Slashdot Mirror

Actually, SSI and Medicare are not self-funding; they've been running in the red for several years now. They are drawing out of the total Federal revenues. And the funds are not a "lock box" for you - the Supreme Court has ruled there is no right to any Social Security payment. Its funds have been part of the official budget for nearly 50 years, and funds have been used to buy T-bills (loans to the Federal Government) since the beginning, by statute. FICA payments are made to the Federal Government, those funds are loaned to the Federal Government, and the Federal Government has no legal requirement to pay back any of it. Does that mean it's separate and self-funding? In any real sense of those words - not a chance.

The food stamp program is $74 billion according to this story http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/...

According to http://www.reuters.com/article... the iraq war has cost roughly 2 Trillion. So the GP is correct.

Actually I found a better website http://www.usgovernmentspendin... If you add up the Pensions (which the lions share is SSA), Health (Medicare), and Welfare, You get a total spend of 2287.5 billion spent on social welfare programs.

Considering that our total 2015 budget was 3,650.5 billion, that means we spent 62% of our budget on welfare programs. If my math is correct.

Now look at military spending for 2015 and it is 820.2, smaller than either SSA, or Health spending. and only 22% of the budget. If my math is correct

Fact of life, without unions workers are screwed, the last thirty years are proof positive of that. Lowering wages, reduced safety conditions, fired arbitrarily and jobs wiped out. Powerful unions pounded the crap out of corrupt politicians and corporations is what is required to clean the current mess up.

The US wages according to the graphs in this wiki have been stable for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A non adjusted list: https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/...

The number of incidents at work is continuously going down: http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/o...

Powerful unions pounded the crap out of corrupt politicians and corporations is what is required to clean the current mess up.

I didn't say unions are bad but there are unions that are cash cows instead of a useful entity. I know of a few cases close to me where unions forced the collapse of companies or even the collapse of wages and benefits. When I see unions asking for 10% raises in the middle of a recession I call NON SENSE. When a union refuses to take the time to understand company financials while making demands I call NON SENSE.

The good unions out there are the ones that work WITH the companies to both further their interests. My father in law worked for a metal processing facility in Quebec (500 workers total). The workers opted to strike. The end result of the strike was many positions cut, salaries frozen for 5 years, removal of performance bonuses and removal of seniority as a criteria for promotions. The greed, miss information or lack of competence of the union was catastrophic for the workers.

Many countries in the EU have very good work conditions without the existence of unions. If it works there it should be able to work here.

I would like credit issuers to have a due diligence responsibility. A SSN and a few other personal identifying pieces of info is not a 'confidential key' that they should be using to grant credit. It shouldn't be possible for identity thieves to attain such value from such information.

The SSNs of all citizens should be a matter of public record.

WRONG!

The SSNs should STOP BEING USED FOR IDENTIFICATION. They really aren't SUPPOSED to be; but every single damned database seems to think it MUST store an SSN, and every single Utility, Credit Card co, etc, seems to think that it is the best thing since the invention of the birthdate for IDENTIFICATION.

In fact, my original SS Card said in big, bold red letters a the bottom: "For Social Security and Income Tax Purposes Only - Not For Identification". See Question 21 in this FAQ. What's curious is that they apparently didn't bother to actually change the SS CODE, so SSNs are still NOT supposed to be used for Identification, period!

Yet Here. We. Are.

The algorithm *was* pull the last number off of the list.

As of June 25, 2011, that is not the case anymore.

That said, this does not help any of us that are less than 4 years old.

I challenge your claim that entitlement programs are 2/3 overhead.

(corrected due to technical problems)

Social security overhead seems lower than 2%.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/...

Medicare, 1.4%.

http://pnhp.org/blog/2013/02/1...

SNAP lower than 1%.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Maybe you didn't bother doing any checking of the claim before repeating it?

--PeterM

Social security pays $28,000/year, so triple that 16.6%. Unless you cut SS beneficiaries. Then how are you going to pass it?

Social Security is not always "supposed to run out in 50 years," it's supposed to run out in 2033. Those predictions have been moved up in recent years, because the Great Recession depressed payrolls (and thus payroll taxes) so much. Does anyone who ever talks about Social Security bother to look up what Social Security's own actuaries are saying? The OASDI Trustee's report is not obscure or hard to find. Here's the report from 10 years ago, predicting trust fund exhaustion in 2042, before the Great Recession happened. Here's the most recent projection from a few months ago, predicting the date as 2033. Once the trust fund is exhausted, current payroll taxes will only cover approximately 74% of program costs; the difference will have to be made up by either benefit cuts or increases in the payroll tax.

This isn't some Republican conspiracy theory. You will note that the second letter is signed by a number of Democratic Party appointees, including three of Obama's cabinet members. These projections are not controversial among people who study Social Security for a living, in the same way that the atmospheric effects of CO2 are not controversial among climate scientists. The controversy only arises about how to fix the problem - nobody wants to be the first to propose 25% benefit cuts or 25% payroll tax increases.

Social Security is not always "supposed to run out in 50 years," it's supposed to run out in 2033. Those predictions have been moved up in recent years, because the Great Recession depressed payrolls (and thus payroll taxes) so much. Does anyone who ever talks about Social Security bother to look up what Social Security's own actuaries are saying? The OASDI Trustee's report is not obscure or hard to find. Here's the report from 10 years ago, predicting trust fund exhaustion in 2042, before the Great Recession happened. Here's the most recent projection from a few months ago, predicting the date as 2033. Once the trust fund is exhausted, current payroll taxes will only cover approximately 74% of program costs; the difference will have to be made up by either benefit cuts or increases in the payroll tax.

This isn't some Republican conspiracy theory. You will note that the second letter is signed by a number of Democratic Party appointees, including three of Obama's cabinet members. These projections are not controversial among people who study Social Security for a living, in the same way that the atmospheric effects of CO2 are not controversial among climate scientists. The controversy only arises about how to fix the problem - nobody wants to be the first to propose 25% benefit cuts or 25% payroll tax increases.

You are missing a couple of taxes at the federal level. There is social security and medicare tax (7.65% or 15.3% depending on how you want to look at it) that hits everyone but starts cutting out at higher incomes. And while you point out that you don't live in a state with income tax a lot do. Additionally a lot of states have a sales tax and this ignores local property taxes or local income taxes. When I did my taxes this year I was curious what my overall rate was and it is slightly below 30% and if I included sales tax it would likely be about 2% higher but that is just a rough guess.

There's more to it then that.

There's a section asking questions taken partly from the IRS database, and partly from your credit report. The questions are hard enough that when I did taxes at H and R Block it was not unusual for people to fail the test. In particular the form was very finicky about your address, and god help you getting on the site if you'd misspelled your street name on your tax return. But if I had been a determined hacker with one of those PII databases I probably could have turned a good half of them into transcripts, and used the transcripts to file tax returns. You get a couple tries a day, after all.

BTW, it's currently illegal to use an SSN as a Driver's License number. Has been since 2004:
[Public Law 108-458] "Prohibits Federal, State, and local governments from displaying SSNs, or any derivative thereof, on drivers' licenses, motor vehicle registrations, or other identification documents issued by State departments of motor vehicles."

People don't seem to have that issue when it comes to social security though.

http://www.ssa.gov/ssnumber/ss...

Instead of falling for this obvious IRS honeypot, just block your SSN.

There's no question you could make this system nightmarish, but the way I see it, the American public (not just Slashdot nerds) has successfully opposed national ID for ages; the only way you'll get public support for this is by offering people something better than the current system. Like an end to identity theft and spam.

Also, the social security administration already offers an identity verification service that only verifies "yes or no", and does not return names or other identifying data. Of course, it's pretty much useless because since so many private databases use the same SS#, the data's out in the wild and easy to collate. But it demonstrates that the government can and will take steps to protect citizens' identity.

Actually, there is what's called Survivors beneftis and it can be paid out for the following scenarios:
1. Parent dies while child is in school (k-12) - Remaining parent can file requests for payout for each child, SS will provide a monthly payment to provide support.
2. Parent dies, spouse can file for Widow's benefits at ~60, which will pay out a portion of what the deceased paid in.

Source:
SSA.Gov Children
SSA.Gov Widower
SSA.Gov how to apply

Actually, there is what's called Survivors beneftis and it can be paid out for the following scenarios:
1. Parent dies while child is in school (k-12) - Remaining parent can file requests for payout for each child, SS will provide a monthly payment to provide support.
2. Parent dies, spouse can file for Widow's benefits at ~60, which will pay out a portion of what the deceased paid in.

Source:
SSA.Gov Children
SSA.Gov Widower
SSA.Gov how to apply

Actually, there is what's called Survivors beneftis and it can be paid out for the following scenarios:
1. Parent dies while child is in school (k-12) - Remaining parent can file requests for payout for each child, SS will provide a monthly payment to provide support.
2. Parent dies, spouse can file for Widow's benefits at ~60, which will pay out a portion of what the deceased paid in.

Source:
SSA.Gov Children
SSA.Gov Widower
SSA.Gov how to apply

I haven't hear anyone claim that the US gov doesn't want to pay its debts, and it constitutionally must pay them so it is moot point. I sure wasn't saying that nor was I trying to imply that and was merely pointing out for the uninformed how things are structured and how we got there. There are problems facing the government once the bond redemption starts in earnest and those are mostly ignored which is the other point I was trying to make. The budget is already a mess and Social Security is just going to gradually make a bigger mess but I doubt anyone would know the difference.

I wouldn't say Social Security is properly funded for decades as the date the trust fund runs out is in 2033 according to the last Trustees Report which is the point at which it will be unable to pay full benefits. So less than 2 decades which means you will likely be caught up in it. The point at which it starts to take in less in taxes and interest and begin to draw down the trust fund.

So the decisions that one wants to make is how to deal with the problem and there really are a finite number of solutions. They could:
1. Raise taxes to ensure social security is fully funded. (democrat plan)
2. Decrease the rate at which benefits increase. (Republican plan)
3. Some combination of 1 & 2
4. Ignore the problem and in 2033 just fully fund it out of the general fund. (what will happen from 2017 to 2033)
5. Ignore the problem and in 2033 tell all social security recipients to fuck off and enjoy their 75%. (what the current plan out of the US government is)

A bond is an IOU, but US Treasury Bonds are special in that they will not default on them, but they are not the same thing as pallets of $100 bills sitting in a warehouse. The part of these discussion I take issue with is the X thousands of dollars per citizen in unfunded liabilities. While based in fact it is the amount that would be needed to be taken right now to cover expenses for the next 75 years assuming no change in incoming revenue or decrease in projected benefits. It is just a big scary number used to show how out of control government spending is.

The more immediate problems is that for a long time when social security was taking in more than it sent out it purchased US Treasury Bonds which provided money to the general fund which was spent on things and that spending on various other programs hasn't gone down. Now that is starting to change and social security is no longer taking in more in tax than it is sending out (the trust fund is still increasing due to interest) so there is less available in the general fund. In the future money from the general fund will need to be diverted to pay back the US Treasury Bonds as social security cashes them in. At some point in the future the social security trust fund will have redeemed all of its US Treasury Bonds and if nothing has been done social security would be able to pay ~75% to ~80% of promised benefits with what it takes in. The interesting thing is the month that that transition happens is that it would cost the same amount out of the general fund to continue to fund benefits at 100% as it did the previous month since the redeemed US Treasury Bonds used to pay benefits were payed out of the general fund. And if you think I a full of shit there is always the first few pages of the social security trustees report that they put out each year that you can access that has the exact dates. If you really want to get into the details just read the full report but I think only people who are actuaries would enjoy such a thing.

You are absolutely correct about life expectancy. At birth, per the Social Security Administration's actuarial tables, men have a life expectancy of 76.1 and women 80.94.

From there it never appears to go down (it is flat a couple of times, age 9-10 for both genders; add actual age and expectancy then diff over time). At no point is your full life expectancy, per standardized tables, at or below 75. At 75 the men and women life expectancy's are 85.89 and 87.77 respectively. Women are expected to live longer until age 116, at which point men and women have an equal life expectancy...

Here's the table: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/...

I haven't used an actuarial life table in a couple of decades, fun stuff.

And to be clear, the expectancy is from that age, so adding them is correct. Here's the full note:
Note: The period life expectancy at a given age for 2010 represents the average number of years of life remaining if a group of persons at that age were to experience the mortality rates for 2010 over the course of their remaining life.

But poor and middle class people don't pay less, they pay more.

Ever hear of the Social Security tax cap?

The rich who make more than $117,000 annually do not have to pay Social Security taxes on anything earned above that amount despite the fact that every US citizen is expected to draw from the pool. As the rich inevitably get richer, the taxable dollars become fewer.

Please do the logic in your head and tell us how you think that is "the best way to distribute limited resources".

According to SSA, once you make it to 65 (which is when many chose to retire), your chances of making it past 80 go wayyyyy up!!!!

http://www.ssa.gov/planners/li...

I use to work in life insurance, trust me, your facts are wrong. Social Security is not fine. It needs much more than a minor change. This is due to Social Security being dumped into congresses budget. Meaning when the government gets all the Social Security tax money in, it pays out what it needs to, and then takes the rest and spends it. Even if they made changes now (which will not happen), it would make little difference.

Once you take into account labor force numbers, and then take into account baby boomer numbers... I'm sorry your just wrong. I mean your basically doing elementary school math and expecting to solve a college level problem.

And how anyone could support this BS program is beyond me. Basically, it's Uncle Tom saying "hey if you give me % of every paycheck, when you retire I promise I'll give it back". You would get way more money (and I do mean way more) if you put that money in 1 of any of the other retirement programs that have been established. Social Security should be optional, or, if people really think you should be forced into a retirement program... At the very least, you should be able to sub your Social Security tax into a separate program.

I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled.

If you own your own house that's not too bad. If you don't, it's pretty much impossible.

I guess such people also qualify for welfare and subsidized housing? Who knows.

So can you tell me, why is it we can get a man on the moon but we can't take care of a few million old people and a few million disabled?

A few million?? You already listed 58 million in your first paragraph. And that's actually low... according to http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs... it was 63.7 million people last month.

It turns out taking care of over 60 million people is actually more difficult and more expensive than sending a couple guys to the moon. I don't find that hard to believe.

Are we really that pathetic as a country that we can't just solve this problem?

Yes, we are that pathetic. If you look at other countries, you see that old people are more likely to live with their kids. It's a cultural thing. Here, old people want to be independent all the way until they end up in a nursing home or die. Good for them, but independence is expensive as hell. As you noted, old people in this country are paying rent! That's crazy.

But that's the root of the problem.. to efficiently take care of old people without involving their kids, you have to pack them into low cost, bulk housing. Control their diets, medication, etc. No cars obviously. You can live cheaply like that...

Or you make them pay their own way, and if they can't, they have to live with their kids and share costs.

Or you do it like we do here, and they can do whatever they want, we have a social taboo against living with your adult kids, and then we give them as much tax money as we can afford to subsidize their lifestyle.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/a...

1993 Average income: 23,132.67
2013 Average income: 44,321.67

Roads and Bridges, like firefighters and law enforcement offers, are a legitimate function of government. Funding for the roads has been cut in half by inflation and the infrastructure is becoming dangerous. Especially bridges.

If the tax had been set at 18%- then it would have scaled with gasoline prices. But with the increasing share of hybrids, much higher mileage of gasoline cars (33mpg vs 28mpg), many more trucks used for shipping (70% more in 2007 than in 1997) (roughly 15 million today vs 4 million in 1993), and now purely electric cars the tax needs to be changed to reflect today's reality.

What we really need is to remove the gasoline tax and replace it with a mileage tax.

I read a lot of 1850's newspapers and it's funny because with the civil war approaching, the voters and legislators then seemed more rational than our voters and legislators today.

You *can't* *have* the roads for *free*.
It *costs* money to build and maintain the road system.

Grow up.

thanks for that number. I'd never heard of the Woolworth SSN

I didn't even mention unfunded liabilities, which are estimated conservatively at about $90 Trillion (with a T) and more aggressively at $120-200T. Here's a tid-bit from only one of them, Social Security, not from a right-wing paper or blog, but from the official Social Security website's actuary report. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the Trustees’ long-range test of close actuarial balance nor their short-range test of financial adequacy and faces the most immediate financing shortfall of any of the separate trust funds. DI Trust Fund reserves expressed as a percent of annual cost (the trust fund ratio) declined to 85 percent at the beginning of 2013, and the Trustees project trust fund depletion in 2016, the same year projected in the last Trustees Report.

Wanna check Medicare/Medicaid? Federal pensions? State pensions? Food stamps? All overloaded beyond capacity. And the only answer you get from anyone is to keep voting for the same people and keep doing the same thing.

The USPS is a bad comparison to make. The USPS pension fund is a public pension fund, whereas social security (OASDI) and Medicare are social insurance programs. There are good reasons why the accounting for these should be different. In fact, the issue that you point out with the USPS pension fund arose when they forced a public pension plan (the USPS) to check for actuarial balance similar to a social insurance program (the 75 year long-term actuarial balance), instead of the simple employer accounting basis under GASB 68 (which is similar to the FAS 87/88 standard for private firms)

I am not arguing that PAYG is the *worst* accounting for social insurance programs, and in fact I don't think that. There are many good reasons why PAYG with some sort of short term/long term checks of actuarial balance *can* be appropriate measures for the health of a social insurance plan. However, OP said OASDI and Medicare are in SURPLUS, full stop, and I think that greatly oversimplifies the issues involved.

Disclaimer: I am an actuary, but no longer in active practice.

1. We were working to send a man to the moon (300,000+ people involved) which was NOT just some guys in "bunny suits" prepping astronauts and rockets in clean rooms at the cape... there were facilities being designed and built and staffed in many states. (it takes far fewer to maintain and use the stuff in later years)

I don't think you understand what "government employee" means. The vast majority of those 300,000 people worked at private companies that were completing government contracts related to the space program.

2. We were doing major construction on the creation of the interstate highway system (passed by Eisenhower in 1956, activity was very high in the 60's) It takes lots more people to plan and build such a system than to maintain it later.

Again, it's not as if the government went out and bought a bunch of backhoes and bulldozers to do the construction itself. Those highways were built by people working at private construction firms, not government employees.

3. We were fighting in Vietnam and at a very high Cold War strategic military posture with lots of HUGE highly-staffed bases all over the world; The US military used to do all its own work for things like base security, base food prep, grounds keeping, supply chain operation, troop transport, etc .... but now days many of these things are "outsourced" to civilian firms, and even the military itself is FAR smaller (the US navy, for example has fewer than HALF the ships it had under Reagan in the 80's and while THAT was higher than under Carter it was still historically lower than at many points).

You just proved the point of the Atlantic. You said that since the 1960s the military has vastly cut down the number of people it employs by outsourcing to private contractors and eliminating inefficiencies. Isn't this exactly what it means to have a small government?

4. Technology was SUPPOSED to reduce the workforce. Where Social Security checks required armies of federal workers to do the processing in the 1940's, it's now largely a computer task now with the payments often handled by automated "electronic funds transfers" (so the workers on-staff handle the human-interface functions and SHOULD be fewer than the number who used to work at SS). Given that much of what government does involves paper, records, and money, a big bloated government SHOULD require a fraction of the workers of decades ago, since all the work of computing numbers, moving and storing money, data, etc should be done my machines now.

This has happened. Today, Social Security Administration expenses as a percentage of the trust fund are less than one third what they are today. (source) But that doesn't fit into your pretty little narrative, does it?

Also, I'm sorry, but anyone who uses the Park Service as an example of big government is a fucking idiot. The Park Service gets .06% of the US federal budget. But wait, it adds up, doesn't it? What if we closed 500 agencies like the Park Service? We would cut government spending by 30%. Oh wait, no we wouldn't. Because the total of all non-defense, non-debt, non-healthcare, non-benefits spending adds up to 9% of the federal government. That's right, even if we shut down every "dispensable" agency -- from the FCC to the FAA, the DoE to the DoJ, the National Park Service to the Internal Revenue Service, the USDA, the USPS, the NIH, the NSF, the FDA, the FHA, NASA, the State Department, SCOTUS, POTUS -- we would only save 9% of the budget.

This is what all republicans conveniently ignore when they talk about big government. Big government isn't caused by all the agencies they love to complain about.

At least Obama was trying to chip away at the real problem with health care reform. No, it isn't

The trouble with it is, as soon as you touch it to see if it works or not, you've already spent more than the computer is worth. If you spend more than a few minutes with it, its like dumping new gold plated rims and a new suspension on a car that is now worth exactly the cost of used rims and a used suspension.

Your cost of labor is far higher than that of a poor person in Nairobi. For example the average US worker earns more in a week than these unfortunate people spend on living expenses in a year: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/A... http://www.unicef.org/kenya/ov...

Poor people don't want your garbage, whether it works or not. Poor people aren't stupid or uneducated; they're merely not rich or middle class.

I think you really don't know poor. Western world poor is rich compared to Nairobi poor. There are plenty of _fat_ poor people with TVs in the USA. Yes they are indeed poor and suffering in the USA but you haven't seen poor if you think poor people elsewhere don't want your garbage.

In some really poor countries there actually isn't that much garbage in the first place! There is nothing to throw away - food is all eaten or kept for later, bottles and bags are reused.

In other places garbage is shipped in from rich countries and they process it (for gold, copper etc). Such work is hazardous, but instead of dying by "next week" they have a chance of dying a fair bit later.

Requesting a replacement Social Security card does not explicitly *require* photo identification. All they ask for is "evidence of identity" and specifically mention scenarios where you may lack government-issued photo ID (ex. license, state-issued ID card, or passport). The government-issued photo ID just makes the process quicker/easier for them, that's all, else you're asked to provide alternate forms of identification: military record, certificate of naturalisation or certificate of birth, employee ID card, medical record or immunization record, Medicaid card, or even a life insurance policy or adoption papers. I had to do this several years ago as I lost my original social security card (I had copies, just not the actual paper card provided by the SSA).

It works the same way when getting a US passport, actually -- if you can't provide either a driver's license or state-issued ID card, you're given about 20-25 alternate forms of proof (the more you have of these the better; call the State Dept. if you want the full list, the website doesn't list off all of them). You can also fill out a DS-71 form (witness validation -- someone who's known you for 2+ years, is a US citizen or permanent resident, has valid ID (see above), and must be there with you physically at the time of passport submission).

How do I know all this crap, especially passports? Because a few months ago I went through trying to get a US passport at the local post office (a few blocks from here) -- solely for use as a form of ID -- resulted in irritation and humiliation. I do not have a driver's license (I don't drive nor have I ever) and cannot go to a DMV to get a state-issued ID card due to medical problems (hence why I wanted a passport). I'm a US citizen and was born here. The "reviewer" at the post office, despite being provided with 7 alternate forms of permitted ID, *and* with a witness (someone I've known for over 15 years who has a valid US passport and driver's license), rejected accepting my passport submission citing "the circumstances were weird [that I had no plans to travel abroad yet were asking for a passport]", speculated that "I could have found some random dude and paid {said friend} to act as a witness for a DS-71", and told me to come back "when I had a doctor's note to prove I couldn't go to the DMV to get a state ID card". To be clear: it was not a passport agency which rejected me, it was some jackass at an official "passport acceptance facility" (i.e. post office).

Because I kept questioning myself ("What did I do wrong? What forms of secondary ID weren't compliant?"), I made a call to the State Dept., which resulted in an investigation -- they were particularly interested in the fact that I was told to get a doctor's letter, since that has no bearing on anything relating to a passport and is a very tricky subject here in California. Two managers at the State Dept. both told me that the doofus should have accepted everything I had -- the DS-71 wasn't even necessary, so they say -- and sent it off to Los Angeles where it probably would have been approved. I haven't gone back there post-investigation since there's apparently no way to guarantee I'll see someone different (I worry I'll get the same guy, despite the investigation, and he'll just be an even bigger dick), and going up to San Francisco to the official passport agency isn't an option given my health.

Sorry for the long story there, but this "ID verification" thing is still fresh in my mind.

The one place that does require state-issued photo ID to get something is -- are you ready? -- a library card from a local library; they won't accept anything else, which is probably what you were getting at (you can actually use a local library card as a form of alternate ID when applying for a passport, but how do you

Yes, you can overtly accept debt when accepting assets, but you cannot take on stealth debt by accepting assets that appear to be free and clear when the estate is closed. That is a blatant violation of due process.

Some debts, such as social security over-payments, do survive the death of the original recipient in certain situations. This link describes some of those situations.

Furthermore, as you describe it "appear to be free and clear" is absolute bubkis. Acting in good faith may protect you from criminal prosecution, but does not transfer property free & clear just because you thought it was. Shit, just ask somebody that got kicked out of their "free & clear" inherited house once an old loan popped up (fyi: title companies are not responsible in such situations, even if they cleared the title).

If the IRS failed to give reasonable notice to the estate of the intention to attach a lien on assets, the debts are gone. They are creditors. Creditors who do not act in a timely manner when an estate is closing or a corporation is being liquidated are simply SoL.

You're making 2 very flawed assumptions here (with your entire post actually):
1. That the Federal Government follows the same laws as a private entity in this or any other matter
2. That the law follows common sense.

Neither are true.

http://www.ssa.gov/

Feel free to run on eliminating it. After all, it's what you're complaining about in your post.

Most people wont run for office, but I wonder what they think about their grandparents moving in with them.

I hope you're joking about Baby Boomers earning Social Security. SS taxes were half the current level when the Boomers started their careers. See http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...

I'm all for paying them back based on what they paid in, but they have not earned the current benefit level.

http://www.ssa.gov/

Feel free to run on eliminating it. After all, it's what you're complaining about in your post.

The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes

Or we could, you know, get rid of the cap. I have yet to hear a coherent argument explaining why regressive payroll taxes are a good thing for this country.

A tax with two brackets:
$0 - $117000; 2.9%
$117000+; 0.0%

I'm sure it's this way to encourage job creators to, um...

In both cases, the money goes into the General Fund to be spent, and is "replaced" with an Interest Free Intragovernmental T-Bill.

Wrong, the debt that the Social Security Trust Fund purchases is not interest-free. You can see that here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progda...

If the net effect of something existing is exactly the same as the net effect of it NOT existing, it can safely be assumed that it doesn't actually exist.

Even if the special issue bonds were interest-free, that criticism wouldn't make sense. That would mean the Trust Fund is giving the government interest-free loans, and then being paid back later. That is completely different than if they didn't save the money to begin with, but still had to be paid back later when they're out of money.

The Trust Fund will run out of money one day and we'll have to cut benefits or divert general funds to pay make it up or raise SS taxes, but that is quantitatively different from if there was no Trust Fund to begin with.

Except that you'd have to do away with the adjustments, and that's not likely to happen.

http://www.ssa.gov/cola/automa...

Social Security is running cash-flow negative, meaning it is spending reserves rather than living on current cash flow. And whilst, on paper, that looks like it doesn't add to the overall Federal deficit, those reserves are simply bonds from the Federal Government which must be redeemed out of current Federal revenues. And those Federal revenues are from a deficit plan.

Saying SS isn't adding to the deficit is like saying your department in a company that is losing money isn't adding to the loss because you're still under budget - even if the products your department builds don't cover your budgeted costs.

It doesn't really matter.

MYTHS AND MISINFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY- Part 2

Starting in 1969 (due to action by the Johnson Administration in 1968) the transactions to the Trust Fund were included in what is known as the "unified budget." This means that every function of the federal government is included in a single budget. This is sometimes described by saying that the Social Security Trust Funds are "on-budget." This budget treatment of the Social Security Trust Fund continued until 1990 when the Trust Funds were again taken "off-budget." This means only that they are shown as a separate account in the federal budget. But whether the Trust Funds are "on-budget" or "off-budget" is primarily a question of accounting practices--it has no effect on the actual operations of the Trust Fund itself.

RL33028: Social Security: The Trust Fund

If you're paying attention, then you'd know that Social Security will be able to pay 100% of its obligations through 2037. If there was a 1% increase in the payroll tax, lifting of the cap (only the first $113,700 is taxed), or if non-work income became subject to the Social Security tax then Social Security would be fully funded for the foreseeable future. Additionally your post erroneously claims a Social Security tax of 12.4% when the actual rate is 6.2% (only the self employed have a 12.4% rate). More amusing you claim that when Social Security goes broke (it won't of course) that benefit cuts will be across the board 25% but simultaneously those of us under 40 will never see a cent. Which is it, 75% of current benefits or nothing?

The question is, since Social Security is not facing a crisis, and the fix to the problem it faces ~25 years from now is a minor tax adjustment, and Social Security has been and remains far and away the most successful anti-poverty program in the US, why are some radical-right groups trying to kill it? That's what needs paying attention to.

you can't rescind participation once you reach the age of majority, unlike every other legally binding agreement your parents enter you into

I don't understand you here.

My parent's never entered me into any kind of agreement...

It isn't like THEY signed me up for SS...as I mentioned, I signed up for in in a 9th grade typing class at school, something of a "class project". I wish I hadn't back then.

I would have much rather have taken all that SS money I've contributed over the years...and put it into investments for retirement myself and used that money to make money.

I would definitely find out about what religion to 'join' to get out of it, if I had the choice back then link here to exception page

But again to the point...I'm confused when you say my parents obligated me to something, it isn't like they signed me up for social security or anything....

Which is partly due to FUD, partly due to bad math, and partly due to media hype. A quick google search turned up the Why Social Security Won't go Bankrupt and Social Security Reform. The former discusses the thoughts behind Social Security, saying that workers today are paying retirees today. The latter having some of the "truth" (if there is such a thing) of what that money is used for, i.e. Congress borrows and may or may not pay back from the SS fund.
  The former article doesn't go into much detail about how it works if the balance of retirees to workers starts tipping steeply toward retirees, but it does comment that some of that fund is from overtaxation of all the people. It's near impossible to know how many pennies each person should be taxed so we can have a zero balance sheet for the millions of people working and millions retired. This article doesn't have any solid evidence of anything, but it is more of a conceptualization of how things work than a hard-facts document. So the idea is perpetuated that Congress is smashing the social security piggy bank to fund some pet projects, or just because a couple members wanted a cookie.
  The second article starts in on the FUD, and doesn't give any hard evidence or supporting references (notice that?) for any of the claims they are making about how the pot of money is going to dry up. So they continue to spew out that Congressman so-and-so was short a couple mil for whatever reason, and got a few other senators to buy off that he really needed the money to put some spinners on his cadillac.

This all started with concern over the baby boomers (all those blue-hairs terrorizing the roads starting in around the turn of the century) vastly outnumbering their children. The concern, of course, being that there wasn't enough money to fund the retirement of those baby-boomers. Looking at the Social Security website, you'll see that the baby-boomers have nothing to worry about. For the most part, they aren't all relying on Social Security, and many have pensions and IRA's to bolster that income.

Still concerned?

The IRS employees that have been furloughed are the ones who give you a refund. The ones who accept your taxes are still working.

Medicare is administered under the authority of the federal government but, for the most part, separately funded from it via trust funds that are segregated from general revenue. See medicare.gov: "How is Medicare funded?" So is Social Security: see ssa.gov: "Trust Fund FAQs." Not that there haven't been questions about whether the SS funds are really there or separate from the general revenue: it was convenient for the administration to terrify seniors by threatening to stop SS checks back in 2011 due to that year's debt limit debate, even though the money by law should be safely stored in the trusts (see Forbes: "What happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund?"). That's the sort of tactic that gets the elderly up in arms and screaming about keeping government out of their Medicare: it really is their Medicare and their Social Security, sourced from trust funds that the rest of the government should not be able to block, drain, or confiscate.

When you hear people saying "Keep the government out of my Medicare," they mean that they don't want Medicare's trust fund status to be breached to fund more imperial misadventures in godforsaken deserts.

Not that it matters much: Medicare and Social Security are fiscally unsustainable and the trusts will drain themselves, period. Social Security was designed for a population whose average lifespan was 63 (hence retirement at 65 -- only half the population would ever receive benefits) and Medicare can't keep up with the absurd rise in health care prices compounded with the longer lives of citizens (the later years are particularly unhealthy, and the elderly not surprisingly take up a huge chunk of overall health care spending). Eventually health care will have to be fully nationalized; you can't fight math, and this business of mandating private insurance isn't going to reduce prices or bloat, just enrich the insurers (insurance is just a casino anyway, and the house rigs the game so that it always makes a profit).

Now, that's a brand new lie I've never heard before.

So FICA is a lie propagated by the right wing? Or are you just so ignorant that you've never heard of it before? Here, go read up on it. Then come back and apologize.

Lyndon Johnson started the shenanigans with his "unified budget" that included trust funds not subject to budgetary legislation, and over the years Congress used the concept for further obfuscation (such as pinning automatic budget cuts to the unified budget rather than the actual budget).

I have no idea what the current situation is, but the SS trust funds were officially off-budget as of 2005 according to http://www.ssa.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html

"present law mandates that the two Social Security Trust Funds, and the operations of the Postal Service, are formally considered to be "off-budget" and no longer part of the unified federal budget."

And what portion of the total federal budget is taken up by SS today?

Negative 85.6 billion dollars.

Social Security has a net surplus right now. That will over the course of the next couple decades as the boomers retire, but that can be fixed by (for example) allowing the tax ceiling to be adjusted with inflation.

It's funny that you would claim our ideology thrives on misinformation and lies. Perhaps you're doing a bit of projecting?

Your average white, wage earning male (the major working population back in the 1930's) is not living to 65 back then

This is wrong. Average life expentancy was low because infant mortality was much higher in the 1930's. We got really good at preventing infant and early childhood deaths, so average life expectancy increased accordingly. However, the increase in population who pay into the system living to collect benefits is not nearly as drastic. Also, they pay into the system. If you lived long enough to collect benefits, you'll only collect benefits for about 3 years longer compared to someone in 1940. Have some data

The increase in percentage of of the surviving population from 21 to 65 over time is somewhat due to advances in medicine, but also heavily influenced by reduced occupational risk. This doesn't really matter because they pay into the system and don't collect for a significantly longer time.

Yes. Normally your employer pays half, and you pay the other half. http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240/~/social-security-and-medicare-tax-rates%3B-maximum-taxable-earnings

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/cola/AWI.html

Average wage certainly has gone up.

Official answer: $113,700.