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Social Security is good till 2040 at minimum. Some modest adjustments can extend it even further and more radical changes gets it to the 22nd century. All of th

by jsz0 16y ago

Social Security is good till 2040 at minimum. Some modest adjustments can extend it even further and more radical changes gets it to the 22nd century. All of this is possible without even touching the ~50% of the budget that goes towards military spending or raising payroll taxes significantly. My personal opinion is we shouldn't even consider cutting a single social safety net until military spending has been slashed. Even China is now limiting the growth of military spending yet in the US this topic is totally off the table.

rflrob 16y ago
From your tone, it sounds like youre critical of the original article, but Social Security collapsing in 2040 means, for anyone in their 20s, that they wont see a payout. What was proposed in the article was, to my twenty something view, "modest adjustments".
hga 16y ago
Social Security isn't "good" for last year (FY2010) and so on, let alone 2040. Those funds in the "lockbox"? Spent on the general budget as soon as they were received, and right now SS expenditures are exceeding their dedicated taxes, requiring money from the general budget. (According to this source http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html the projected deficit was going to be $41 billion as of the beginning of August, a couple of months before the end of FY 2010). According to Wikiepedia FY 2010's DoD budget, all categories except the black budget was $663.8 billion; that's a bit less than the year's Social Security expenditures. As for it's relationship to the whole budget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_defense_budget#Military_budget_and_total_US_federal_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_defense_budget#Military_budg...): "The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues." The "including non-DOD" apparently includes: "This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA." A substantial fraction of which can't be reasonably scored as "military spending".
sbov 16y ago
Note that defense being 50% of the US budget doesn't include mandatory spending, such as social security. If you include these the US spends about the same on social security as defense, at about 20% each.

by jsz0 16y ago

rflrob 16y ago

From your tone, it sounds like youre critical of the original article, but Social Security collapsing in 2040 means, for anyone in their 20s, that they wont see a payout. What was proposed in the article was, to my twenty something view, "modest adjustments".

hga 16y ago

Social Security isn't "good" for last year (FY2010) and so on, let alone 2040. Those funds in the "lockbox"? Spent on the general budget as soon as they were received, and right now SS expenditures are exceeding their dedicated taxes, requiring money from the general budget. (According to this source http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html the projected deficit was going to be $41 billion as of the beginning of August, a couple of months before the end of FY 2010). According to Wikiepedia FY 2010's DoD budget, all categories except the black budget was $663.8 billion; that's a bit less than the year's Social Security expenditures. As for it's relationship to the whole budget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_defense_budget#Military_budget_and_total_US_federal_spending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_defense_budget#Military_budg...): "The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, defense spending was approximately 25–29% of budgeted expenditures and 38–44% of estimated tax revenues." The "including non-DOD" apparently includes: "This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget, such as nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA." A substantial fraction of which can't be reasonably scored as "military spending".

sbov 16y ago

Note that defense being 50% of the US budget doesn't include mandatory spending, such as social security. If you include these the US spends about the same on social security as defense, at about 20% each.