Sorry, Gene, but I'm just not in the mood to give more hard-earned money to the incompetent government bureaucracy (doesn't matter who's in power) that can't stop building bridges to nowhere. The money to 'fix' social security is right in front of them, they're just too greedy to use it. Money to them is like crack to an addict. If it means I'll have to do the same thing my grandparents did (take care of myself), so be it. A forced retirement income for every breathing citizen is and has never been a fundamental 'right' and I resent the fact that blowhards like you think I'm too stupid to handle a measly 5% of my 'forced retirement' investment on my own. I guarantee you, if they try to impose SS taxes on all income without letting us manage at least some of it, the 2008 election could be very interesting, to say the least. The government is squeezing us relentlessly in countless ways to feed its addiction and it will learn that there are limits to its greed.

The feds have yet to fix a problem, other than getting to the moon & back, by throwing more money at it.

Diawa

The problem is that people have worked their lives paying their taxes and have been PROMISED a retirement. That MUST be honored. Employers are reducing pession plans and people are living longer. For the interest we spend because we have not balanced the Federal Budget we could easily insure the commitments to the Baby Boomers.

The vast majority of people would not provide an adequate replacement for Social Security and for the Boomers it is too late for them to provide a replacement for Social Security. The poor spending choice of the Federal Government has NOTHING to do with the Social Security funding issue. It is simply the result of the vary large number of births after WWII. The ONLY way to keep the commitments to the Boomers is with added tax revenue and by increasing the retirement age to reflect increased longevity.

The problem is that people have worked their lives paying their taxes and have been PROMISED a retirement. That MUST be honored. Employers are reducing pession plans and people are living longer. For the interest we spend because we have not balanced the Federal Budget we could easily insure the commitments to the Baby Boomers.

i.e., Gene wants his retirement no matter how much it costs the next generation.

Never mind the part about George W. Bush's promises to deliver for those that are nearing retirement or are already there, and the idea that they'd not have their retirement affected at all.

The idea is to EMPOWER the next generation and get them off the government's responsibility and back on their own two feet.

Sadly Gene can't buy that and isn't interested as it might cause his own funded house of cards to come crashing down and leave him without. Better to hand that mess and the whole rickety plan called Social Security over to the future generations to fix.

For someone that so desperately wants the deficits fixed now and not handed to future generations, it's beyond ironic that Gene (the Clueless One) wants to keep bandaiding up Social (in)Security so that future generations can deal with that mess all in the name of not disaffecting the current beneficiaries of the whole ponzi scheme.

Terpfan1980

The individual accounts do not end Social Security. If you read my Blog you will see the issue is not the X and Y Generations but the Baby Boomers. Yes we have a commitment to those that have worked and played by the rules. It is time to pony up and insure the promises are kept. In addition, the majority do not want to change Social Security and that is a political reality the conservatives will have to accept!

It's hard to keep track of what exactly Col is trying to accomplish when one article of his complains about how high the current Gov't is making the deficit while on another article he wants a solution to something that will continue to raise the same deficit he cried about in his other article. Even more fascinating is how he can point out what he thinks is wrong but never seems to have a solution to it other than getting rid of Bush. Fine, so we get rid of what he thinks is the cause of the problems, Bush, what then? What solutions does he give to fix the dilemmas created by Bush? None cause his limit is to just eliminate the cause of the problem, leaving the problem itself unsolved. Kinda like turning off the electricity when someone is being electrified but then leaving the person there and not treating them cause you don't know how to.

Oh well, it's his right, as an American, to complain about the Gov't, post on this site what he feels (as long as the site owner allows it), make a fool of himself and eventually be wrong.

Charles.C

You make a good point. What you ask I have tried to answer in the second section of my book. I address the issue of Social Security, Medicare and the general Fund budget imbalance with specific suggestions. What I am saying is that we can not solve our problems by turning our back on the promises we have made to our fellow Americans!

The fact that gets out of focus about Social Security is that today it is self sustaining. With 3.5 Workers for every person retired the system pays ALL the promised benefits as well as the administrative costs with the Social Security Taxes that are currently paid.

If it were not for the large number of people born after WWII, there is no reason to believe that there would be a problem with the funding of Social Security. The X and Y generations that follow the Baby Boomers have a demographic like today and we therefore have an issue of funding the one time bubble in population that occurred after the second world war. That does NOT require a change in the structure of Social Security as Bush has proposed. In fact the change Bush wants to make DOES NOT solve the issue at hand which is the bubble of people called the Boomers.

To fix this problem will require added funding to deal with the ONE TIME bulge in the population by increasing the funding which would be held in the trust fund in the form of marketable securities which would be liquidated as the Baby Boomer numbers created a need to add to the ongoing Social Security Tax Collections. From the outset it was understood that there would be some short periods where tax collections would exceed retirement benefits and short periods where the opposite were true. That is the purpose of the Social Security Trust Fund. The problem we have created with the trust fund is that it was not invested in conventional securities but is Federal Bonds to help fund the fact that we have refused to balance our budget apart from Social Security. When it comes time to use the Trust Fund to pay benefits to the Boomers, the Fed will have to either sell added publicly held debt to refund the bonds issued to Social Security (and Medicare) or use money from the general fund to redeem the bonds the Treasury issued to the Social Security Trust Fund.

terpfhan1980


"i.e., Gene wants his retirement no matter how much it costs the next generation."

Your dam right. Just like everyone else including you when you retire. I paid my taxes so the last generation could live out their lives and I expect NOTHING less now that it is time for my retirement! I will also expect the same thing for my children. If that means a little higher tax, especially on the top 10%, so be it. I would like to see what the Social Security outlook would be if we taxed ALL income for Social Security the same as we do for Medicare. That would not TAKE ONE CENT from 90% of the working population!

I love the solution some have to balance the budget. They say just cut spending. Anyone that makes such a statement is not interested in solving the budget problem because MOST of Federal Spending is either to Obligations (Interest on the debt, pensions etc) or provide services we could not do without or are essential (National Defense, Homeland security, Medicaid etc.). Most who have looked at the Federal Budget believe the MOST we could cut, if we had the political will to cut out pork etc is about 6%. For all those that say let's balance the budget by cutting spending I have a proposal. STOP paying interest on the $8.7 Trillion Dollar National debt. That will save over $450 Billion in 2007 and the budget is balanced! If we also cut the PORK we would have a REAL Surplus!

If it were not for the large number of people born after WWII, there is no reason to believe that there would be a problem with the funding of Social Security. The X and Y generations that follow the Baby Boomers have a demographic like today and we therefore have an issue of funding the one time bubble in population that occurred after the second world war. That does NOT require a change in the structure of Social Security as Bush has proposed. In fact the change Bush wants to make DOES NOT solve the issue at hand which is the bubble of people called the Boomers.

Keep in mind that the average life expectancy is now around 80 years old. I'm not sure this was taken into consideration when the Social Security idea was created. They also were not considering that population growth would get so out of hand but this time. And yes, ity is out of control cause teens go about getting pregnant and just either giving the kids up to the Gov't or just continue to have one after the other without a daddy to help them. Not to mention the large amount of illegals that have entered the country and now their kids are Americans as well. None of this was accounted for where Social Security was created, now we have a growing problem in our hands and there is no real solution to it at the moment.

This promise you keep mentioning, will have to take a back seat till a solution is found. It's sad to think that anyone actually gave just to make sure they would get some back someday. I don't give with the intentions of getting back someday. If I get great, if I don't and I have no money to sustain myself, that's my fault for not having savings. There was a time when this country had no Social Security, and the American population did not die out cause of it. It's because of this Social Security that people have gotten to lazy to learn to value a dollar cause they expect to get something back once they retire, so why save any money at all? Shame how we have come to depend on a Gov't that is suppose to help us, not support us.

Charles.C

You are correct some of the issues you raise were not taken into account in 1935. However there were changes made to Social Security to deal with most of the issues you indicated and today the system is more then solvent. If we did not have the very large number of Boomers the funding problems would be small. No matter how long we delay, the issue is that without added money the retirement that the Boomers were promised will not be available. Most projections I have scene say if we do nothing, when the Trust Fund is consumed ($1.7 Trillion) the Social Security taxes will cover about 75% of the expected payout. Thus, the sooner we begin increasing the money going into the Trust Fund and invest those added funds so they earn interest and dividends (No more IOU’s from the Fed), the better off we will be. The least painful way for the vast majority is to tax all income for Social Security the same as we do for Medicare.

Creating individual accounts that will use some of the money designated for Boomer Benefits will not solve anything. Waiting until the Trust Fund has been used will not make the problem go away. We need to act NOW to put more into the trust fund, allow the earnings from the added tax revenue to increase the trust fund and gradually increase the age at which full retirements benefits are paid.