It's indeed a fact...
Social Security Costs Keep Increasing Over the Long Term
Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 45 percent of Federal program expenditures (excluding net interest on the debt) in fiscal year 2018. The unified budget reflects current trust fund operations. Consequently, even when there are positive trust fund balances, any drawdown of those balances, as well as general fund transfers into Medicare’s Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) fund and interest payments to the trust funds that are used to pay benefits, increase pressure on the unified budget. Both Social Security and Medicare will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth through the mid-2030s due to rapid population aging caused by the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment.
Trustees Report Summary
You are
again arguing a false dichotomy. Costs, benefits, and efficiency are not mutually exclusive conditions. Neither the NYTimes article nor you have proven benefits will suffer. Until it is evidenced (if not proven) benefits will proven the article and the op upon which it is based, is baseless speculation that proves to be propaganda,
not news. Repeating the false dichotomy makes the argument and argument ad nauseam and that is not a resonable or rational argument
for or against anything.
Do you understand Social Security is a net loss investment? When SocSec was first legislated it was supposed to be a "locked box" purse that Congress was prohibited by statute from using for any purpose other than that for which it was designated. About 20 years after its inception when its first set of regulations were set to expire the Democrats legislated changes that allowed Congress to use the money as part of the whole pool of revenues and spend SocSec money on expenditures other than SocSec. Conservatives predicted this would happen and they decried and voted against the change but they held a minoty so the changes were legislated despite the dissent.
Look it up.
According to your profile you're a decade older than me so you were a kid in the mid-fifties when these debates began. You
know what I just posted is true because you have been there along the way.
Lest time I checked, SocSec returns about
78 cents on every dollar invested. That's an abysmal return. If the money was kept under your mattress it would be better than SocSec. If it were invested in bonds it would provide a better return than it does currently. If the government invested in the market the way private citizens do then 1) SocSec would be profitable and 2) the federal government could use the excess elsewhere (I'd have a problem with that as a conservative, but it would be a measurable improvement over confiscating tax-payer revenues designated for retirement and healthcare), and 3) the stock markets would have had enormous capital to hedge against recession. This change could have been legislated at any time over the last
80 years. Such a change has been suggested many times and resisted
by Dems.
I could go on but 1) you probably know the history, 2) you probably don't care because you're more ideological than you care to admit (as evidenced by your having accepted the NYTimes bait), and 3) it digresses from my point. My point is thie NYTimes article is baseless and as such it amounts to propaganda. My response to
you, the author of this op, is to
look at the article objectively and examine it critically to see that it is not actually factually
news. The only
fact in the article is the fact Trump is going to cut SocSec resources. Any objective
news reporter practicing the professional journalists' code of ethics would have objectively investigated the significance of that announcement (no change has actually been made) and both lib and con could read the objectively written article and walk away from it with a shared understanding of what happened and what might happen reasonably, not speculatively. We might still have differing opinions about the veracity of any change but we would not be indispute as to the facts.
And when you, The Barbarian, 1) buy into the bait, and 2) don't push back on it then 1) you're part of the problem and not the solution and 2) not living up to what you've said were your own standards.
Now you're in a defensive posture as
evidenced by the posting of this Trustees Report. The problem that report cites is not specific to the current POTUS and has been a concern for at least the last fifty years! Did you complain under
all of the prior POTUSes? I did. I don't care what party affiliation exists, the problem(s) with SocSec are chronic and ignored.
Why wasn't
that stated in the NYTimes article?
Occam's razor: because the article isn't
news; it is propaganda.
And there is no defense for that, Barb. I exhort you to be more discerning. I'm not a big fan of Trump. I'm impressed with many of the changes made economically and socially but I don't trust the man. I posted posts in other boards decrying the man's lifestyle and repeat practice of "covenant-breaking" or breaking contracts and exploiting legal loopholes for personal gain. I decry his practice of willful provocation and governance by tweet. It's undignified and unprofessional but that's kinda the point from his perspective and a lot of his supporters. People that take him literally aren't taking him seriously and people that take him seriously don't take him literally. It shouldn't be that way but it is.
None of which justifies the NYTimes article.
How many times have you heard news media and editorial personalities say they should be covering other more important events and not tweets but there's so much to say about those tweets? They are openly acknowledging their failure to do their job because spending the Fourth Estate's capital on tweets is not their job.
If Rappeport and Haberman had done their job as
journalists that article would look much different and you and I would have something of substance directly related to that article to discuss. As it is the only news is Trump is
considering cuts. Nothing has actually happened (other than an announcement).
And you took the bait.
I appreciate your time, patience, and tolerance. I suspect my op-reply was not what was hoped for originally. I again exhort you to be more discerning. Check out some of the history and background I posted (including the ethics code), be as critiqual of "news" as you are of forum posts. It will serve you well.