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For those who don't know, the majority of debt comes from Social Security and Healthcare, both of which Republicans tried to fix in the past (2004 SS, 2017 Medi

For those who don't know, the majority of debt comes from Social Security and Healthcare, both of which Republicans tried to fix in the past (2004 SS, 2017 Medicare) to make them somewhat viable, and are the only party even somewhat discussing these issues. The 2004 attempt in particular would have made everyone reading this substantially wealthier by allowing us to "invest" our SS, instead of pooling and distributing. People who mention military spending don't understand we actually underspend given our GDP. As a percentage of GDP, we rank somewhere in the mid/high range of countries (this is the best way to measure, otherwise try comparing Vatican city budget vs Chinese military budget...). Elon said Optimus robots, once fully integrated with the economy, will be a major deflationary factor and would allow for GDP growth to overcome the debt issue. Hopefully we don't need to rely on something like that and can actually fix this issue.

nytesky 2y ago
I remember the 2004 initiative, the ownership society etc. 1) If you diverted funds from the pay as you scheme and invested in it stocks etc, how would they make up shortfall? Why doesn’t the govt itself invest like an old school pension or annuity — it doesn’t have to restrict itself to US bonds? 2) isn’t that effectively turning SS into another 401k? Many workers feel the old school pensions were better than 401k, unless you ah e to be an investing wonderkind (which likely means you took a lot more risk). 3) if people start investing SS, and markets go down like 2007, isn’t the govt still going to be on the hook to provide for retirees just like currently?
- EcommerceFlow 2y ago
  1) Not sure what their plan was, but Bush said it was his major goal of the 2nd term. 2) Yes, if you want that. I'm sure there were options to invest in Bonds only or whatever else. Point was you had the choice and it wasn't just redistribution. 3) No, the whole point was to give choice. There's probably some stipulation where a certain % has to be in bonds as you near retirement age, but we're talking about a dead bill 20 years ago.
lxm 2y ago
The majority of outlays comes from entitlement programs. Whether to sell new debt and to what extent is up to every respective administration. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president...
frumper 2y ago
We don't borrow money to pay for social security, quite the opposite. Social Security has several trillion dollars invested in US Treasuries. It is running a 100-200 billion dollar deficit and over the next 10 years that investment will dwindle and become an actual negative on the federal budget, but that certainly isn't the case right now, nor has it ever been. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html

nytesky 2y ago

I remember the 2004 initiative, the ownership society etc. 1) If you diverted funds from the pay as you scheme and invested in it stocks etc, how would they make up shortfall? Why doesn’t the govt itself invest like an old school pension or annuity — it doesn’t have to restrict itself to US bonds? 2) isn’t that effectively turning SS into another 401k? Many workers feel the old school pensions were better than 401k, unless you ah e to be an investing wonderkind (which likely means you took a lot more risk). 3) if people start investing SS, and markets go down like 2007, isn’t the govt still going to be on the hook to provide for retirees just like currently?

EcommerceFlow 2y ago
1) Not sure what their plan was, but Bush said it was his major goal of the 2nd term. 2) Yes, if you want that. I'm sure there were options to invest in Bonds only or whatever else. Point was you had the choice and it wasn't just redistribution. 3) No, the whole point was to give choice. There's probably some stipulation where a certain % has to be in bonds as you near retirement age, but we're talking about a dead bill 20 years ago.

lxm 2y ago

The majority of outlays comes from entitlement programs. Whether to sell new debt and to what extent is up to every respective administration. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/us-debt-by-president...

frumper 2y ago

We don't borrow money to pay for social security, quite the opposite. Social Security has several trillion dollars invested in US Treasuries. It is running a 100-200 billion dollar deficit and over the next 10 years that investment will dwindle and become an actual negative on the federal budget, but that certainly isn't the case right now, nor has it ever been. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html https://www.ssa.gov/policy/trust-funds-summary.html