Blame your grandparents and aging parents, they won't vote for anybody who will cut their entitlements. We can point the finger at politicians all day long, but they're not going to do something their voter base opposes if they can avoid it.

Fucking baby boomers.

Gee Robert, could it have anything to do with paying for other people's benefits, sucking it up and taking a doubling of SS taxes that were going to save the program for your generation, only to be told on the cusp of retirement that it's not happening? By the way, the economy sucks, so we're going to have to cut people, and you're at the top of the list because you're now "highly compensated?" That is if your job hasn't already been outsourced. Good luck finding another job at 60, WalMart already has all the greeters they need.

No, obviously the answer is that boomers are evil and hate their kids. Not evil enough to have starved you in the crib, but still evil.

We could sit down like adults and come to the conclusion that there are going to be cuts, but somebody needs to get serious first before talking about dumping me on the street. You can't say the Department of Education is necessary. It didn't exist when I went to school.

The retirement age needs to be raised, and there will be cuts to medicare, but first you are going to have to tell me again why we need a Cabinet level position that doesn't teach a single kid, or why we need to pay billions to corporations that are in the farming business not to farm. Or why we need to overpay Federal government workers by about 40% as compared to private sector employees. In other words, I've been there, done that and am not going first this time.

I will do my share as long as everybody does theirs. If not, then it sucks to be you because I'll be dead. My kids can't cry too much, I'm still paying on the $100K I borrowed for their educations. You're welcome.

I don't consider SS an "entitlement," as though we'll be receiving something for nothing. This is something we've been paying for all our working lives. I'd have been perfectly happy to keep that portion of my paycheck all these years. Now you tell me I should just look upon my contributions as lost? No way.

Kishke, your contributions ARE lost. Get this through your head. The money Has. Already. Been. Spent. The only, ONLY way to pay future benefits is to borrow. I'm sorry, it's shitty news, I know. The time to do something about this was thirty or forty years ago. But everyone was content to kick the can down the road.

Yesterday I read a comment on reason.com by someone who expressed astonishment that he had to not only pay for the old folks' retirement but his own, as well. Well DUH! How is it possible that you have not known this your whole life? That is ALWAYS what was going to happen. A tiny handful of people (mostly libertarians) have been screaming about this for decades, but NOBODY LISTENED. That's the idiocy I hear from the younger set, most of whom don't even freakin' vote.

From the older set I just hear different versions of "Don't touch my Social Security!" or "I just want back what I paid in!"

Utter cluelessness on both sides of the generational war, which is going to get ugly.

MarkD, enjoy your social security/medicaid while you can. It's a government sanctioned pyramid scheme. Except the boomers forgot to reproduce enough children to keep the pyramid upright.

You know what happens to a pyramid scheme when you can't bring in enough new suckers...errr, investors? it collapses. Ask Madoff what happens when there's more going out than coming in.

Better hope the government doesn't slurp up your 401k between now and the collapse. Of course, yankee dollars may not be worth bumpkis at then...

if you ask him if he's for cutting back on any of these programs and you just hear one "no" after another

This is because these programs are very popular and their primary beneficiaries - older people - vote in large numbers and punish politicians who propose cuts in Medicare or Social Security, causing a substantial disincentive for the political class to do anything about these problems. In 1983, Republicans and Democrats worked together to push through Social Security reforms that were unpopular, but were possible because both parties signed on to them, limiting the exposure of either side. In today's political climate, I'm pretty sure such a deal is impossible. And the U.S. will continue its slow march toward insolvency.

This is something we've been paying for all our working lives.

This isn't a 401k or investment vehicle. It's a tax on employment. You're not guaranteed to receive any benefit. You really should read the fine print.

Congress may change the rules at any time for any reason.

And the U.S. will continue its slow march toward insolvency.

If this is "slow", I'd hate to see fast. Social Security is already pulling out the IOUs in their "lock box" and selling them to make up the difference between benefits going out, and payroll taxes coming in. If unemployment stays where it is, that trend will only accelerate.

The US represents 2% of world population and 50% of military spending. Others have mentioned various departments that aren't productive. In 1900 there were 40 Federal laws, now there are over 40,0000. The list could go on and on.

Congress may change the rules at any time for any reason.

Oh, I know. But I'm explaining why I'm against touching SS, or branding it an "entitlement." There are plenty plenty plenty of places to cut spending. This shouldn't be it. Not when we've paid into it for decades, and when we've been promised - fine print or no - a return in exchange, measly though it might be. Any legislator who goes there loses my vote.

Yes, there are plenty of other places to cut spending, and we should cut those places, too. But we could cut ALL of them by 100%, and we still wouldn't have enough money to cover entitlements.

It has EVERYTHING to do with paying for other people's benefits, old folks are those "other people". I doubt I'll ever see social security for myself, forget saving it, we need to GET RID OF IT. I'm preparing myself for my own retirement, I don't want to be beholden to the government for that.

So, what exactly would YOU call this mindset: My children and grandchildren, and all other people who pay taxes must be taxed to pay benefits to me until such a time as I die, before I die all other taxpayers must fund my care with no upward limit of cost, regardless of the sum which I contributed to the system in the course of my life.

I could tell you why we need those positions...but I can't because we don't need them. I could tell you why federal employees are not overpaid...but they are radically overpaid. I could tell you why we pay people not to farm, but there is no good reason, you are 100% right, but none of that makes the cost of programs like social security, medicaid, and medicare even one penny less painful.

-----------------

It sucks kishke, but that may be what it takes to return this nation to fiscal solvency, I'd HATE to think of my contributions as "lost" too, but it'd be better than another decade or more of the same eventual outcome, or of demanding our descendants pay out for us.

"Any legislator who goes there loses my vote."

You are in denial. There is NO WAY to continue this program indefinitely within our lifetimes. Social security was set up at a time of expanding population, rising wages, and lifetimes that did not go much beyond the time a person started collecting. ALL OF THOSE TRENDS ARE NOW REVERSED. People are living longer, wages are comparably smaller in terms of their buying power than they once were, employment is an ever changing circumstance, and the population has stopped having as many children and started having them later. None of the things that allowed this pyramid scheme to remain sustainable exist any longer. If you are not willing to give this one up, then all of our children to come and children living now will continue to pony up the dough in an unsustainable system that will WRECK their quality of life.

There are a lot of places to make cuts, and I agree we need to start hammering them HARD. But that does not mean we shouldn't start with this glorified pyramid scheme and start slashing it to pieces until it is GONE. Lesson learned, hope you've been preparing for your retirement instead of counting on this one, because you likely won't see much of it.

I would recommend watching the documentary IOUSA. The guy who did it was the head of the congressional budget office and he shows that you could get rid of ALL spending on the federal level except SS, medicare, welfare, and medicaid; and the numbers for the deficit barely budge. Those entitlements are what is bringing the whole thing down.

Now I understand you have paid into the system for your life, but you also voted in the politicians and voted for the programs that drained the fund. the baby boomers HAVE spent the money, on roads, defense, welfare, and numerous other boondoggles. Instead of raising taxes on themselves, they filled the fund with IOUs.

Now you ask the younger generations to foot the bill for actions they had no say in. I am only 26 and I see my taxes going up up up to pay for your bills and the whole thing being defunct before I ever get to the payout date. You are asking to STEAL everything from me for your generations mistakes. If I had the option to opt out of those programs and keep my money, I would sign in a heartbeat.

Zach, your observation is spot-on for all of Generation Y, and for Generation X as well. IOUSA was a good movie, and you might also like the documentary 'Generation Zero.'

My generation (X) has grown up disillusioned and embittered by a system we always knew was screwing us. We have always been so hopelessly outnumbered, most of my generation didn't even try to fight it - not that this was any real excuse to not try. (For my part, I faithfully and uselessly voted Libertarian in every election.)

But there was really no way to defeat the overwhelming numbers of Boomers, Silent Gens, and what's left of the GI's, all of whom only stood to benefit from the status quo. They stood around sucking their thumbs while their payroll taxes were spent on other things, racking up debt, knowing it would mean screwing future generations, but that didn't seem to bother them too much. The Boomers aren't feeling quite so smug now, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put them into the "screwed" camp along with us X's and Y's when it comes to entitlements.

And no, I've never felt the least bit bad about the idea of "taking away Grandma's Social Security check." Get a friggin' job and save your own money. That's what grown, responsible, self-reliant adults do. If I have to work until I'm 80, so the fuck can you. Retiring at 62, healthy and able-bodied, spending the last 20 years of your lives taking vacations on your kids' dimes? Nope, no sympathy here.

Try re-locating to the Far East. I think the odds are better there.

The USA is bankrupting itself, largely through a huge military and related outlays. The entitlements are noisome, but do not make a claim on output. They just transfer money from one person to another.

The trillion-a-year military-VA-foreign policy archipelago saps real economic resources out of the private jobs- and wealth-creating sector, and feeds it to ever-hungry federal agencies and bureaucrats.

Entitlements? Let's see, become a federeal employee in the military, work 20 years, retire at age 40, and pick up a pension for the rest of your life and free health care to boot. $1 million separation package, easy.

Now, that's an entitlement.

There are a lot of places to make cuts, and I agree we need to start hammering them HARD.

When that happens, come back, we'll talk. Until then, leave SS alone.

If I had the option to opt out of those programs and keep my money, I would sign in a heartbeat.

Yeah, me too. So?

Now you ask the younger generations to foot the bill for actions they had no say in. I am only 26 and I see my taxes going up up up to pay for your bills and the whole thing being defunct before I ever get to the payout date.

Hey, we agree again. That's exactly what I'm worried about! Getting shafted before I get to the payout date. And hey, you're 26, so you've had a say for 8 years now. I wasn't either around when SS was voted into law.

Kishke, I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Robert that you are in denial. You are going to get shafted before you get to the payout date. There is absolutely nothing that can prevent that now.

PJ: You may be right. But I'm betting not. I don't think they're gonna cut Social Security. There are lots of seniors, and they vote in droves. And there are lots of people like me, who aren't seniors, but who have been paying for years, and we vote too.

The outcome will be the same, regardless of whether the politicians vote to cut Social Security or not. At this point in the game, the only way to keep those checks going out the door is to simply print them, and if that happens the checks won't be worth anything. The seniors are going to scream either way - whether their checks get smaller, or whether the checks only buy half of what they used to buy.

"The USA is bankrupting itself, largely through a huge military and related outlays."

Are you not reading??? It's the entitlements that are busting us, underfunded because of the (working) population bust, and the housing bust, which caused the recession that caused tax revenue to plummet.

It's the perfect storm, though it was going to happen even without the recession.

You youngsters are pointing the finger in the wrong direction. SS is a Socialist scheme dreamed up by FDR AND HIS HOMIES. Baby Boomers have paid into the system for 60+ years and were the first generation to see a rising of the minimum age requirement(for a livable payment). SS is "supplemental" retirement income, which means you are supposed to fund your "primary" retirement on your own. If the fucks in the Gov had just let everyone fend for themselves,i.e., no deductions from your paycheck, it is highly likely that by setting aside that money and investing it you would be in much better shape, retirement-wise ($3000 invested every year for 30 years @6% = nearly $1,000,000). Good luck!

Historically, the Young have helped the Old, partly out of family love, and partly because of a transfer of wealth from the Old to the Young. The Young have been paid for their services, to the extent they have worked for the Old.

Our politicians have now built a scheme where the Young will be expected to work for the Old, for nothing. The Young will be ordered to pay the amounts promised by Medicare, Social Security, and union and government pensions, lavish healthcare promises, and lavish pensions.

There is nothing real in the "Social Security Trust Fund". There is only a political promise to find the money somewhere that has already been spent. This is 1000 times bigger than the Bernie Madoff fraud of $50 billion. It is a gigantic Ponzi scheme pretending to be a sensible government program. Collecting more tax for that scheme will not change anything.

The Old will wave pieces of paper at the Young calling for perfectly legal, high taxes on them. This will be presented as a given, the amount of transfer duly voted under law by the Old for the benefit of the Old.

In exchange, the Young will be told that they too can collect from their children in turn. The Young will be slaves to the Old, under the suggestion that they too can enslave their Young.

If the Young have any sense at all, they will tear up those pieces of paper in contempt for the Old who decided to enslave them. The Young will have contempt for the government and "the Law" that arranged this enslavement. They will break the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. They will blame the government that pretended to plan for the future, but instead spent it all, expecting the Young to supply what was never saved.

There will be a revolution that changes much of our current law. Government bonds, then refered to as the "old government bonds" will be worth the paper they are printed on.

--> easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/01/ponzi-schemes-like-social-security.html
Ponzy Schemes Like Social Security
. . There is nothing real in the "trust fund". There is only a political promise to find the money somewhere that was paid in and already spent. The shortfall is about $15 trillion in today's dollars, about the entire yearly income of everyone in the US.

--> easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamacare-bails-out-medicare.html
Obamacare Bails Out Medicare
. . Obama's "Healthcare Reform" is a huge tax hike with rationed medical services.

jksisco, you and I know that. The problem is that FDR and his homies did a really good job of convincing earlier generations that SS was an investment program, and there are just too many people who are still in denial about that, as we've seen on this thread.

kishke, PJ is right: unless you're within a few years of retirement now, and you don't live past 80, you will get shafted. The last time at which the SS program could have been saved has passed, and the math now makes the collapse inevitable. Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff and no matter how hard he flaps his arms, it's only a matter of time until he hits the desert floor and goes poof. The government has no avenue available to it to increase tax revenues -- we're already on the back side of the Laffer curve and further tax increases will cause revenues to go down -- and by 2025, give or take a few years, SS payouts will exceed total revenues. At that point it simply won't be possible to pay all of the benefits, even by eliminating the entire rest of the federal government.

And as far as your implied questions of the morality of cutting SS, consider my viewpoint for a moment. I'm in my prime earning years now, but I'm also paying the highest FICA taxes in the history of the program. The wage maximum has pretty much moved in step with my salary increase for the past 15 years, and we're another year or two away from the wage cap coming completely off. And you know what? I'll never get a dime of that back. Not one stinkin' dime. So tell me, what is my motivation to support even more extraordinary measures to keep SS alive for a few more years at the expense of everything else? How is me paying confiscatory tax rates in order to support you, when I'll never receive anything at all, a moral stand?

Andrew, that's a good explanation. I'm going to try to avoid pointing fingers, but the fact is that the program was fraudulent from the start; doomsday has always been inherent in the math, and that's that. PJ and I have hid this discussion here before about what happens when we get old and frail and we can't work anymore. Given the fairly high likelihood that our retirement savings will have been confiscated by a government desperate to keep entitlement programs rolling, our one remaining choice will be whether we want to die slowly (by starvation) or quickly (by eating a gun barrel).

kishke, if you don't already have a retirement fund, start one!

I hope they don't take the 401K's away.

I'm Generation X, and have known for a while that Gen X and later can't depend on social security to be there for us. Sad to say, we have to pay into it and probably won't get anything in return. Life sucks sometimes.

Then again, it could be worse. Amy has posted about stuff that happens to women in Muslim countries. It wasn't all that long ago, on a historical scale, when pneumonia was called "consumption" and was frequently lethal. Or how about the way people used to cut people's heads off (in England, even) and stick the heads on posts? Part of the reason people came to the USA in the beginning was to escape religious persecution - also in England, there was persecution if you belonged to the "wrong" Christian group (I think for a while the Catholics were persecuted by Protestants, then the Protestants were percecuted by Catholics, or maybe it was the other way around).

In other words, maybe life doesn't suck quite as much as it used to.

I was both ways around KrisL kept going back and forth.

Guy Fawkes, Bloody Mary, Henry the 8th, ect

How is me paying confiscatory tax rates in order to support you, when I'll never receive anything at all, a moral stand?

Cousin Dave: It's no less moral than me paying now and for the last 20 years for others. I want to take out what I put in. I don't see anything immoral about that.

Well then kiske hit up the people who already took your share not the people who are currently being forced to pay into a system that wont e around for us

kishke, I understand the feeling, but what you put in is gone and that's just the way it is. Your "taking out" will actually consist of taking it away from someone else. Because someone steals from you, that doesn't make it morally right for you to steal from someone else.

No one stole from me, nor will I be stealing from anyone else. The govt took the money legally, and if they take yours, it'll be legal too. The govt is a cooperative made up of us all. We empower them to tax and spend, and if this is how they choose to spend the money - i.e., to keep their promises - then it's just fine, so long as we all have a say, which we do through the vote. I see nothing at all immoral in that. What is immoral is to take money with the implicit promise that it will be returned and then not return it.

Well then kiske hit up the people who already took your share not the people who are currently being forced to pay into a system that wont e around for us

This is not between me and any particular individual. It's between me and the government. A nation is an ongoing collective entity, not merely a transient collection of individuals. The nation, represented by its government, needs to honor its obligations. When a nation enters into a treaty, it remains in effect even after the government changes. Same with debts: when the country under Bush borrows from China, the country under Obama has got to repay. I see SS the same way: The government made a promise to the individual wage earners. Give us a portion of your earnings, we'll return it to you when you get old. They - we - need to make good on the debt.

The nation, represented by its government, needs to honor its obligations.

My dog needs to shit solid gold coins. But she can't.

The government *cannot* honor its obligation at this point. There is no amount of "should" or "need" that will change that. Be as outraged as you want, but you can't get blood out of a turnip.

Okay, so the government sucks and can't be trusted. Let's make sure we've learned that lesson for future reference, m'kay?

The government *cannot* honor its obligation at this point.

If it can't, it can't. If you don't have the money, and have no way of getting it, you can't your debts. But there seems to be plenty of money for other things. I believe that paying your debts comes before giving people free handouts. Let them cut all the freebies - welfare, hud etc. - and pay the debt.

BTW, don't imagine for a moment that if they stop SS payments they won't keep taking the bite out of your paycheck, b/c they will.

The point I was making earlier kishke is that you are not asking to take out what you put in. Instead you are asking for more. The fund was drained by the voters to pay for programs instead of the government raising taxes to pay for them. The previous generations have already withdrawn what they put in. The IOUs were left BY them in the fund. The Government did it with your consent.

As for the whole, its ok because you get to vote angle. So its alright to enslave 40% of the people in the US because the other 60% want them as slaves? This doesn't trample their rights to their lives and property.

I can't recall who said it, but a main who has 50% of his earnings taxed away is 50% a slave.

If you want to cover SS fine. get rid of the actual entitlements. Cancel medicare and medicaid and Obama care. They are the biggest lines in the debt and if those didn't exist then covering SS would be a lot easier.

I think in the end SS will survive. The reason I say this is that too many people want the system. It is politically unfeasible to remove. However they will monkey with the inflation CPI so that the payout decreases.

I recommend checking shadowstats.org for some interesting reading. The person who runs the site shows how the have changed and substituted the checks for CPI so they no longer check what they used to. The rate of inflation is in fact several times greater than it used to be. For SS to be the same as it was in the 50's for a payout, the monthly allotment will have to double. So I see myself getting a SS check but it being worth about $20 bucks after inflation.

If a thing cannot continue indefinitely, it will not.

Social Security is rapidly approaching the point where the program cannot take in enough money to cover present-period obligations. There was never a "trust fund", and there never will be. Those IOUs are worth precisely dick.

Right now, SS takes 13+% of the first $100,000 of everyone's income, and for people with sufficiently low incomes, the EITC pays them back.

The only way to even give SS another decade of solvency is to eliminate the cap on SS taxable earnings. But that's going to pull so much capital out of the market that we'll be in yet another recession with yet another bout of currency devaluation and the accompanying inflation.

Which makes the SS money worth even less, digging the hole yet deeper.

Here's the unpleasant truth you have to accept: If the retirement age isn't raised and the payouts either capped or means-tested, we're completely fucked. The military budget is already 1/4 of the SS budget. At some point, SS outlays will exceed GDP. Math doesn't lie, and it doesn't forgive.

People aren't having enough children that become productive taxpayers to keep the ratio of SS payers to SS recipients at an acceptable level.

And if they were, we'd be on a population doubling curve like India.

The downfall of Social Security is yet another proof that socialism ALWAYS FAILS.

Oh, and one final insult: Theresa Ghilarducci's proposal that the government seize all 401(k) money and replace it with a government-managed guaranteed annuity is being seriously considered by the Mad Duck session of Congress. It's almost like the Democrats WANT a shooting war.

I have a 401K leftover at my last company -- I am seriously considering if I can turn it into physical silver/gold even at a loss. I never took the 401K at my current company. I'm in my 40's -- I'm thinking gold and silver is the place to be.

I don't believe SS will be there when I get there. I don't think we will get to Million Zimbabwean dollar scenario. But it will be close.

Ayn Rand actually seems to be right. Just that there doesn't seem to like there is a Colorado to go to.

Jim P., you might be interested in the Central Fund of Canada (CEF) as a place to roll over your 401K.

http://www.centralfund.com/