In 2042, there will only be 2 workers per SS retiree....?

I just heard this mentioned again on FOX. Now, I'm not a Nobel winner in mathematics but something doesn't sound right with that equation. The "baby-boom" generation was supposedly born between the years of 1946 -1964. Now those that were born in 1946 will be 96 years old in 2042. What percentage of those born in 1946 will still be living in 2042? I doubt that it will be a large percentage. Those born in 1956 will be 86 years old in 2042. There will probably be more of those living than those born in 1946 but many of them will be dead. Those born in the last year of the "baby-boom" generation, 1964, will be 78 years old. The odds are that many of the youngest of the baby boomers will be dead in 2042 when SS is supposed to go "broke" because there will only be two workers for each retiree. The majority of us will most likely be gone at that time and we will not be living in Florida drawing our SS checks.

All this squawking hysteria on the right is because we're not supposed to start dying off, not now, not ever! They've apparently found the secret to immortality, because they fully expect us all to be alive and kicking until the end of this century.

...is difficult, but all the thoughts people are having about people dying, etc., are taken into account. That's what actuaries do whether for SS or insurance companies: take everything into account that possibly can be in order to predict what groups will be alive at a particular time, in other words, predict death.

There are several big fat problems. While it is possible to predict the deaths of living American far into the future fairly accurately, it is not possible to predict the growth of the economy, the birth rate or the immigration rate with any confidence and they all have huge effects. A slight increase in economic growth, and the SS Administration actuaries and economists are bound by law to be conservative, and there won't be a 20% solvency problem in 2052, there won't be one at all.

What I think is that there is a likely distant solvency problem. There are many ways to deal with it and anything that is done should be conservative, whether it is increasing payroll taxes, slowly raising the retirement age a few years, lifting the contribution limit above $90K (while simultaneously limiting payouts for those folks) or re-indexation. All those maneuvers, if tweaked must be approached in a minimalist way or they will knock the pegs out from under current and near-future SS recipients who have been counting on the deal the country made with them decades ago. I noticed that reindexation from wages to the CPI would have almost halved what current recipients are getting now if that policy were in effect!

We should not be baited into offering our own plan at this time. We have a plan. It is called SS. Let the Republicans take the heat for any decreases in benefits or increases in taxes and let us be seen as the ones who forced them to moderate their draconian plans.

Above all we have to make sure people understand, and they do not because the MSM obscures this, that any solvency problem that might occur in the distant future will not be fixed in any way whatsoever by private accounts. Not only are they an issue apart - gambling with the bedrock of a person's retirement - the cost of draining those funds out of SS to put them into the hands of Wall Street will cost all SS recipients trillions. Trillions that will flow into the hands of wealthy investments folks, who must be positively ecstatic at the prospect of having the public treasury thrown open to them.

As he did with Iraq, Bush conflates two unrelated subjects together by speaking of them in the same breath until in the public mind they are linked by cause and effect. To wit: 1. Terrorists hit us on 9/11. Iraq supported terrorists. Suddenly 70% of Americans think Iraqi terrorists hit us on 9/11. 2. Social Security is "going broke." Personal accounts will give citizens the choice of better return on their SS dollars. Citizens erroneously think piratized accounts will help the eventual solvency crisis.

The only good thing one can say about this is the famous ability of the admin to convince folks that apples and oranges are oranges seems not to be working as well this time. It's our job to see it falls flat on its face.

I worry constantly that the good numbers and rumors of Repuke mutiny will make us complacent, they'll peel off a couple of Dems from red states who have to sweat not supporting the BA and bam, we'll be blind-sided with a quick and narrow Repuke win with a few House and Senate Dems to make it happen.

Good point.

drug costs, higher still insurance costs, limited access to medical care and legal recourse for negligence, and decreased funding for the sciences will all contribute to this. Planned obselescence.

big families too. not as big, but when you multiply the baby boom by gen x, it does make for more people. i'm not saying that you're wrong. simply trying to put perspective on it.

that means their first children were born in 1966. The retirement age will probably be about 72 years of age at that time. That means they will pay into the system until about 2038. Another perspective.

i wasn't so sure about my math after i posted, but meh. just trying to show that a big population boom has later repercussions (ie, population grows more rapidly)

So how in the hell do we know whether there will be enough to support their parents or not???

hence, the issues with all the urgency of the "problem".

then you have to realize that the 'boomlet' of which you speak will be at the prime of their working lives at that point and probably not standing in line for SS.

i wouldn't say that's the prime of their working lives...they'd be looking at retirement themselves.

that is, of course, if the republicans would stop stealing out of the SS funds.

this whole thing is just more tricked-up lies from the happy folk who brought us Iraqi WMDs and 9/11 connections, so Wall Street can loot the SS fund and kill it, the way the gop has wanted from the beginning.

i don't doubt that it's tricked up lies, especially the URGENCY of it. there are people who sincerely think that SS is in trouble, and they may be partially right...but the key is that it doesn't need the vast reorganization (demolition) that bush is pushing. if they stop taking money from the fund, it won't be a drastic problem. raising the salary cap would help also.

idk, seems to me that anyone who actually believes bush completely anymore doesn't deserve to have the social security safety net anymore. they can privatize their own if they want.

on edit: clarification.

is that the surplus was created because the baby boomers were putting money into the system their entire working lives. The pukes raided the surplus in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest, which is why the trust has "IOUs" instead of cash. They stole the money and gave it to their rich pals. Now they want us to throw more money to their oligarch friends while bankrupting the system.

They are criminals through and through. I wish more people would mention the fact that they took the money.

There never was a lockbox containing excess money
collected from social security taxes minus benefits
paid out.
Every excess SS money was spent in the same year as
going back 60 years.

All we have is a drawer full of IOU's from uncle sam
to himself saying that when SS falls short, uncle sam
will pay back. Pay back from WHAT? ONLY source uncle sam
has is taxes. Well there is also the federal lands. So
whenever the shortfall starts, we can look forward to
increased taxes -or- sale of federeal property to private
developers.

We loaned that money to the government. They are not "IOU's", they are US Treasury Bonds. Bush gave it away in the tax cuts. It is MY GODDAMN MONEY and I by god want it back. I've got US Bonds sitting in my safe deposit box, don't tell me they're just IOU's that the government can default on if they want to.



http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=430

The point is not that the IOU's are worthless, the point is that the cashflow situation the government is experiencing is going to change dramatically in the next few years. Right now, excess SS funds are coming into the system and being used to purchased government bonds, effectively making the deficit look smaller than it is (that's one of the things that bugs me when people say Clinton ran a surplus--that's bullshit, if you take away the excess SS money, Clinton ran a deficit too). In about 15 years, there will be no more excess money coming in from SS and the government will have to start actually coming up with money to fund the general budget and money to start paying off those IOUs. Its this cashflow crisis that needs to be dealth with.

I thought the surplus when Clinton left office was about $250 billion?? That more than make up for any money that may have been in the SS surplus at that time, doesn't it?

I'll have to check...

Even if you subtract excess SS revenue, Clinton ran a surplues (86 billion in 2000).


http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=1821&sequence=0#table1

For starters. There will be funds to pay out until 2042. It will never be bankrupt because there will always be workers to pay in. If we leave it alone, we can still pay out 75-80%, which is the same amount of the cuts Bush is proposing anyway.

If we make the tax cuts permanent, we will lose ten trillion in revenue. I loaned the money to the government, Bush gave it to the wealthy. Take the tax cuts back, my FICA money back, from those earning over $300,000 a year and problem solved. It's not a tax increase. We gave the wealthy too much of OUR money and I want it back. Quite simple.

accuse me of RW talking points when I point out facts?

The fact is, every surplus dollar collected in the social
security account has been spent. A bond has been issued by
the treasury to the SS dept. When SS will need that money
in 12-20 years (depends on a lot of assumptions and variables)
my point is, uncle sam has no money stash to draw from. US will
have to 1) increase taxes 2) sell federal assets.

No dissonance there. That's what a bond is, by definition.
Your point that the risk of default is very low is true.
However, his point that it is an IOU from Uncle is also true. The result of it being an IOU is that somehow the funds will have to be found to pay the IOU off.

Does that mean that taxes woud have to be raised somewhat on the wealthy? Of course, as Dubya says, we know the wealthy don't pay taxes, don't we? Well, maybe it's just time that they pay their way? What do you think?

how has it been INVESTED or how has it been squandered.

I really don't think it takes a genius to realize that the SS has been collecting more money than they have been paying for years, where is that money? why wasn't it managed wisely? Who is responsible and if they (the Government) didn't feel that they could wisely invest the money to make money for the system and the future supposed shortfall then, then what makes the Government NOW think that investing into private accounts by ignorant investors is going to be the answer????? I don't know, but it doesn't make ANY sense to me.

It was spent, not invested. But... I'm not sure I WANT the government to invest in stocks. If a stock is part ownership of a company, do we really want the government buying up companies? How will the government vote the stock? Who will get put in place on the Board of Directors?

I don't trust the administration de jour in this.
What, you expect the government to buy non-voting stock? Then I don’t trust the businesses not to take advantage of the government, with politicians going along with it.

I have no problem putting my own investment money in stocks or funds, but I have a deep distrust of letting politicians do this with my money.

they can't pay it back...

Let us say that Mr ABC works and earns a paycheck.
But Mr. ABC spends more money than he earns during the year.
He makes up the shortfall by borrowing from Mrs. ABC's cookie
jar, and writes her a IOU note. The cookie jar money is similar
to the current and past surplus in social security account, IOW
SS taxes are more than the SS benefits paid out in the year.

Eventually mrs. ABC's cookie money is gone. Now when the family
shortfall occurs, she wants to start cashing in her IOU's. But
mr. ABC, instead of investing her money, spent it all. This is
exactly what the US congress & president are doing. They had
the US treasury borrow the money from the SS account, and spend
it so that the budget deficit looks smaller. Now since there is
no excess money in the ABC family, there is no way to cash in
the drawer full of IOU's in mrs. ABC's dresser.

Now the ABC family has only two choices, sell their assets
or mrs. ABC goes out and finds a job, which is the same as
US raising taxes, the ONLY source of additional dollars for US.

(typo edited)

Your "cookie jar" scenario is a completely inaccurate analogy!! It's a fiction created by the right-wing, power-mongering machine.

The US "borrowed" with treasury bonds it is constitutionally bound to pay.

The US is (or was prior to the neoCONs who apparently are willing to bankrupt to US) the very best guarantor of debt because it is constitutionally bound to do so.

On edit: THE NEOCONS HATE THE CONSTITUTION AND ARE INTENTIONALLY DESTROYING OUR CONSTITUTION AND OUR COUNTRY!!! Why? Well, because they are sick, corrupt, power freaks!!!!

collected in social security taxes, where is US going to find
the money they are required by law to pay? There are only 3
options....1) cut benefits 2) increase payroll taxes, 3) sell
federal assets.

Incidentally, it was the Sen Moynihan led commission that
proposed changing Social Security system as we have it. And
to my knowledge he was a lifelong democrat and not a right
wing democrat. Many other democrats since Moynihan have also
voiced the same thing. But now simply cuz Bush is proposing it,
is not a good enough reason to reject it without due
consideration.

The number of baby boomers is greater than Generation X (bad novel). Once baby boomers die and GenX retires, there will be far more workers putting into SS than there would be retirees. It's all based on numbers that forget that people die. The won't go bankrupt but will fix itself once the disportionate number of retirees and workers are settled by baby boomers dying and GenX retiring to die.

Making a lot of assumptions (like in 2042 we'll have similar economic conditions as we have today) it's just workable -- but with little room for overhead.

The average annual salary in the US in 2004 was about $43,318. That means each hypothetical average worker pays 2685.72 per year in Social Security taxes. Their employer also pays a matching 6.2% into Social Security, making a total contribution of $5,371 per worker into the fund.

So with two average workers, that gives about $10,742 to support one retiree. I think Social Security currently pays out about $12,000 per retiree, so it comes up a little bit short -- more so if average pay keeps dropping.

But it's something that needs a 'tweak', not an overhaul, even in this worst case.

while i don't doubt you, i doubt the formula your source used. it probably takes into account the millionaires/billionaires that trend the entire thing up. looks like WAY too high of a salary.

on edit: general edit.

That is about right for income, which includes dividend income, etc. It's right in the mid $40's for both median and average income.

Wages, a different figure that economic reports generally don't use, median is around $16 an hour, $33,600.

http://economics.about.com/od/wages/a/wages_04_4Q.htm

i'm not an economics expert. the number just sounds wrong. (i'm somewhat holistic)

again, doesn't that include all the billionaires who push the average up?

Wages really shouldn't, unless they're incluidng multi-million dollar CEO wages in that calculation. It would be interesting to get the average or median income or wages without the top brackets, that's for sure. I'm not an economist or mathematician either. I just found out they were including dividend and capital gains income in the income calculation a couple of days ago. Just pisses me off, it's not reflective of how most Americans actually live.

i don't include the multi-millionaires in there, bc they're certainly not "average" americans. the "average" americans i know are construction workers, bank tellers, fast food workers, etc.

for a 2000 hour year.

and people who were getting paid a decent living (or even pretty damn good (in the case of programmers)) were pink-slipped and either haven't found jobs yet, found jobs at lower wages then they were making, or for the few lucky ones, found jobs at or above what they were making....

With the Republicans raiding the system, and Big Business doing everything it can to "save" a buck and dump American workers (or their benefits), it's no wonder they want to "push" it through as quickly as possible. They don't want people to really think about it.


edit: typo

It is pretty impossible to see that far ahead. Will these people be living in ghost towns? They have already raised retirement age and if the quality of life is bettered to the degree they claim some people will work longer. The other factor would be to establish savings accounts that would supplement SS and not deduct from it.

Also, even the CBO says the system is solvent until 2052. It's actually technically always solvent, but I mean able to pay it's current obligations fully.

Only, what, the first 88,000 fall under FICA? The rest is exempt?

I was born in 1957. Odds are, I'll be dead before I can cause any sort of financial crisis in SS. The biggest LIE is that baby boomers are the problem. We will be DEAD before there's any problem and WE have been paying extra FICA taxes since 1987. The FICA taxes that helped create the surplus that Bush gave away to the wealthy.

Finally. One more person wakes up to the screwy baby boomer scam. Good on you Kentuck.

NOW I'M REALLY PISSED!! :mad: :puke:

Right now it's 3 or 3.5 workers per retiree. With overall productivity growing at a clip of 2-3%/year the problem is not going to be the amount of wealth available then or the number of workers. Apportionment problems and efficiency problems are going to matter more at that point.

the value of work done is forgotten in the grab for everything that is the corporate agenda.

activity should both go down to remind them they not only need workers, they need a well paid market here. Let the market decide. Isn't that what free marketeers believe?

,...and their "predictions" naturally serve their true "rip-off the people" agenda.

If anyone ever THINKS about anything these extremists say,...they will either accept the neoCONs as "prophets" or as assholes ripping off the American people as quickly and efficiently as possible.