11 ms·

Recent reports from the Treasury Department show that the US government owns nearly $1.5 trillion in student loans. That’s pretty sad when you think about it:

by gesman 9y ago

Recent reports from the Treasury Department show that the US government owns nearly $1.5 trillion in student loans. That’s pretty sad when you think about it: the US government’s #1 financial asset is debt owed by tens of millions of its young people for university education that didn’t even necessarily qualify them for a real career. Millennials are the most educated generation in history. Yet there are record numbers of them working off student debts as waiters and bartenders, and supplementing their income on the side with ‘gigs’ (like being an Uber driver). ... On top of all that, young people will spend their entire working lives paying into a pension system that likely won’t be there for them when it comes time to collect. The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years. Millennials’ retirement horizon is far beyond that. ... Miami-based homebuilder, Lennar Homes, recently announced it would pay a big chunk of a student loan for any borrower buying a home from them. Through its subsidiary Eagle Home Mortgage, the company will make a payment to a buyer’s student loans of as much as 3% of the purchase price, up to $13,000. Debt has become such a keystone of our society, that the only way we can afford something is to swap one type of debt they can’t afford with another type of debt. -- Simon Black

ProAm 9y ago
> The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years Can you cite any sources on this? Im fairly certain it will not be completely out of money, but will be to a point where more money is going out than coming in.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  The Social Security Trust Fund does exhaust it's surplus (if no additional changes are made to the system), but that reduces benefits to ~3/4 of those promised; benefit payments do not disappear entirely. "In the annual Trustees Report, projections are made under three alternative sets of economic and demographic assumptions. Under one of these sets (labeled "Low Cost") the trust funds remain solvent for the next 75 years. Under the other two sets (the "Intermediate" and "High Cost"), the trust funds become depleted within the next 20 years. The intermediate assumptions reflect the Trustees' best estimate of future experience. Some benefits could be paid even if the trust funds are depleted. For example, under the intermediate assumptions, annual income to the trust funds is projected to equal about seventy-nine percent of program cost once the trust funds become depleted. If no legislation has been enacted to restore long-term solvency by that time, about three-quarters of scheduled benefits could be paid in each year." As long as the government continues to exist and has the ability to tax, Social Security will be around. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/index.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/index.html
adreamingsoul 9y ago
Millennial here, thanks for the daily reminder of the future I have to deal with. Failing government systems, check. Unaffordable educational system, check. Limited housing and land, check. Degrading climate, check. Some days I believe I just may find a way out of it. But, for every day I participate in the rat race is just another lost when I should be working on building a better future for my family.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  There's still a chance for you if you can get adopted by someone rich!
  - adreamingsoul 9y ago
    But that's the last thing I want. I want to work hard and I'm willing to make sacrifices to reach my goals.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  dont worry. put your funds into 'good money' like sensible cryptocurrencies and watch your savings multiply. that is how we will fight the crooked boomer system.
  - the_gastropod 9y ago
    This is really dangerous advice, especially for the poor. Crypto "investments" only multiply by convincing the next person down the line to buy your <coin of choice> at a higher price than you did. Add to this that there are no consumer protections around it, and it's an absolute honeypot for scammers. 99% of the key to wealth is to live beneath your means. It's unglamorous advice, but it's absolutely effective.
    - icedchai 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic. "The Millionaire Next Door" should be required reading in high school. It has all you need to know about living below your means, building wealth slowly and consistently.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
AlexCoventry 9y ago
> the company will make a payment to a buyer’s student loans of as much as 3% of the purchase price, up to $13,000. How does this make economic sense? It reminds me of the deals home sellers would make to prop up their numbers in '06/'07.
- tmnvix 9y ago
  As a debtor, I would rather debt that can be discharged through bankruptcy, so there is incentive there to prefer this offer to that of another similar offer that doesn't include the debt transfer. In other words, there is benefit to both the borrower (a 'better' kind of debt) and lender (we sell something we might otherwise not).
- lukevdp 9y ago
  For the building company it's a 3% discount wrapped up in marketing.
- ethbro 9y ago
  Presumably because it allows buyers who would not qualify for home loans based on cash flow (impeded by student loans) to be eligible. Or at least, that's my guess. I know home loan standards are pretty static, so I'd guess it's to allow indebted students to qualify.
rayiner 9y ago
> The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years. Millennials’ retirement horizon is far beyond that. That’s not how Social Security works. For practical purposes, it’s pay-as-you-go system: http://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/misleading-the-public-how-the-social-security-trust-fund-really-works http://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/misleading-th.... As boomers retire, taxes will need to go up to account for the higher ratio of retirees to workers. But when the millenials retire, unless they end up having a substantially smaller generation after them, that strain will not be there.
- mjevans 9y ago
  The best investment we could make in retirement would /honestly/ be in public owned automation and production of all basic things that don't inherently /require/ human labor. The sooner we can have a society more like Star Trek's utopian future the better for anyone that wants to retire without being a burden on the current generation. (Even then, I don't think I'd ever want to /fully/ retire, I'd just like to focus on things I actually find fun and meaningful.)
  - outworlder 9y ago
    Best investment for whom, though? Not companies. Not governments, not because it wouldn't be beneficial, but because there's no incentive – the benefits are down the road, probably beyond the time it takes for the current generation of politicians to retire.
- Zelphyr 9y ago
  As a Gen-X'er I was told in my twenties that Social Security was going to run out by the time I was forty. Here I am, in my forties, and it hasn't run out yet. That's not to say that it can't or won't. But in those twenty years, if I've learned anything, it's to not trust the headlines.
  - mobilefriendly 9y ago
    Since 2014 Social Security has run out of money, and the shortfall is being financed by general federal borrowing. It just isn't in the headlines these days.
rgbrenner 9y ago
the US government’s #1 financial asset is debt ... for university education This isn't quite true.. In addition to the assets in the chart, the governemnt has about 8T in mortgages (out of 15T total outstanding) through several Government Sponsored Enterprises, like Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutstand/mortoutstand20090331.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortouts... The only difference is that the government took over the student loan market without creating a GSE to manage it.
- fineng123 9y ago
  That's a pretty bad comparison actually. They don't "have" them. It's just another place to sell your risk when you do a mortgage deal and then they repackage them and sell the end result to investors. It's necessary (or helpful rather) so that you don't have to have a balance sheet to hammer out CRE deals. You can just do the deal and sell the risk and not keep the interest rate risk on your books. The Fed's balance sheet on the other hand, now that makes the student debt load seem miniscule.
  - _delirium 9y ago
    How successful is the risk-selling in terms of getting the risk off the federal government, in practice? I can believe there's some level of success, so sure, 100% of the debt-repayment risk in securities managed by the federal government's mortgage entities shouldn't be counted as really being the federal government's. But the way the 2007-08 mortgage mess played out suggests that in an actual mortgage crisis (which is the only time the risk exposure would be seriously tested), the US government does quasi-officially backstop a large portion of the market in mortgage-backed securities that it manages, so it's shouldering more than 0% of the risk represented by those nominally repackaged-and-sold-off debt instruments.
    - marshray 9y ago
      Maybe the only way to quantify 'moral hazard' at the present time is to count the occurrences of 'Lehman Brothers' in the investment media.
SheepSlapper 9y ago
> Millennials are the most educated generation in history. Yet there are record numbers of them working off student debts as waiters and bartenders, and supplementing their income on the side with ‘gigs’ (like being an Uber driver) We're the most educated in history, but many people decided to use that education to learn topics that aren't lucrative/in demand. Personal responsibility plays in a ton here, and some people made bad decisions. It's still simple/easy to get a good education at a state school, entirely paid for by loans, and come out with a degree that will allow you to pay those loans back in a few years. People who plan accordingly benefit in a HUGE way from the availability/accessibility of student loans, the barrier to entry is that much lower. As far as SS goes, I'd be happy to see it fail but I'm also happy to keep paying into it without a guarantee of return in order to ensure my parents generation doesn't find themselves destitute. There are so many ways to plan for your future, having the government come in and force you to participate in SS is far from ideal. Not sure how my fellow Millennials feel about that, though...
- wocka 9y ago
  >Personal responsibility plays in a ton here Except everyone is constantly told they need to go to college by authority figures as they go through the education system. There's also responsibility that falls on employers demanding college degrees for jobs that in no way need them, e.g., secretary.
- johnchristopher 9y ago
  What's SS ?
  - cozzyd 9y ago
    social security
  - golem14 9y ago
    Social Security ?
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    Social Security
Justsignedup 9y ago
Welcome to Soviet Russia where you will meet engineers, doctors, and generally college level educated populous, as your waiters and cabbies. How we learned from history.
tunesmith 9y ago
Buyer beware... "pension system that likely won't be there" is a right wing frame. In reality, social security very likely WILL be there. But fostering cynicism about it is a prerequisite towards imagining it won't be, which makes it (theoretically) easier to dismantle. "Well it's in poor shape anyway, we should just blow it up..." There are good informative comments below that are being downvoted, that are about how social security actually works. You just can't seem to avoid political crap here. There is plenty of good information out there on various easy, non-disturbing ways to tweak social security if necessary. Google some of the ole trustee reports or publications by the late Bob Ball.
- Clanan 9y ago
  There are already unfunded pension plans and systems waiting to blow up in the next decade. This article [0] details the South Carolina government pension plan, covering 550,000 residents, which is currently $24 billion in the red. Your response is engaging in "political crap" by providing no evidence besides name-calling. For some actual proof of the Social Security situation, here's the SSA report [1] explaining how its Trust Fund will run out in 2035. So yes, Social Security will still exist, but it will rely on short-term funding rather than a big account. That's fine in theory, provided the budget is there. (It likely will be; I imagine the politicians will cut military funding before they hurt SS!) [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/collapsing-pensions-will-fuel-americas-next-financial-crisis-2017-03-14 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/collapsing-pensions-will-f... [1] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
  - dmm 9y ago
    Once the trust fund is exhausted, unless the law is changed, SS payouts are made equal to SS payroll taxes. This is projected to settle out to payments being ~70% of what has been promised.
    - candiodari 9y ago
      Ok so the next question is whether that should be considered failure or not. Also they'll go below that (because some of their "investments" are government bonds which they won't be allowed to unload, as it would affect the government too much). For current or future recipients of said benefits, the answer is pretty clear : yes. And, frankly, the government has promised these people compensation in terms of years or work, and amounts of income after those years of work. It should be illegal to make these claims. (and for the private sector, it mostly is, so frankly these laws are letting government lie on compensation letter, which is low, dishonest)
georgeecollins 9y ago
" The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years. " Is very misleading. Social Security is not a bank account, it is an insurance (you can get it at any time, and you get it simply because you paid in) where people are constantly paying in and out. In 17 years* the Social Security system will probably have to cut benefits by 23% unless we either raise the retirement rate or raise the maximum salary at which you have to pay social security tax. The latter is a pretty painless thing to the average tax payer, who already has all their salary subject to social security tax. The social security system was in much greater danger in the Reagan era, when they decided to make benefits taxable, which was ultimately a progressive way to reduce benefits. *http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/13/news/economy/social-security-trust-fund-projection/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/13/news/economy/social-security...
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  I don't understand why there is a max income threshold for social security tax. Can anyone explain this to me?
  - mpwoz 9y ago
    Presumably because over a certain threshold, you're paying far more than you'd ever expect to receive back from the program in retirement? Not saying I agree with it but that's my guess as to the reason.
  - mobilefriendly 9y ago
    It was conceptualized as a universal safety net pension program, not a welfare program or progressive redistribution program.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  I assume you actually mean "raise the retirement age"? Raising the retirement rate would mean paying out more money, not less.
  - 9y ago
qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
Time spent being educated is not necessarily related to being educated.
redshirt 9y ago
The problem with the US Social Security trust fund is that it's misnamed. It should be called the giant equity stash that the US Government can convert to bonds and borrow against. The fund should be flush with cash, however, that'd be fibbing. It would be flush with cash, if it weren't borrowed against for other things in one form or another. For example, the GW, Reagan, and Clinton used this to their benefit. src: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/politics/at-heart-of-social-security-debate-a-misunderstanding.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/politics/at-heart-of-socia... Given that these were bonds, the payments will come due back to the trust fund in one form or another....I'd suspect financed with more debt.

by gesman 9y ago

ProAm 9y ago

> The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years Can you cite any sources on this? Im fairly certain it will not be completely out of money, but will be to a point where more money is going out than coming in.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
The Social Security Trust Fund does exhaust it's surplus (if no additional changes are made to the system), but that reduces benefits to ~3/4 of those promised; benefit payments do not disappear entirely. "In the annual Trustees Report, projections are made under three alternative sets of economic and demographic assumptions. Under one of these sets (labeled "Low Cost") the trust funds remain solvent for the next 75 years. Under the other two sets (the "Intermediate" and "High Cost"), the trust funds become depleted within the next 20 years. The intermediate assumptions reflect the Trustees' best estimate of future experience. Some benefits could be paid even if the trust funds are depleted. For example, under the intermediate assumptions, annual income to the trust funds is projected to equal about seventy-nine percent of program cost once the trust funds become depleted. If no legislation has been enacted to restore long-term solvency by that time, about three-quarters of scheduled benefits could be paid in each year." As long as the government continues to exist and has the ability to tax, Social Security will be around. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/index.html https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/index.html

adreamingsoul 9y ago

Millennial here, thanks for the daily reminder of the future I have to deal with. Failing government systems, check. Unaffordable educational system, check. Limited housing and land, check. Degrading climate, check. Some days I believe I just may find a way out of it. But, for every day I participate in the rat race is just another lost when I should be working on building a better future for my family.

aidenn0 9y ago
There's still a chance for you if you can get adopted by someone rich!
- adreamingsoul 9y ago
  But that's the last thing I want. I want to work hard and I'm willing to make sacrifices to reach my goals.
45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
dont worry. put your funds into 'good money' like sensible cryptocurrencies and watch your savings multiply. that is how we will fight the crooked boomer system.
- the_gastropod 9y ago
  This is really dangerous advice, especially for the poor. Crypto "investments" only multiply by convincing the next person down the line to buy your <coin of choice> at a higher price than you did. Add to this that there are no consumer protections around it, and it's an absolute honeypot for scammers. 99% of the key to wealth is to live beneath your means. It's unglamorous advice, but it's absolutely effective.
  - icedchai 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure the parent was being sarcastic. "The Millionaire Next Door" should be required reading in high school. It has all you need to know about living below your means, building wealth slowly and consistently.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

AlexCoventry 9y ago

> the company will make a payment to a buyer’s student loans of as much as 3% of the purchase price, up to $13,000. How does this make economic sense? It reminds me of the deals home sellers would make to prop up their numbers in '06/'07.

tmnvix 9y ago
As a debtor, I would rather debt that can be discharged through bankruptcy, so there is incentive there to prefer this offer to that of another similar offer that doesn't include the debt transfer. In other words, there is benefit to both the borrower (a 'better' kind of debt) and lender (we sell something we might otherwise not).
lukevdp 9y ago
For the building company it's a 3% discount wrapped up in marketing.
ethbro 9y ago
Presumably because it allows buyers who would not qualify for home loans based on cash flow (impeded by student loans) to be eligible. Or at least, that's my guess. I know home loan standards are pretty static, so I'd guess it's to allow indebted students to qualify.

rayiner 9y ago

> The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years. Millennials’ retirement horizon is far beyond that. That’s not how Social Security works. For practical purposes, it’s pay-as-you-go system: http://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/misleading-the-public-how-the-social-security-trust-fund-really-works http://www.heritage.org/social-security/report/misleading-th.... As boomers retire, taxes will need to go up to account for the higher ratio of retirees to workers. But when the millenials retire, unless they end up having a substantially smaller generation after them, that strain will not be there.

mjevans 9y ago
The best investment we could make in retirement would /honestly/ be in public owned automation and production of all basic things that don't inherently /require/ human labor. The sooner we can have a society more like Star Trek's utopian future the better for anyone that wants to retire without being a burden on the current generation. (Even then, I don't think I'd ever want to /fully/ retire, I'd just like to focus on things I actually find fun and meaningful.)
- outworlder 9y ago
  Best investment for whom, though? Not companies. Not governments, not because it wouldn't be beneficial, but because there's no incentive – the benefits are down the road, probably beyond the time it takes for the current generation of politicians to retire.
Zelphyr 9y ago
As a Gen-X'er I was told in my twenties that Social Security was going to run out by the time I was forty. Here I am, in my forties, and it hasn't run out yet. That's not to say that it can't or won't. But in those twenty years, if I've learned anything, it's to not trust the headlines.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  Since 2014 Social Security has run out of money, and the shortfall is being financed by general federal borrowing. It just isn't in the headlines these days.

rgbrenner 9y ago

the US government’s #1 financial asset is debt ... for university education This isn't quite true.. In addition to the assets in the chart, the governemnt has about 8T in mortgages (out of 15T total outstanding) through several Government Sponsored Enterprises, like Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutstand/mortoutstand20090331.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortouts... The only difference is that the government took over the student loan market without creating a GSE to manage it.

fineng123 9y ago
That's a pretty bad comparison actually. They don't "have" them. It's just another place to sell your risk when you do a mortgage deal and then they repackage them and sell the end result to investors. It's necessary (or helpful rather) so that you don't have to have a balance sheet to hammer out CRE deals. You can just do the deal and sell the risk and not keep the interest rate risk on your books. The Fed's balance sheet on the other hand, now that makes the student debt load seem miniscule.
- _delirium 9y ago
  How successful is the risk-selling in terms of getting the risk off the federal government, in practice? I can believe there's some level of success, so sure, 100% of the debt-repayment risk in securities managed by the federal government's mortgage entities shouldn't be counted as really being the federal government's. But the way the 2007-08 mortgage mess played out suggests that in an actual mortgage crisis (which is the only time the risk exposure would be seriously tested), the US government does quasi-officially backstop a large portion of the market in mortgage-backed securities that it manages, so it's shouldering more than 0% of the risk represented by those nominally repackaged-and-sold-off debt instruments.
  - marshray 9y ago
    Maybe the only way to quantify 'moral hazard' at the present time is to count the occurrences of 'Lehman Brothers' in the investment media.

SheepSlapper 9y ago

> Millennials are the most educated generation in history. Yet there are record numbers of them working off student debts as waiters and bartenders, and supplementing their income on the side with ‘gigs’ (like being an Uber driver) We're the most educated in history, but many people decided to use that education to learn topics that aren't lucrative/in demand. Personal responsibility plays in a ton here, and some people made bad decisions. It's still simple/easy to get a good education at a state school, entirely paid for by loans, and come out with a degree that will allow you to pay those loans back in a few years. People who plan accordingly benefit in a HUGE way from the availability/accessibility of student loans, the barrier to entry is that much lower. As far as SS goes, I'd be happy to see it fail but I'm also happy to keep paying into it without a guarantee of return in order to ensure my parents generation doesn't find themselves destitute. There are so many ways to plan for your future, having the government come in and force you to participate in SS is far from ideal. Not sure how my fellow Millennials feel about that, though...

wocka 9y ago
>Personal responsibility plays in a ton here Except everyone is constantly told they need to go to college by authority figures as they go through the education system. There's also responsibility that falls on employers demanding college degrees for jobs that in no way need them, e.g., secretary.
johnchristopher 9y ago
What's SS ?
- cozzyd 9y ago
  social security
- golem14 9y ago
  Social Security ?
- sangnoir 9y ago
  Social Security

Justsignedup 9y ago

Welcome to Soviet Russia where you will meet engineers, doctors, and generally college level educated populous, as your waiters and cabbies. How we learned from history.

tunesmith 9y ago

Buyer beware... "pension system that likely won't be there" is a right wing frame. In reality, social security very likely WILL be there. But fostering cynicism about it is a prerequisite towards imagining it won't be, which makes it (theoretically) easier to dismantle. "Well it's in poor shape anyway, we should just blow it up..." There are good informative comments below that are being downvoted, that are about how social security actually works. You just can't seem to avoid political crap here. There is plenty of good information out there on various easy, non-disturbing ways to tweak social security if necessary. Google some of the ole trustee reports or publications by the late Bob Ball.

Clanan 9y ago
There are already unfunded pension plans and systems waiting to blow up in the next decade. This article [0] details the South Carolina government pension plan, covering 550,000 residents, which is currently $24 billion in the red. Your response is engaging in "political crap" by providing no evidence besides name-calling. For some actual proof of the Social Security situation, here's the SSA report [1] explaining how its Trust Fund will run out in 2035. So yes, Social Security will still exist, but it will rely on short-term funding rather than a big account. That's fine in theory, provided the budget is there. (It likely will be; I imagine the politicians will cut military funding before they hurt SS!) [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/collapsing-pensions-will-fuel-americas-next-financial-crisis-2017-03-14 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/collapsing-pensions-will-f... [1] https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p111.html
- dmm 9y ago
  Once the trust fund is exhausted, unless the law is changed, SS payouts are made equal to SS payroll taxes. This is projected to settle out to payments being ~70% of what has been promised.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Ok so the next question is whether that should be considered failure or not. Also they'll go below that (because some of their "investments" are government bonds which they won't be allowed to unload, as it would affect the government too much). For current or future recipients of said benefits, the answer is pretty clear : yes. And, frankly, the government has promised these people compensation in terms of years or work, and amounts of income after those years of work. It should be illegal to make these claims. (and for the private sector, it mostly is, so frankly these laws are letting government lie on compensation letter, which is low, dishonest)

georgeecollins 9y ago

" The Board of Trustees of Social Security tells us that the program is going to completely run out of money within the next 15 years. " Is very misleading. Social Security is not a bank account, it is an insurance (you can get it at any time, and you get it simply because you paid in) where people are constantly paying in and out. In 17 years* the Social Security system will probably have to cut benefits by 23% unless we either raise the retirement rate or raise the maximum salary at which you have to pay social security tax. The latter is a pretty painless thing to the average tax payer, who already has all their salary subject to social security tax. The social security system was in much greater danger in the Reagan era, when they decided to make benefits taxable, which was ultimately a progressive way to reduce benefits. *http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/13/news/economy/social-security-trust-fund-projection/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/13/news/economy/social-security...

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I don't understand why there is a max income threshold for social security tax. Can anyone explain this to me?
- mpwoz 9y ago
  Presumably because over a certain threshold, you're paying far more than you'd ever expect to receive back from the program in retirement? Not saying I agree with it but that's my guess as to the reason.
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  It was conceptualized as a universal safety net pension program, not a welfare program or progressive redistribution program.
0xffff2 9y ago
I assume you actually mean "raise the retirement age"? Raising the retirement rate would mean paying out more money, not less.
- 9y ago

qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago

Time spent being educated is not necessarily related to being educated.

redshirt 9y ago

The problem with the US Social Security trust fund is that it's misnamed. It should be called the giant equity stash that the US Government can convert to bonds and borrow against. The fund should be flush with cash, however, that'd be fibbing. It would be flush with cash, if it weren't borrowed against for other things in one form or another. For example, the GW, Reagan, and Clinton used this to their benefit. src: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/politics/at-heart-of-social-security-debate-a-misunderstanding.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/politics/at-heart-of-socia... Given that these were bonds, the payments will come due back to the trust fund in one form or another....I'd suspect financed with more debt.