6 thoughts on “Forbes post, “What If We Stopped Worrying About The Social Security Trust Fund?”

  1. The big lie on social security is that when it was implemented the life expectancy was so low that most people didn’t collect anything but this is not true. Improvements in life expectancy have mostly come from reduction in death’s among people (infants and death’s of children) under age 20. A retiree in 1940 could expect to collect for about 16 years, today it is only 18 months longer. Raising the retirement age has already equalised that.

  2. Leave it as is is, let the cuts to outlay happen on schedule as everyone has know would happen and has had years to prepare for; that would do it too.

    The list of institutions needing massive influxes of capital that are assuming or demanding the federal government to swoop in is terrifying – cities (Chicago, etc.), states (Illinois, Kentucky, NJ, etc.), private pensions (PBGC, multi-employer), SS, Medicare; it can’t all happen. We are facing massive deficits even if the federal government just does what it actually has committed to – which does NOT include bailing out SS in a few years, bailing out PBGC when it runs out of money, bailing out multi-employer pensions, or bailing out cities or states. All of those institutions made their choices, with access to economists and calculators; they’ve known or been able to know that the wall was coming, and have done nothing to bear the costs of their mistakes themselves.

  3. I may make some enemies here but as a single person I believe the “free”spousal benefit is very unfair to single taxpayers. If I pay the same lifetime FICA tax as my married neighbor why should his/her non working spouse be eligible to collect up to 50% of that benefit? Basically SS pays a married couple 150% of the single person’s benefit- all things equal. There is no “litmus test” that a stay at home spouse raise children. The couple could be childless & the non-working spouse gets a free benefit with no reduction in the PIA of the wage earner. No private (or public) pension plan gives “free” benefits to a spouse without a reduction in the primary earners pension.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *