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> I'm not confident that I'll receive social security. This is a common sentiment, but it's a strange one to me. I think it's extremely unlikely that a program

> I'm not confident that I'll receive social security. This is a common sentiment, but it's a strange one to me. I think it's extremely unlikely that a program as popular as Social Security is going to just disappear. Entitlements have alligator blood. They're going to be really hard to get rid of. And, anyway, it's pretty foolish to think you can predict what's going to happen in politics 30 years from now. 30 years ago the Soviet Union still existed and nobody had heard of the Internet. And people want to tell me they know what's going to happen with Social Security?

zokier 8y ago
> And people want to tell me they know what's going to happen with Social Security? No, they are telling the exact opposite, that they do not know what is going to happen to social security. So they are not confidant that they will receive it because they do not know what will happen to it.
- dionidium 8y ago
  Right. But that's not saying anything. You could apply that statement to literally any aspect of government, but nobody does. They apply it specifically to Social Security. That's no accident. That's the result of a direct, targeted FUD campaign against Social Security.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
peterwwillis 8y ago
Why would you expect it to continue existing just because it's popular now? Lots of things that were popular were eventually changed or removed. The consequences are serious and the time it takes to determine whether it's worth worrying about is in decades. It's like global warming. If you wait to find out what happens, it's too late. In South Korea, suicide rates are high because there is no social safety net. Old people just kill themselves. If SS gets made effectively defunct, what recourse will 2/3 of the aging population with no retirement have?
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Any politician who even hints at getting rid of Social Security will find them self unelected quickly. Old people disproportionately vote. It won’t go away. The real question is: will I be able to retire on what little SS will provide, and the answer is likely no, given how little it is nominally, plus inflation.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The real question is: will I be able to retire on what little SS will provide SS is a safety-net pension, not intended to be a good retirement on its own, only to mitigate (not even eliminate) poverty should other retirement arrangements fail. So, yeah, unless your standards are really low, you don't be able to retire on it alone. But that's pretty much by design. It wasn't designed to replace employer pensions.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      The form of this argument is very popular wrt to the minimum wage, too. But setting aside the claim's veracity -- obviously, people had conflicting desires and intentions even at the time -- it's not a very convincing style of argument. We can make these programs whatever we want them to be. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care very much about the intentions of the people who happened to write the original law. Even if it happens to be true (and, again, it's not clearly true), it's not a very interesting discussion (outside of a history course) and certainly not one that helps us navigate the best path forward at the present time. Your own references to employer pensions demonstrate how totally irrelevant the original intentions now are, since such pensions have waned in influence significantly in the intervening years.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > The form of this argument is very popular wrt to the minimum wage, too. I've never seen it; it's pretty clear that minimum wage isn't a fallback in case of private arrangement failure (that's welfare, not minimum wage.) > We can make these programs whatever we want them to be. Sure, we could make a general universal first-resort pension. SS has never be designed to be or marketed as that, so you shouldn't expect it to be. (That's orthogonal to whether you should reform it to be one, or replace it with one; a portable, universal, public, actuarially sound defined benefit pensions is, IMO, a great idea.) > I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care very much about the intentions of the people who happened to write the original law. I don't particularly care what you care about. The discussion was over various perspectives of the decline of social security, starting with whether it would fail to be there—it was then suggested that it would for political reasons, but the real question was whether it would be an adequate retirement. I was pointing out that the fact that it was perceived as unlikely to be should be unsurprising and not a sign of decline, since it never had been in the past and was never deisgned to serve that purpose.
bluGill 8y ago
The problem is the way social security is funded is a ponzi scheme. The numbers don't add up, which means something will be done in the future. A part of the national debt it social security. What the something is I don't know. There are lots of options. It is entirely possible that the younger generation realizing that the money isn't there will decide to scrap it. It is possible that taxes will be raised to pay it off. Maybe the government will borrow money to pay for it. Maybe benefits will be cut (this is already happening via inflation, but the effect is small). Maybe the retirement age will be raised. I don't know what will be done, but something will have to happen. As you said, anything can happen in 30 years.

zokier 8y ago

> And people want to tell me they know what's going to happen with Social Security? No, they are telling the exact opposite, that they do not know what is going to happen to social security. So they are not confidant that they will receive it because they do not know what will happen to it.

dionidium 8y ago
Right. But that's not saying anything. You could apply that statement to literally any aspect of government, but nobody does. They apply it specifically to Social Security. That's no accident. That's the result of a direct, targeted FUD campaign against Social Security.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

peterwwillis 8y ago

Why would you expect it to continue existing just because it's popular now? Lots of things that were popular were eventually changed or removed. The consequences are serious and the time it takes to determine whether it's worth worrying about is in decades. It's like global warming. If you wait to find out what happens, it's too late. In South Korea, suicide rates are high because there is no social safety net. Old people just kill themselves. If SS gets made effectively defunct, what recourse will 2/3 of the aging population with no retirement have?

ryandrake 8y ago
Any politician who even hints at getting rid of Social Security will find them self unelected quickly. Old people disproportionately vote. It won’t go away. The real question is: will I be able to retire on what little SS will provide, and the answer is likely no, given how little it is nominally, plus inflation.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The real question is: will I be able to retire on what little SS will provide SS is a safety-net pension, not intended to be a good retirement on its own, only to mitigate (not even eliminate) poverty should other retirement arrangements fail. So, yeah, unless your standards are really low, you don't be able to retire on it alone. But that's pretty much by design. It wasn't designed to replace employer pensions.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    The form of this argument is very popular wrt to the minimum wage, too. But setting aside the claim's veracity -- obviously, people had conflicting desires and intentions even at the time -- it's not a very convincing style of argument. We can make these programs whatever we want them to be. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care very much about the intentions of the people who happened to write the original law. Even if it happens to be true (and, again, it's not clearly true), it's not a very interesting discussion (outside of a history course) and certainly not one that helps us navigate the best path forward at the present time. Your own references to employer pensions demonstrate how totally irrelevant the original intentions now are, since such pensions have waned in influence significantly in the intervening years.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The form of this argument is very popular wrt to the minimum wage, too. I've never seen it; it's pretty clear that minimum wage isn't a fallback in case of private arrangement failure (that's welfare, not minimum wage.) > We can make these programs whatever we want them to be. Sure, we could make a general universal first-resort pension. SS has never be designed to be or marketed as that, so you shouldn't expect it to be. (That's orthogonal to whether you should reform it to be one, or replace it with one; a portable, universal, public, actuarially sound defined benefit pensions is, IMO, a great idea.) > I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care very much about the intentions of the people who happened to write the original law. I don't particularly care what you care about. The discussion was over various perspectives of the decline of social security, starting with whether it would fail to be there—it was then suggested that it would for political reasons, but the real question was whether it would be an adequate retirement. I was pointing out that the fact that it was perceived as unlikely to be should be unsurprising and not a sign of decline, since it never had been in the past and was never deisgned to serve that purpose.

bluGill 8y ago

The problem is the way social security is funded is a ponzi scheme. The numbers don't add up, which means something will be done in the future. A part of the national debt it social security. What the something is I don't know. There are lots of options. It is entirely possible that the younger generation realizing that the money isn't there will decide to scrap it. It is possible that taxes will be raised to pay it off. Maybe the government will borrow money to pay for it. Maybe benefits will be cut (this is already happening via inflation, but the effect is small). Maybe the retirement age will be raised. I don't know what will be done, but something will have to happen. As you said, anything can happen in 30 years.