Quote:
Originally Posted by RandallNeighbour
Perfectlap, I did some quick math and SS recipients would have to live to well past 107 years old to get out all the cash they put into the program. Now Medicare might be a different animal, but SS is not going well because the fund's been robbed from repeatedly by Congress through the years.
Am I not correct on this?
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The Trustees Report for SS projects that it can pay out FULLY until 2036. After that checks need to start shrinking or , and this is the important part that is left out of most calculations, wages for Americans need to start going UP instead of falling as they have been for the last decade. Our workers are unksilled and the private sector are not really interested in spending the money to train, despite their lowest ever taxes. Corporate taxes today equal barely 1% of GDP, half of what it was 40 years ago. The largest exodus of workers (baby boomer) this economy has taken in one shot are only compounding the problem. The jobs that up and coming generations are taking now pay less than the jobs the baby boomers took on when they started paying into the entitlement programs.
ANY shifting of the status quo, or actual reform to healthcare results in a political bloodbath (See summer 2009 townhall screaming) those now lower wages of American workforce will not allow for continued funding of social security AND Medicare. Every nickel is going to get eaten up by Medicare and military defense spending and of course the monumental interest payments on both. If you strip away the deficit element of both of these sure...social security will probaly see a barely 1% increase as a share of GDP -- from 5% to 6%. But the rightwing on one side and left on the other are neck deep in grid-lock. Reagan's budget man David Walker famously said "guns, butter and tax cuts. You can't do all three". We simply can't afford to keep spending on Medicare, the military, servicing the national debt interest and balk at any increases in taxes. It's madness stuck in park.