“Right now that date is 2033 for the entire Social Security program. The disability fund is projected to start running out of money in late 2016, and 2034 for the retirement fund.”
STOP THE BAD REPORTING!
The SS trust fund NEVER RUNS OUT OF MONEY! We pay INTO it with every paycheck! This right wing jargon and nonsense has become the accepted, standard language with which to discuss this topic, and of course IT IS NOT TRUE!
In a worse possible case scenario- which will NEVER HAPPEN- the SS trust fund will supply 78% of the funds promised…that is NOT “going broke”! This is all just right wing garbage meant to destroy and privatize Social Security, which of course is the one “solution” which COULD actually make it GO BROKE!
How about we get some real REPORTERS WORKING HERE! You know, reporters you pay with real money! Is this the Huffington Post, run by mommybloggers and interns?
OK, my ongoing proposal - remove the cap on earnings. Make publicly-held companies pay 100% of every form of compensation - no more free company jets, luxury apartments, deferred compensation tricks - for anyone earning more than 20 times the average worker in their company. Make them prove their worth to shareholders.
Yes, fold disability into the “retirement” fund. At the same time, start investigating places like Harlan and Winchester VA, where social services people actually had to start instructing people in applying for disability because their budgets were stripped. Start releasing those figures and maybe the states will start addressing the problem.
Finally, could Democrats start trolling the Pukes? One would hope so, but one doesn’t think it will happen, or that anyone would pay attention if it did.
“Those fears are well founded”? Combining them would make the fund “insolvent” a year earlier is a massive difference? Ridiculous. You point out the alleged issue, which is inconsistency. So the solution is to punish everyone on disability due to “well founded fears” where there might, allegedly, based on “fears,” be “fraud”? Standard GOP reasoning - there must be something because we believe there must be something, when n reality the “fears” are based on everything but reality. If there’s such massive fraud that’s causing “insolvency,” then isn’t the solution to root out the fraud? It couldn’t be that the system is simply underfunded, could it, and that drawing simply from a larger pool, and then fully funding the system by, say, raising the cap based on an inflation calculation might solve the actual problem. Except, of course, if the objective is, as others have said, to simply kill the program a piece at a time because takers don’t deserve to mooch off the rest of us.
For similar examples of GOP “fears” not actually proven by actual reality, I refer you to the massive inflation that’s been coming pretty much tomorrow ever since the Fed started managing the currency to get us out of the Great Recession. (It’ll be here, just wait, maybe day after tomorrow!) Or, on a larger scale, the mass collapse of the health care system due to the ACA, as evidenced by the opposite actually occurring, though there are indeed some folks suffering, thanks to those GOP led states which refused the Medicaid expansion, who are suffering because the benefits working for others don’t extend to them (and followed closely by real system viability issues in some of those same GOP states because the Feds will no longer directly subsidize free care - take that moocher providers and citizens, see how the GOP is making things better?!).
As a certain well-known Democrat once said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Or, in the case of the GOP, fear is a key component to their governing strategy, about all they have.
Yup, all that money that could go to the Wall Street casino, just being given to people who paid into the system without a percent going to the 1%, and in return getting a guaranteed income, even if the captains of industry and finance tank the world economy (after taking their percentage off the top - mama wants a new private jet and bigger wall around the compound to keep “those people” at bay). How unAmerican!
This is total malarkey. Essentially you’re claiming that you can accurately determine the payout on social security over the lifespan of all participants, but with disability that’s impossible to determine? Really? The determination on either is based on actuarial data and estimates, neither are concrete, both need to be based on well educated guesses. Somebody could have a disability during their years before reaching SS age, somebody else could, you know, die and never collect. If your actuarial work is good, you’ll hit the mark. Another way to help hit the mark? Enlarge the pool - and be sure, unlike current social security trust fund, you adjust your collection criteria periodically, such as by raising the cap based on inflation. By combining the different fund pots into one, you enlarge the pool. If the guesses on disability are not accurate, you adjust your actuarial criteria. Or, as far as the GOP is concerned, kill the program, then see how many of those disabled moochers make it to social security eligibility. Don’t make it, more for the rest of us. Two problems solved!
