Blackhacker

I must admit. I am just getting around to learning how SS really works. For all those who are dumb like me, the SS payrole taxes come in and benifits go out. What’s left over goes in to the SS trust fund which is invested in Treasry Bonds. The governemt is obligated BY LAW to pay that money back. According to the SS trustees, payrole taxes will continue to exceed benifits until 2018. At that point they will have to start dipping into the trust fund. The trustees say they can do this until 2042 at which benfits will have to be cut by about 1/3.

Ok in 38 years I wll start to be looking for those benifits that I have been paying for my whole adult life, So I DO want something done, but ripping out the whole thing and replacing it with a system that pays out LESS. There MUST be simpler ways to handle this.

1. Incease Payrole Taxes
   I know. Nobody likes the T word but in 2018 when SSA starts cashing in though T Bills, what is the governemt going to do to pay them back? You guested it. So raise a little now or raise alot later.
2. Cut Spending
   This is one of those things that conservtives say needs to be done, but we have YET to elect one to the whitehouse in recent memory who actally does this. It must also be noted that when cuts are mentioned, programs that benifit the poor and elderly are usually the target of the cuts not the benficiary.
3. Diversify the trust fund
   The government is scared of 2018. All that money coming due at one time. They could little by little divest from those bonds and buy corporate bonds, or mortgage backed securities. They are a little more risky than TBills but very stable. This way when 2018 comes around the impact wont hit the Gov’t wallet (which is to say our wallet) quite as much.

For all of those who might rail against "Socialized Medicine" Here is some think about.

Here’s a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba’s, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.

Imagine in the richiest nation in the world, our health care system is in such a state that the babies born in this country would have a better chance during thier first year if they were born in Cuba. Almost no doubt that if they study the mortality figures you would find a high cooralation between income and infant survival.

…But they are part of a pattern of recent statistics dribbling out of the federal government suggesting that for those on the bottom in America, life in our new Gilded Age is getting crueler.