Is my argument sound or am I whacked? It seems like there should be some massive increase on the benefits side which I can't seem to find which would be required for your wealth transfer assertion to be true.

The reason today's retirees were able to get such a great deal compared to what they put in is that when they started working, their tax rates were incredibly low, because it is and always was a pay-go system (and they were paying for relatively few retirees). They paid 1% at the start; moving up a few times during their working years; but, again, averaging something like 2-3%, and that applied only to the first N dollars of wages.

The opposite is becoming true now. We're paying for a LOT of retirees, and the guy flipping the burger pays 8% for the privilege.

There simply isn't any problem with SS and even if you can squint and see one, it's so far out - and keeps moving farther with each year

lol

WTF? First, SS *currently* takes in far more than it pays out. For 2007, SS receipts were $869.6 billion, outlays were $586.1 billion. Even with the most pessimistic predictions, SS is only going to *start* falling short of what it is currently obligated to pay out somewhere around 2042. It's important to remember that in1994 the doomsayers were predicting SS disaster in 2029. So, the time when we even start to think of a problem in SS keeps getting moved out. And even when it's a "problem", it's actually pretty trivial to fix with some minor adjustments - clearly not a looming disaster of biblical proportions.

If we had actually listened to Gore and created a SS "lockbox" rather than taking all that extra dough Greenspan decided we should rake in during the 80's ('83 reform) and giving it away with Bush's tax cuts and military spending, we wouldn't even be talking about 2042 as a date as we'd have to project to infinity to find an issue with SS. Again, where's the problem? I know the right has a huge incentive to talk this down and proclaim disaster, but I'm not sure what anyone else's is. And the facts are pretty clear and even agreed upon by everyone in the debate - even the ones with a flashlight under their chin spinning scary stories of 2042 and the horrors that await us. There simply isn't any problem with SS and even if you can squint and see one, it's so far out - and keeps moving farther with each year - that it's completely immaterial to any realistic argument.

Or at least that's the way it seems to shake out to my analysis. If you have some other way of looking at it, with different predictions that portend disaster, I'd love to hear about them...

It wasn't inevitably going to be that way, but somebody slept at the actuarial wheel.

Is there any evidence that today's workers can expect a similar largesse from future retirees? Only if our population grows by an order of magnitude.

Then you come back at me with libertarian this and Iran that and what about the right to counsel. I'll stipulate that all those things are important... but the post we're all ostensibly commenting on here is about the credit rating of the US government. That's what I've been talking about anyway.

And sure, the President could suspend Habeas Corpus tomorrow and put us all under a military dictatorship. As I tried to make crystal clear, it's all just a game played by arbitrary rules that we can change at will - something that the libertarians, I must point out, disagree with because they somehow think there's some primordial property rights that predated human evolution or something. But other than that, pretty much anything can be wiped away with either the legislator's pen, the judge's gavel or the President's police.

Focussing on SS's particular precariousness in this game o' life seems oddly misplaced - especially given how other, far more fundamental aspects of our society such as rule o' law, right to counsel, spying without warrants seem to being thrown under the bus. And given the worrying about SS vs. the blind eye we're casting towards the trillions we're throwing down the drain in Iraq (Iran 2008!!!!11!!!).... well, it's a bit odd to see and leaves one scratching one's head wondering WTF is so important.

And like I said, all it takes is an act of Congress to change the rules. The politics of the issue obviously govern how that works out - but that's what constrains it, not some mythical "ownership" you have of the taxes you paid.

Okay, so can you tell me when the government has failed to live up to this obligation? And this goes for M1EK, too. Basically, it appears that y'all are forgetting that we constantly borrow against the future and have since we invented the idea of finance thousands of years ago. We're financing todays wars on the backs of tomorrow's grandchildren. And I'm sure they'll continue to do the same.

This isn't some bizarro world where things just popped into existence yesterday. We have over 50 years of experience with SS and I think you're just insane if you think that the government is going to be able to reneg on those benefits. I'm paying for my parents benefits and my kids will pay for mine. Only someone purposefully misunderstanding the deal would claim that my money is being redistributed to my parents.

So, sure. Get all Ron Paul and talk about the philosophy of "your money". Let's remember that the entire idea of economics is a complete and utter fiction in the first place and that society and culture as a whole are all just elaborate games played with rules that we simply made up out of nothing.

It's all simply an illusion anyway.

Geebus.

Congress can pass a law that says they don't have to pay you a dime, and that's the end of your benefits. They can repeal the Social Security Act tomorrow, and that's it. No more benefits paid to anyone. On the other hand, if some individual retirement accounts scheme were in place, it would actually be your money. But for now it's not.

Don't take my word for it, read the Social Security Act. You'll note that it never says anything about the money being "yours".

I'm confused. Traditionally, in redistribution schemes, there's a net loss to someone as the money they put in is distributed to those who have put in less. Please explain how this is happening in the case of SS.

The problem with the conservative mindset is that they really don't understand this very simple point about SS. They actually think it's a redistribution tax and that you don't get back what you paid into it. It's quite bizarre.

Relatively few here would call me a conservative, but I'd call it as redistribution tax as well - considering that most past retirees took out many times what they ever put in (even assuming interest slightly above inflation), and even current retirees stand to do quite well.

The fact that the tax applies to all wages short of 97,500 in 1997 makes this a tax on the young and poor which is paid to the elderly, regardless of their economic status. For most of them, they got "their money back" a long time ago.