Online Social Security Statement In Limbo 160
coondoggie writes "While the debate over Social Security benefits is heating up in Congress, one of the most basic ways everyone interacts with the agency — the yearly Social Security Statement — is in limbo as the agency struggles to move it online. The Social Security Statement had been issued every year since 2000 to more than 150 million workers serving as the government's key way of communicating with workers about benefits, earnings records and how much retirement money they have. The statement is also a key tool for communicating with the public about the long-term financial challenges the Social Security system faces. However, whether you realize it or not, the SSA suspended mailings of the statement in March citing budgetary concerns."
Grandma and the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
My grandma calls websites "double-u double-u double-u's". There's no frigging way that she could handle something like this online.
Re:Grandma and the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
My grandma can't read. There's no way she could handle a long document with words printed on it.
Re:Dire Omen? (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem here that not many people know about is that the "trust fund" isn't an actual account with actual money in it.
Sure it is. You might as well argue that your bank account has no money in it because they loaned it out, or that any retirement fund with stocks, bonds, or T-bills in it doesn't have any money in the account.
All accounts run like that. "Your" money isn't there. It's in some IOU form. Unless you have your retirement account stashed under the bed, you do exactly what you condemn.
Re:Dire Omen? (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that the social security trust fund *is* the federal government. The federal government lent all the money in the social security trust fund to itself, and then it spent the money. A bank would have lent the money to various third parties who would pay it back. The federal government has to pay the money back through tax revenue (or more borrowing). That's a pretty big difference. If a bank lent its deposits to its officers, and then the officers spent the money, all the bank's officers would be in jail right now. An IOU written to yourself is not an asset. The social security trust fund is insolvent. All the money being paid out has to come from taxes, borrowing, or printing money.
"Budgetary concerns" my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They can have a $1 for this. (Score:5, Insightful)
The SSA has been making a large push to direct deposit. I am sure this is saving them far more than the statements that they have been mailing every few years.
A matter of OR (Score:2, Insightful)
with the GOP refusing to allow for tax hikes or to cut the large sources of spending
Excuse me, but the GOP are quite willing to hit huge sources of spending.
The Democrats want to drive down tax collection further by raising rates (since it happens every. single. time. it is tried you'd think they would change the tune), and they CERTAINLY to do not want to cut even the most minor spending.
Re:Better sites (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone up for retirement more than ten years out better have arranged their own finances.
you want to see pitchforks and torches? wait till the boomers retire and are told there is no money (or not enough) in the kitty.
if anything will cause a rebellion, THIS would be it. people HAVE paid into the fund and they do have a right to expect a payback after working 3/4 of their lives.
maybe if we had less wars (...) we'd be able to support OUR OWN FRIGGIN PEOPLE.
we all will retire. this affects us all.
I'm tired of stealing from our own people to line pockets of the aristocracy.
they better hope there is money in the fund. even old guys can put up a fight if they are pushed to poverty.
Re:Better sites (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone up for retirement more than ten years out better have arranged their own finances.
Although I enjoy cranky anti-government fantasies too, it's better to stay closer to reality. The Republicans are beating this anti-Social Security line because they want to say, "Social Security isn't going to be there for you, so let's end it and save you all those tax deductions" (which are the lowest in the developed world).
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/cockroach-ideas/ [nytimes.com]
Conscience of a Liberal
Cockroach Ideas
By PAUL KRUGMAN
March 13, 2011, 12:57 pm
“the Social Security trust fund doesn’t exist”
If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box – you might even call it a lockbox – from Reagan’s tax cuts.
Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction.
But there are two problems with their position.
The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits – which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to – then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.
The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis.
Re:Dire Omen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the entity who issued the bonds in this case is also the one paying the value plus interest. Therefore, you need the thousand dollars in the other jar to pay for the securities, and then you have to find money elsewhere to pay the interest on those thousand dollar securities. Assuming that, unlike the government, you haven't already spent the thousand dollars in the jar.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
It will collapse when the young finally revolt over being taxed the amounts needed to keep the elderly living in the style to which they've become accustomed.