"Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit"

[_Kevin Graham]

Do you even believe your own lies at this point?

You haven't demonstrated any lies on my part. What did I lie about?

Right now the age to draw social security for people in their 20s is 72.

Uh, that's not true. Retirement age for anyone born in 1960 or later is 67 not 72, and that is because people are living much longer than they used to. When 40 becomes the new 30, 70 is the new 60.

The only way most of them will ever live to see any of the money they paid into social security is if they can manage to get a doctor to say they're disabled.

Where do you even come up with this BS?

If someone retires and their average income was $43,720 all their life then their SS benefits would be $18,230 a year. That may not sound like a lot but when you do the math, it really isn't all that unreasonable. Consider that if you make $43,720 you only pay a small percentage of that into SS. Since the tax rate has fluctuated between 3% and 6% since 1960, let's just say you paid in about 5% of your income into SS. Over a 47 year period that comes out to about $100,000 that you've paid into the trust fund. Now how many years of receiving $18,230 in benefits would it take for you to get back that $100,000? Roughly 5.5 years! So you'll get all your money back if you live to be 73. And if you live to be 78, (which is just below current median life expectancy) you'll receive about twice that.

Most will never see a dime of the money they paid into social security

On the contrary, everyone who lives to be 67 will see it. You're truly swimming in the Right Wing BS right now. And this will really piss you off, but those dirty illegals you hate so much actually put roughly $13 billion into the Social Security fund each year. That you think they don't just proves how ignorant you really are. Maybe you should sign up as a blogger for Frontpage.

[_ajax18]

And this will really piss you off, but those dirty illegals you hate so much actually put roughly $13 billion into the Social Security fund each year.

How does anyone even know how much someone working illegally in the country pays into social security? That's why employers prefer illegal labor is because they don't have to pay taxes on them. It's all under the table or under some fictitious social security number.

You still didn't answer the fact that the defacto welfare program, SSI disability, is draining social security funds for working people who paid into it. The government is banking on the fact that many will die before they can ever get back any of what they paid into this welfare abyss. Maybe they would have preferred to save their own money and leave it to their own posterity as every working man should have had the right to do, if we truly lived in a free country. Social security should be criminal, and it pounds the lowest amongst the working class with absurdly high taxes. When are young people going to start asking themselves, "Who the hell is FICA, and why do they need so much of my paycheck."

[_Kevin Graham]

You're not listening or reading anything I post. You've already been shown to be completely ignorant on the basics of SS, making asinine claims about eligibility and being laughably wrong about no one ever seeing a dime... and now you're going to keep harping about "facts" which you only think are facts because FOX News says so?

Top Ten Myths & Misconceptions About Social Security Disability

Fox Pushes Disability Benefits Myths

Myths & Facts Behind The Campaign To Attack Disability Benefits

Face it, you're an idiot on this subject.

You can't even keep your argument straight. First you argue no one will ever see the money they put into it in the first place and then you argue that too many lying moochers will benefit more from it than they put in.

So which is it?

And I'm still waiting for you to explain my "lie".

[_Analytics]

And this will really piss you off, but those dirty illegals you hate so much actually put roughly $13 billion into the Social Security fund each year.

How does anyone even know how much someone working illegally in the country pays into social security? That's why employers prefer illegal labor is because they don't have to pay taxes on them. It's all under the table or under some fictitious social security number.

The best jobs in America are above-board jobs that require Social Security numbers. The main reason an "illegal" would want a fraudulent Social Security card is so that they can commit the crime of getting a job and paying taxes, including FICA taxes.

In such cases, it is extremely unlikely they will ever get Social Security credit for the FICA taxes they pay. Thus, it is "free money" going into the SS system.

[Guest]

Yeah this represents the usual spin and misunderstanding of both SS and the deficit.

Tell me cinepro, if SS never existed, what would our current deficits and debt be?

Exactly as they are today.

Kevin, at some point your insistence on this tumbles into willful delusion, and you're only going to end up looking foolish. I don't know whose word you'll accept on this. How about Charles Blahous? He's one of Obama's guys. Obama nominated him to the Board of Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds, so if he doesn't know what he's talking about, then we've got huge problems...

He wrote the following in an LA Times opinion piece in June of 2014 after someone insinuated that he had stated that SS doesn't contribute to the deficit. Here are some excerpts, and I recommend the entire piece to you:

My testimony [to congress] was unambiguous that Social Security adds to the deficit. In my written testimony, I stated, "Social Security operations are currently adding to the unified federal deficit and will add substantially more in the years to come."

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Social Security operates similarly in the sense that the payroll taxes it collects are currently insufficient to finance benefit payments. This difference is made up with payments from the government's general fund. For 2011-12, lawmakers even enacted a further subsidy of roughly $220 billion from the general fund, deliberately adding this portion of Social Security spending to the deficit as a stimulus measure.

Hiltzik misleadingly suggests these facts are the inventions of "anti-Social Security conservatives." That Social Security adds to the deficit is widely substantiated by experts irrespective of their policy views.

So, regarding his "written testimony" to a congressional panel saying "Social Security operations are currently adding to the unified federal deficit and will add substantially more in the years to come", what happened there? Either he was mistaken and didn't know what he was talking about, or he was perjuring himself and lying to congress.

Which was it?



I would also point out that two points from the article on "Alternet" are problematic in the context of this discussion:

"1. Social Security is a self-financed program."

It is until it spends more than it brings in, at which point it takes money back from the government's general fund and adds to the deficit because previous surpluses were transferred and spent. This is happening now, as explained in this report cited by Blahous in his article:

"The trust fund perspective does not encompass the interrelationship between the Medicare and Social Security trust funds and the overall federal budget.... From a budget perspective, however, general fund transfers, interest payments to the trust funds, and asset redemptions represent a draw on other federal resources for which there is no earmarked source of revenue from the public... For [Social Security], the difference between revenues from the public ($613.3 billion) and total expenditures ($773.2 billion) was $160.0 billion, indicating that [Social Security] also had a negative effect on the overall budget [in 2012]."

Alternet's second point: "2. Social Security is not in danger of running out of money."

Now you're talking about something different than the "deficit". Obviously, as long as SS can get money from the government's general fund, it won't "run out" of money. But the government has to borrow the money to pay Social Security. Those payments are adding to the deficit. Whether or not that is a problem is what people like Blahous and President Obama and other leaders are trying to figure out (and how to solve it if it is). But that's a different discussion. For the point of this thread, it is well-established that Social Security does "have to do" with the deficit.

[_ajax18]

Thus, it is "free money" going into the SS system.

Nothing is ever free. How many years before they claim I owe them reparations for some employer much wealthier than me exploiting their illegal status?

[_Quasimodo]

Thus, it is "free money" going into the SS system.

Nothing is ever free. How many years before they claim I owe them reparations for some employer much wealthier than me exploiting their illegal status?

My retirement is coming up, ajax. I hope you are contributing your legal share to ensure my leisure in the next few years.

[_ajax18]

My retirement is coming up, ajax. I hope you are contributing your legal share to ensure my leisure in the next few years.

More than enough, though I doubt you'll ever see as much as you have paid in. I'm surprised they haven't completely taken social security away from people who have other retirement income yet. It's coming. Soon it will be just another redistribution of wealth program.

[_Bret Ripley]

Thus, it is "free money" going into the SS system.

Nothing is ever free. How many years before they claim I owe them reparations for some employer much wealthier than me exploiting their illegal status?

Srsly?

At any rate: for the most part, those whose illegal status is being exploited aren't paying into SS. They are being paid under the table or perhaps as a contractor. It's only those illegal workers who present fake SS cards that contribute to SS, and (speaking from experience) if an employee presents fake ID there is usually very little an employer can legally do about it other than keep a completed I-9 on file. In these cases the employee and employer both pay FICA tax on the employee's wages, and as previously mentioned the employee will never get credit for these contributions even if he/she later achieves legal status.

[_Analytics]

Kevin, at some point your insistence on this tumbles into willful delusion, and you're only going to end up looking foolish. I don't know whose word you'll accept on this. How about Charles Blahous? He's one of Obama's guys. Obama nominated him to the Board of Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds, so if he doesn't know what he's talking about, then we've got huge problems...

He wrote the following in an LA Times opinion piece in June of 2014 after someone insinuated that he had stated that SS doesn't contribute to the deficit. Here are some excerpts, and I recommend the entire piece to you:

My testimony [to congress] was unambiguous that Social Security adds to the deficit. In my written testimony, I stated, "Social Security operations are currently adding to the unified federal deficit and will add substantially more in the years to come."

If you consider the "unified federal deficit" to be the sum total of all government revenue and expenses, including Social Security, then this is true.

But if you use the technical legal definition of the "unified federal deficit", what Charles Blahous (of the Hoover Institute) says here is absolutely, unequivocally false.

Since 1993, by law the "unified federal budget" explicitly excludes Social Security. So, if the "unified federal deficit" is defined as the deficit of the "unified federal budget," then the Social Security deficit has absolutely no effect on the unified federal deficit. From the perspective of the unified federal budget, the Social Security administration tapping into its trust fund only causes the unified federal budget to swap one type of treasury liability for another: net zero effect.

In fact, Social Security payments cannot cause a deficit to the unified federal budget, by law. By law, once the Social Security Administration depletes the assets in its trust fund, it must reduce Social Security payments so that current revenue covers current liabilities. That is the law.

This difference is made up with payments from the government's general fund.

No, the payment is made up by spending down the assets in the Social Security trust fund--real assets that were created by past payroll taxes explicitly for that purpose. And reiterating what I stated above, if the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money (and the law isn't changed first), then benefit payments will be reduced so that current Social Security benefits are low enough to be covered by current Social Security tax revenue.