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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32831 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Social security is going to run out of money, so what? Anyone with wisdom has been planning to not get anything back out of it for ages.

This overstates the case considerably. The report of the trustees in 2022 estimates (rough estimates of course but the best ones we have so they'll do) that all the way through to 2096 SS benefits at 74% of the current level would be sustainable with no changes at all in tax law. That's a big gap, but not a completely irresolvable one with some changes here and there. A couple of percentage increase in payroll taxes eliminates the problem entirely, and while there may not be political will for that at this juncture when the problem starts to come into closer view by the 2030s it's hardly out of the question.

The important point to remember is that the OASDI trust fund is huge and generates its own income so a moderate deficit between income and outgoings in not a particularly large problem; in the coming decades it will start to be exhausted if no changes are made, but as I say those changes don't have to be revolutionary for the problem to be resolved.

if people planned well and/or had wisdom, there wouldn't have been the creation of the welfare program in the first place

I expect social security benefits to be paid by money printing.

We are become brown Argentina.

I would bet heavily on means testing as the primary solution.

It is extremely optimistic to assume there will be a solution, as opposed to periodic bailouts paid for by money printing and brought about by one party shutting down the government until the other gives in.

That is the first time in at least a decade someone has called me optimistic. Perhaps there is hope left!

Sure, they'll try to hold it together with string and bubblegum. I just think that "tax the fat cats" (of whom there will be ever fewer) is historically the option most often chosen.

I grant that it's possible. I don't think it will happen though. I think they'll admit bankruptcy first.

You expect a government to admit when they screwed the pooch?

In this case yes, because they'll get put through the wringer worse if they don't.

Anyone with wisdom has been planning to not get anything back out of it for ages.

All two of us? Meanhile, the other ~350 million Americans are congenitally incapable of imagining that a handout might end.

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