So count you in the category of the trust does not exist talking point.

[MAcciard]

18. it exists on paper, but in reality

all it holds is paper that Congress has to repay in order for it to have value. In order for congress to repay what they have spent, they have to generate a shitload of revenue.

Either way it is far more prudent to consider it as gone, rather than a liquid asset.

[bettyellen]

25. prudnet for republicans and people who fall for their BS

[jtuck004]

11. It will be issued by the Federal Reserve just like they do today,

by adding zeroes to the deposits in the computers of bank accounts. The same way they will pay off the worthless paper the Fed gave tradeable treasuries for at 100% on the dollar to hedge funds and banks who had leveraged part of a $13 trillion mortgage market into about $140 trillion of smoke. The same way the Fed paid foreign investment funds so they would not lose faith in the dollar. The same way we pay for wars today.

[MAcciard]

19. what are you talking about?

[jtuck004]

22. Read this

please, (just click here) and then ask your question.

Because what you are asking is unclear.

[dkf]

6. Social security is an agreement that younger people pay for older people.

As long as that social contract is intact social security will live on. But laws are laws and can be changed. We need to make sure the burdens we place on the young are not so onerous that they won't rise up in protest and cancel this agreement.

The "bonds" in the social security system are for the surplus that the general fund has used to balance it's budget. Other than the surplus funds the money you have contributed year after year is not yours. It went out to your parents and grandparents.

[mmonk]

12. I was under the impression the dedicated tax went for recipients

and the surplus went to purchase treasuries. If there is no money for social security, there is no money for anything else but at least social security has a dedicated tax. So social security is not the problem.

[jtuck004]

13. Anytime half of "the young" would like to retire with no safety net

they are free to do so. How stupid that could possibly be is hard for me to contemplate.

We have a sovereign fiat currency. The "bonds" are nothing but a vehicle to pay interest. All the fed has to do is add zeroes in the account, just like they are doing today to reimburse the nest of thieves on Wall Street for causing massive unemployment and the foreclosure of millions of homes.

Onerous? I don't see them rising up to throw off the burden of two wars for which there is no clear, definable end game. But they would rise up to make life harder for people who have spent the past 50 or so years building a world for them to live in, and watching as their labor was sold for the short term, and their lives sold down the river.

The real opponents of the young are those who would start another war, and draft them to serve as cannon fodder, who want a cheap labor market with no costs for the long term. And yet the threat that comes to your mind is to make life harder for people as they enter a time in their life when they might not be able to contribute as much as they would have.

There's something to be proud of.

[depakid]

7. From the looks of it, not just a Republican talking point....

[dkf]

8. It's weird. When the financial people sell products they are expected to explain what is guaranteed

And what isn't and the amounts that they are covered too. But we don't want disclaimers and explanations on what social security truly represents. It seems so backwards to me. Isn't it better that people not count 100% on something that isn't guaranteed?

[jtuck004]

10. There is nothing else for them to count on. About half can't make

enough for any retirement, and the recent financial crisis has devalued the housing many people count on
so we will have millions who enter social security with nothing else.

And it was their money they paid in, it should be guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Just
like we make sure foreign investors in hedge funds got paid, despite the reckless behavior of the hedge funds.

[dkf]

17. But that is exactly the point. The amount you put in never represented an investment.

Social security is a pass through system where funds of workers go to the retired. The private accounts that represent your money is what republicans want. We are against private accounts remember? The money in the social security system isn't owed to you. They will pay out to whoever the law says is eligible at the time of distribution.

If this is an investment then lifting the cap will mean that the rich will get even more from social security when they retire. On the other hand if you don't connect what is paid in to what you receive then you can lift the cap and make the higher brackets pay more and not get anything extra. Then it's just redistribution.

[jtuck004]

21. The workers that are receiving them have been paying in for years

so it is not all other people's money. And as people die off, their benefit funds someone else.

Actually it is owed to me based on the law that took it, and on the schedule the law says it will be paid back under.

I don't remember anyone ever calling it an investment? It is people paying into a system that keeps them and others from having nothing at the end of their lives. It is an anti-poverty measure, not something to get a return on in financial terms, but in much greater human terms.

And I don't have a problem with redistribution. Frankly, the rich don't pay their share of the use of the commons anyway, so perhaps they should pay in a lot more.

[dkf]

23. Yes but the schedule that you will be paid under is whatever the law happens to be at the time.

That is how they can increase the retirement age when you've been paying into the system for years.

[mmonk]

14. It still is.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

15. Yep. Just ask President Obama who set up a commission which might possibly

destroy it.

[glitch]

16. K & R because this TRUTH cannot be repeated enough.

And to all the liars out there trying to create their own reality: we aren't buying it.

[senseandsensibility]

20. k an r

See? I told you everyone would love it.

[earth mom]

24. Yep and those jerks won't be happy until we're all eating cat food and living under bridges!

:grr: