Under 65 and expecting SS ?

I'm 60 yrs old and just now started to think I will not receive the full Social Security benefit until death. This article caused the change in my thinking.

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Mikek

Reply to
amdx
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That disclaimer has been on my statements for many years. It's one reason I started SS at 62

Reply to
Rex

But it's more than the disclaimer. Something will need to be done by 2033. Probably before. Either raise SS withholding, reduce SS benefits or take it out of the general fund. ah, oh wait. In 2033 the lock box* will only have 73 cents for every $1 of out going benefits.

  • a mythical place within the general fund for the money that is credited to the SS fund. The money credited to this account has been spent. Then more money was borrowed and spent. Then more money was borrowed and spent. :-(

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

What the government did (naturally when Dems had the White House and The House and Senate at the same time) was literally, legally, the same thing Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels did in Dumb and Dumber. They took the money and replaced it with IOU's. But us conservatives are just so dumb aren't we. Fox News is so stupid as certain posters like to say (well actually I stopped watching all TV news in 1984). Bush is such a dummy, etc. But seriously, Christopher Hitchens had a great retort for the people who repeatedly chanted "Bush is stupid." He said it was the kind of criticism stupid people would come up with. (His exact words are on youtube somewhere, in a Bill Maher interview IIRC.)

During the 1990's they kept chanting "affordable housing" and I wondered what the hell they could possibly have in mind. Pay construction workers less? Open land for development? Repeal regulations? They were more clever than that. It turned out what they had in mind was to force banks to give mortgages away under threat of prosecution on Civil Rights grounds.

So now, when they say there is no problem with Social Security, what do they really have in mind this time? I think I know. They will confiscate private property, starting with corporate property. Then they will effectively take from the value of 401k's and other savings. When they can't possibly get enough revenue from the current year's income, they will essentially tax past years over again. Eventually they will move on to personal property by indirect means like imposing property taxes comparable to charging rent. When they achieve their goal of the state owning all property there won't be a SS problem or any problem because they'll just pull all the strings.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

There never was any money there. Ever. It's a combination of ordinary Treasury bonds and "special obligation" bonds. It always has been.

Ah, well, you said it.

No, that wasn't the basis of it. The basis was to build lower-cost housing when builders just wanted to build ever-higher-priced housing. There was no plan or policy behind that; just a desire, which fit into the reality when it seemed like every builder in America was building McMansions and lobbying housing commissions and zoning boards to build bigger houses on ever-smaller lots.

What you're talking about is another part of the puzzle, based on the CRA and banks that complained the feds were forcing them to make risky loans. But the banks had spent decades making loans at higher rates to perfectly credit-worthy customers, with rates based solely on their race. If you don't know the origins of the mortgage enforcements, look up "redlining" and "reverse redlining," particularly the practices of Wells Fargo Bank:

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Anarcho-capitalists, like our friend Jon Ball, will now go into overdrive while leaning on the horn, to dispute this. But it can't be disputed. Several banks were indicted for doing the same things:

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Banks wanted to make the loans, and, when they figured out how to offload them in fraudulent "tranches" that were mixed with some quality loans, they went at it hell-bent. Countrywide was getting rich on it. Meantime, the feds *were* pressuring banks to make loans that were bad bets. There was plenty of bad faith to go around. It was a mess that will be argued for years to come.

There is no problem with Social Security. That's another myth.

What's it like, living in a world of fear-fueled paranoia? Does it make you happy to believe all of these cockamamie myths? Do you bother to check them out? If not, why not?

Reply to
Ed Huntress

You might make a fuller explaination of this. I think the government said that the money coming in is less than the money going out as of last year. Might have been as of 2015.

This from the government web site.

Social Security's total expenditures have exceeded non-interest income of i ts combined trust funds since 2010, and the Trustees estimate that Social S ecurity cost will exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year project ion period. The Trustees project that this annual cash-flow deficit will av erage about $76 billion between 2015 and 2018 before rising steeply as inco me growth slows to its sustainable trend rate after the economic recovery i s complete while the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substan tially faster rate than the number of covered workers.

It may be no problem to you, but it sounds like a problem to me.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Read the whole thing, Dan. It says about the same thing that was said in 1987. Socieal Security needs another adjustment like it had it

1988. It's not a catastrophe. It's just the result of changing demographics.

And, if the Medicaid projections for the rest of the century hold true (both accounts are intermingled), we're all screwed anyway, SS, Medicare, or not.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I did not say it was a catastrophy or that it could not be solved. But it sure sounds like a problem to me.

Say you are driving in your car and blue smoke starts coming out of the exhause pipe. That is a problem. Sure it can be fixed, but it is going to take money to do it. And you might have thought you were going to spend the money on something else.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Are you basing this on the same financial expertise you apply to your personal accounts?

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Those reports are always cautionary, telling Congress that it has to act within a certain timeframe or there will be bad consequences. That isn't anything new. It's the nature of the beast.

You know how the age demographics are going in this country (and most western countries, plus some Asian countries). Sooner or later, you either have to increase taxes or decrease benefits. There is no magic lottery that will pay for it all.

If Congress acts fairly soon, the adjustments will be modest. Look at what happened in 1988.

If you have blue smoke and you didn't have a clue it was coming, that's one thing. When demographic and actuarial statistics give you a

30- or 50-year warning, that's a different thing.
Reply to
Ed Huntress

What was the 1988 adjustment? All I can find is, " (COLA). This adjustment, which was effective for December 1988, resulted in a $728 million increase in the monthly benefits ..." And something about the notch.

I can only come up with 4 fixes, raise the retirement age, cut benefits, increase FICA taxes and remove/increase the cap. Cutting benefits, a political nightmare. Increase taxes, rough but probably doable. Raise the retirement age, doable. Remove/increase the cap, doable.

Got any others? Your thoughts.

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

Eh, sorry, Mikek, that was 1983 -- the Greenspan commission. It's getting harder to remember dates...

As for your suggestions, I generally agree. Means testing is an essential one, IMO. Be prepared to make adjustments quickly with changes in the economy and employment, is another.

I'd bump up the retirement age at least two years or so.

Then do an analysis with a few assumption options on the economy, and see if anything else needs to be done. And get started quickly, so the adjustments are as gradual as they can be.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Give people the option to decline the amount of benefits they receive in exchange for a reduction in what they have to contribute while working.

Something like you can pay eighty percent of the usual while working, but you will only get 75% of the benefits you would get if you paid the full boat.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

There will be no COLA this year. Government says there is no inflation.

Do you know that dividends pay no FICA tax.

Best Regards Tom.

Reply to
azotic

Reply to
Martin Eastburn

What "money" are you talking about? SS has ALWAYS been a "pay as you go" program. There never was any money stored up like nuts for winter.

The "Trust fund" is an accounting device. There is not, and never was, any actual money there.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

But the trust fund was publicized as having money stored up in it.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

I don't recall anyone ever telling me that. Anyone who followed the extensive news coverage of the adjustments made in '83, or Greenspan's controversial comments about it in the years since, would know better.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

It's really very simple. My SS payments are issued by the US treasury not some trust fund. The talking heads don't know what they are talking about. The SSA does the accounting as to who gets what based on how much they paid in FICA taxes and what age they begin to collect SS payments. Remember FICA is a tax not a savings account. The government can spend taxes as soon as it gets the money no mater what the source.

Best Regards Tom.

Reply to
azotic

Means testing is the one I hate most. I've spent 34 years living under my less than middle class income so I could have a nest egg at retirement. With a means test, those that earned 2 x what I did will not get means tested, but because I saved, I will. That's like spanking the good kid when the bad kid acts up. It just ain't right.

Reply to
amdx

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