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They could do that. But then I could always run my 'What if' test cases with some other SSN. And then cut and paste the final numbers into my own form. I like to use the number I found in my wallet.

Please elaborate on your alleged connection.

Do a bit of reading here

The participation rate is a wild card for the U.S. labor market outlook. Employers could unlock a massive pool of untapped labor if they can pull currently disenfranchised workers back into the game. If that’s the case, the job market isn’t as tight as the current 4 percent unemployment rate would suggest and today’s still-slow wage growth makes more sense.

The average American Salary is still $58,000 if you believe that.

The average (mean) net compensation: $48k
The median net compensation: $32k

Source: https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/...

Federal spending. Social spending is about 68% of the entire budget - yeah, not 70% but quite close.

Medicare is bankrupt in 2026 and Social Security in 2032, the average being about 12 years from now.

Now, it turns out I cannot register such an account, I can't create a sign-in, it just barfs. So I called the contact number, and after waiting the requisite few hours, I had a gov employee tell me that without a credit rating - I don't have one, don't use the credit system - I can't prove I'm myself, and can't have an online account with them - despite they know it's me and send me checks! Which is probably breaking some law about how the gov has to provide online access, but...nothing can be done, according to them (sorry, Joni Mitchell).
.

This points out where the real power lies perhaps. A private company, collecting our data with no recourse - you can't opt out - has more power over government operations than...the government. Interesting. https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
All you have to do to have no credit rating is not use any credit for 7+ years. You are then a ghost. Also interesting is that "no" credit rating is worse than a bad one! I had a dispute with Verizon some years ago - sold me a phone, no service in my area, wouldn't cancel - I wouldn't pay! They sold me off to a debt collection agency who threatened to screw up my rating. Net result - endless offers of credit from all and sundry due to now having a rating at all. Which is now long gone.
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Obviously you're not going to see this kind of story in the MSM. But it's true. Probably doesn't affect that many, but it was eye-opening for me.

Perhaps this link is close to what you are looking for:
https://www.ssa.gov/history/li...

In 1940, less than 60% of 21-year-olds made it to 65.

Also, in 2000, there were 4 times more people age 65 and older, than in 1940.

No matter how you measure it, there were a lot fewer old people in 1930 than there are now.

Not life span. Life span is 120. Expected? At birth. Russia is 57. US is 76M/81F. Norway is more. Japan more still. Canada is much less.

But this is stupid anyway, as is any {quote}AI{quote} prediction. I refer you to

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

Except using $50k is a stupid baseline, first nobody but a fastfood worker or similar low wage job actually costs their employer only $50k per year in the west.

I was being generous with the $50k. The median income in the USA is around $30k ( https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) and is only about $10k if you are looking at worldwide income.

Basically, a billion dollars is approximately 100k man-years of labor if you use the median global income. You could literally hire 10k people to work for you for 10 years (or 1k+ people for life).

I realize that other movies and entertainment spend similar amounts of money but it's mind-boggling that we are using so much labor and resources for something so immaterial.

• 1970: 6,186.24
• 2016: 48,642.15

which are based on wages for a worker, and are actually more favorable to your case, but still demonstrate that even a basic good such as bread has increased in cost by more than 10% compared to a worker's take home. You should also note that income tax hits more people today since taxes weren't indexed to inflation nor wage growth, so in real terms, the bread costs even more, comparatively.

Rather than make up numbers, why not look them up? Here are some real numbers - have fun with them.

Cost of Medicare per person per year is roughly $12000. Medicare isn't free, either - it's significantly subsidized, but the average subscriber is paying about $7600 a year. So that means that taxpayers are paying about $5400 per year per Medicare subscriber. Medicare payments currently make up roughly 15% of the total US budget, with enrollee premiums and deductibles returning a little over 60% of that.

Cost of social security per person per year is roughly $16320. It makes up about 20% of the total budget. Social Security is (ostensibly) paid for by current-worker taxes, but is certainly going to need retooling one way or another.

Military spending in 2015 was less than 16% of the US budget, although that is currently going up.

Also interest on the debt takes up 6% of the budget.

You can't make this shit up.

The SSN has 9 digits, not 10. There is no check digit. SSN Randomization

I recall seeing the notice on my first SS card. Looked at https://www.ssa.gov/history/hf... and found the following: "Q21: When did Social Security cards bear the legend "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION"? A: The first Social Security cards were issued starting in 1936, they did not have this legend. Beginning with the sixth design version of the card, issued starting in 1946, SSA added a legend to the bottom of the card reading "FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES -- NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION." This legend was removed as part of the design changes for the 18th version of the card, issued beginning in 1972. The legend has not been on any new cards issued since 1972."

The funny part: I was never intended to be used for identification. The SOLE purpose of the Social Security Number was to track income and earnings for later disbursement from the Social Security fund.

IANAL, but I read that as, legally, Financial Institutions and Healthcare providers have no basis for needing your SSN. Unfortunately, it's just become used as a national ID.

The problem here is not the private sector but that the government has failed to use secure methods of authentication such as two factor authentication and public key encryption.

So while your statements about government being the problem, not using enough security, etc. may well be justified, they had little to do with the actual damages here.

The Social Security Administration specifically uses Equifax when creating your online account. Therefore, whoever holds the Equifax data will have no trouble redirecting your social security payments into their bank account(s).

Clearly neither of you has any clue regarding the reality of this situation.

I didn't know this until a couple days ago, but starting in 2011 all new SSNs are random numbers. https://www.ssa.gov/employer/r...

That's a good minor step. So, starting in 2029 this will actually help someone, if ever so slightly.

I didn't know this until a couple days ago, but starting in 2011 all new SSNs are random numbers. https://www.ssa.gov/employer/r...

Where did those millions go? Walmart, Starbucks, various other retailers and over the last several years, the Social Security disability participants have bulged - which are not counted in any unemployment statistic.

Disability rolls have indeed ballooned by some 3.5 million recipients since 2002.

Undoubtedly, there are genuinely disabled folks receiving this benefit alongside the ones using it as a UBI. The $64,000 question? Is it easier to keep the poor on subsistence level income if you make them feel a little dirty about it?

I can help with that. Or use 457-55-5462 (Lifelock CEO) or 078-05-1120 or 219-09-9999

Yep, the formula to validate SSN is no big secret although it is not published at large.

even the nice police officer didn't want to know the other day!

Strange thing, last time I opened a bank account, they wanted my Driver's License number. WTF? Since when you you have to drive to have a bank account?

How will the developers using a fixed SSN like field everywhere in their database (primary client key, foreign keys) would cope with your behavior? Those who do that might even have a stored proc to validate the SSN field, I have seen it"

I can help with that. Or use 457-55-5462 (Lifelock CEO) or 078-05-1120 or 219-09-9999

Social Security numbers are fine. The problem is that organizations have foolishly been using them for authentication ("Prove you are you!"), rather than merely identification ("Who are we talking about?"), which was all they were ever designed to do.

Even more narrowly than that. It's original purpose was to track workers solely for use in determining SS benefits - that's it. From The Story of the Social Security Number

The Social Security number (SSN) was created in 1936 for the sole purpose of tracking the earnings histories of U.S. workers, for use in determining Social Security benefit entitlement and computing benefit levels.

It's too late for the Republicans. Have you seen the new budget? Everyone is pissed off. Social Security's 2016 report says the Trust is insolvent by 2034 (last page); the new 2018 budget reduces tax funding flowing into Social Security. The AARP, anyone who follows NASI, and even many of our current-generation are quite unhappy about this, and ... well, there goes your voter sentiment.

America's aging population and you fucked around with retirement. I get a pass on that because I'm making it more-stable to ensure people get what we promised; you cut benefits, reduce funding, and jeopardize the entire system, you only get roasted. Old people don't have a lot of shit to deal with anymore; you touch their last source of survival, they don't forget for a long time. Medicare and social security will be your downfall if you intend to cut benefits.

Obama moved millions to permanently out of the workforce . The biggest way was via moving 2 million unemployed to permanent disability, which resulted in a nice shaving of unemployment by 3% or so.

U definitions; U6 is most of the people who want to work but cannot find a job, cannot find a full time job (underemployment) and thus still need assistance, or who have given up.

ShadowStats also factors in those who have permanently left the work force but are still in the 19-64 age range. It's no secret that permanent disability and permanent Medicaid status have both exploded since 2008. ShadowStats factors those people into their own unemployment rate, as it appears the Federal Government moved a permanent segment of society from the unemployment rolls (U3 and U6) to "out of workforce" in an effort to lower the unemployment rate. Perhaps that's why the Labor Force Participation Rate is the lowest it's been in 40 years (note: labor force participation rate only includes those who are of working age, who are physically able to work, but are not actively working - it does not include retirees).

You're off by an order of magnitude, at least. 70k people worked for the social security administration in 2010. It's definitely not millions. And I'd argue that if the best jobs are administering welfare programs, those aren't great job options. Better an investment in those communities so that new business can spring up. I think UBI would do that, because there wouldn't be as much risk in trying to start a business, and there is an incentive to work even part-time, because you'll have more money in your pocket. The problem with our current welfare programs is that for many of them, you hit a dollar limit and you lose 100% of your benefits. No incentive to work too much with that scheme.

Actually, they dropped dead much earlier than that.

Only 53.9% of men and 60.6% of women made it to 65. https://www.ssa.gov/history/li...

Well duh, they dropped dead before reaching their 20s.

Straight quote from your link: "Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women, and the retirement age was 65. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due mainly to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood."

And then they show of all the 21 yo men alive in 1915, 54% of them reached 65 yo (in 1960). Those had 13 more years of life expentancy. So it's retire at 65, drop dead at 77 for that cohort.

The days of retiring at 65 and dropping dead at 70, which was the reality when Social Security got set up in the 1930's, are long gone..

Actually, they dropped dead much earlier than that.

Only 53.9% of men and 60.6% of women made it to 65. https://www.ssa.gov/history/li...

See Table E "Operations Of OASI And DI Trust Funds, Combined, In 2016" from https://www.ssa.gov/oact/FACTS...

Fiscal Year 2016 balance of payments was +$34.2 billion , Calendar year balance of payments was +$35.2 billion

The "problems that were not being adequately handled before those programs were created" were Democrats not having permanent mandatory control over every person in the country.

This stupid-ass meme just won't die.

57,997,000 people received Social Security benefits in February of 2017. 43,425,000 of those people were age 65 or older. 74.87% of Social Security beneficiaries are old people.[1]

Old people skew heavily Republican when voting.[2] The margin is as high as 9% for people in their early 80s. For Donald Trump's election, it was 8%.

If Social Security, by far the largest Democratic entitlement program, was supposed to gain control of those old people, it was a miserable failure. Or maybe this is just a stupid-ass meme that needs to die because it was never true.

Anyone that says that willfully disregards Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid taxes which are NOT exempted under any circumstance.

I can list many government employers, like police departments, that in fact do not pay into SS. I do not think any should be exempt, but there are many.

https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/stateandlocal.html

Nope it will sit at about that 75% for ever because that is about what it takes in per year compared to what it pays out. Also the SS trust fund runs out in 2034 but stops taking in more than it receives around 2020 (although a few years ago it paid out more than it took it). You can read page 6 of the annual trustees report and find out the highlights.

The Social Security Administration says that in 20 years it's out of money and can only pay about 76% of benefits promised. And that either a 16% benefit cut immediately, or a 16% raise in taxes, is required to stave off this problem. That's not a minor adjustment, and if it was a private pension the Federal Government would declare it insolvent.

"We make only one quarter of what are [sic] forbears [sic] did after you adjust for inflation against the PCI [sic] index."

You're full of illiterate bullshit.The CPI Inflation Calculator shows a 1957-2015 increase of 843%. The Average Wage Indexing Series shows wages went up 1321%. The average person makes over 50% more today than in 1957. In addition, the number of 2 earner families more than doubled, so families as a whole do even better than that.

It goes against gross because that is also their "salary". For a normal worker, they pay half of the SS tax on their wages and the company pays the other half. If you are self-employed, you pay both sides. Reference

This is why consultants are ridiculously expensive - they are very aware of their overhead for taxes, and have to compensate for it.

Hate to be that guy, but:

[citation needed]

Here is a sample calculation done by the various people who make that claim:

typical study of reduction in lifespan due to smoking:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

The average geezer on SSA gets 15K a year.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/doc...

The average medicare per-person yearly cost for the over 65 people is $19K.
https://www.cms.gov/research-s...

cigarettes killing the old folks 7 years early save $238K from SSA and Medicare

Lung cancer is an expensive way to go. typical last-year costs are 95K.
cigarettes death include heart failure and strokes. quick deaths are cheap.

We could give everyone a UBI of at least $5k today, possibly even $10k, without costing anyone an extra dollar. There may or may not be moral hazards, although recent surveys from Sweden suggest that these are not as bad a people initially think. And this might sound harsh, but the sort of people that would stop working after receiving a $5k or $10k UBI are probably not really contributing that much to society anyway, so it might not be that big of a loss to the rest of us if they drop out of the economy.

But anyway, here's how the math would work:

The population of the US is 319 million.

Of those, 122 million pay federal income tax (source: https://www.reference.com/gove...)
Suppose that for those 122 million people, we gave them a tax hike of exactly $5k
Under a UBI, they could get an extra $5k, which exactly offsets this tax hike

So there are 192 million people left
Keep in mind that UBI replaces existing welfare payments, like social security and food stamps
Social security taxes bring in $920 billion (source: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS...)
Food stamps cost us $74.1 billion (source: http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/sup...)
That's enough to pay just over $5k to each of those remaining 192 million people

I haven't bothered to look into how much we're spending in admin costs to apply means testing to these welfare systems, and I haven't looked into how much money the various state governments are spending on various welfare schemes - all of this would become unnecessary under a UBI.

However the Cato Institute has looked into this, and they think we're spending $1 trillion per year on "welfare" (source: http://www.cato.org/publicatio...). I'm not sure I fully trust their analysis, but I'll take this as an estimate of the upper bound of what we could afford. So this, combined with social security revenue, would add up to $2 trillion per year to share amongst the 192 million non-taxpayers, which would give a UBI of just over $10k.

No need to tap into our Medicare funds, or cut any of our other expenses. We could continue to pay medical expenses, pensions, fund NASA and wage unnecessary and expensive wars around the world.

So that's where we're at today. In the future, there could be technological advances that make us more productive, and mean that we can lower our labor participation rate. The OP asks us whether UBI is the way to go in the future, and I'd say it's a plausible option.

Like I said,

https://oig.ssa.gov/whistleblo...

https://www.oig.dhs.gov/index....

https://oversight.house.gov/su... (the "Blow the Whistle" link)

Here's a link for you.

Wonder how they arrived at a 0.893381 (impressive number of digits btw) probability of a 119 year old male dying within one year, considering that not a single man in history is confirmed to have reached that age.

Here's a link for you.

Nope. Not even close. Look at https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS.... Out of 100,000 men, about 10% will die in the 60s. Not remotely close to 60%.

There is a message on the SocialSecurity web site that states the SMS requirement has been removed.
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/

I agree with Krebs that the weak place in this is the initial setup, but there's no good answer for that. The SSA is better than most, though.

To setup an account, SSA does a soft inquiry against your Experian credit report and asks your some multiple choice questions based on that. to verify that it's really you. This is easy for relatives (or pretty much anyone) to hack if you happen to be an old person that's lived in the same place for decades and only had one job.
The questions they ask are taken from the same database as are the same questions you have to answer to get a copy of the credit report (or online IRS account, etc), so a total stranger can do testing against other agencies without setting off the wrong-answer lockout on SSA.

If your Experian report has incorrect info (such as your current address or work history), you may need to have a copy of the report to answer the questions the way they want.

The online account cannot be setup by you or anyone else if you have a credit freeze on your Experian credit report.
Everyone should have a freeze on their credit report.

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

It was a trust fund, properly funded pension scheme until Congress figured out how to steal the fund.

This isn't true, in multiple ways.

First, Congress hasn't "stolen" the money. The Social Security trust funds (there are two of them) have always been required by law to be invested only in securities backed by the federal government. Basically, that means Treasury bonds. What happens when you buy a T bill? The money flows into the general fund, available for Congress to spend. Where else would it go? Scrooge McDuck's mattress? The trust funds still hold all of those securities, whose value has been growing at low, fixed rates, and can redeem them when cash is needed to pay out benefits... of course, that presumes that the general fund has the money to redeem them.

Now, you might argue that the law requiring the funds to be invested in government-backed securities was the mechanism by which Congress stole the money, but that really wasn't its intent. The other options were to (a) just pile the money up without investing it in anything or (b) have fund managers invest it in open market securities (stocks, bonds, etc.). Just piling the money up would cause it to erode due to inflation and would have seriously distorted the economy by sucking a huge amount of money out of the money supply. Investing it in the open market would have made the trust fund manager the single largest investor in the world (it would be be managing in excess of $3T today), with all sorts of opportunities for dangerous market manipulation, and exposing the trust fund to the risk of significant losses during market downturns. Those were the reasons that the funds were restricted to government-backed securities.

The social security trust funds, BTW, constitute the single largest piece of the federal debt. They are about $2.8T of the $19T.

Second, even if it weren't an open question whether Congress will be able to raise the money to redeem the securities held by the trust funds, the system is still going to go bankrupt, because it is a Ponzi scheme, no matter how much you wish it weren't. Social Security always was a system where current contributors pay the expenses of current retirees. It was never a system where each generation saved up for its own future retirement.

Since its inception, the Social Security program has always had more cash flowing into it than flowing out, so the trust funds have been growing. But they're growing very slowly these days, and it's projected that 2019 will be the last year the OASDI fund (the retirement fund) sees a net surplus. After that, it'll start drawing down those trust funds (assuming Congress can raise the revenue, but we're ignoring that for the moment), and it's projected that by 2033 the OASDI trust fund will be depleted (see https://www.ssa.gov/policy/doc...).

That is not because Congress has "taken" the money. That 2033 date assumes that all of the money put into the fund, plus interest, is actually available.

Of course, what will happen in 2033 (assuming no changes, and assuming the federal government finds a way to pay the bills until then) is that we'll finally have to just admit that it never was a true trust fund, that we've always just funded current retirees with current tax revenues, and that there's no reason to stop doing it just because some fictitious account balance hit zero.

Social Security had a total administrative expenditure of .7% in 2014, the most recent year for which I could find statistics. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS...

How about we give anyone making under $15,720 a form of basic income. How about for every $2 you make over the limit, your BI is reduced by $1, so there isn't any hard cut-off.

And how about the benefit be $733/month, or $8,796 per year. That's pretty close to $10K. Maybe add a bonus if you're blind. Because that must suck.

For all the uninformed... This is exactly what we currently do.

Am I reading any of that wrong?

This sounded interesting to me, so I decided to take a peek.

It doesn't look like there was a significant jump in claims from 2012 to 2013 - the number of claims actually decreased: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS...

There WAS a significant jump from 2008-2009 (about a 500k increase), but I don't see anything close to a 43% jump.

Can you show me where you got your data, or are we looking at completely different information (maybe claims to state aid instead of federal)?

99% of America can't afford $600/month.

Average != Affordable

~$75k a year to afford this car. $75k for a household is not "rich" in my book.

Rich? No, but still in the top 1% of the country. You have absolutely no idea how much money the 'common man' in America makes. 15% of our population lives in 'poverty' which is something like 13k/year income. The AVERAGE American income is about 51k/year ... but the median household income per year si closer to 30k. The 1% skew the numbers for everyone else because the gap is so ridiculously large.

The average household income for families with MASTERS DEGREES ... is 78k/year. If you go by the median, you know, the one that matters, you need a freaking Doctorate to make $78k/year. I can vouch for that, my wife is in fact a vet, she made about 70k a year until she got yet another 4 year degree to get lab animal certified.

You need a doctorate to buy an affordable car? I don't fucking think so.

This car isn't affordable in the sense that Musk is trying to pretend it is. Joe Sixpack isn't buying a Model 3.

The rest of the 1%, like those of us here on slashdot (hint, if you've ever bought a north face jacket new (you trendy bastards) then you're more than likely WELL into the 1% range even if you're too ignorant to realize that), can afford a Model 3, but that doesn't make it affordable, just makes it cheaper than the last model.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

$75k is good fucking money unless you live in some retarded city that costs way to fucking much to live in. It does not count as affordable if you need to make $75k/year to fit into a magazines model of what you need to make.

Social Security is paid out of the Social Security Trust Fund, not the General Fund (citation). By law, it is not allowed to touch the GF. However, money does flow the opposite way to plug revenue gaps -- hence Al Gore's famous 'lockbox' speeches that were much lampooned on SNL.

Huh. Do we believe dywolf's ramblings, or the OASDI's trustees who state "Social Security’s cost exceeded its tax income in 2013, and also exceeded its non-interest income, as it has since 2010." Personally, I'll trust the SSI trustees over you - they have a bit better handle on the situation, and they legally put their own butts on the line with their annual reports (which have reported a negative income balance since 2010 - like their summary states).

Now, you may not be aware of the term "running in the red", but when your income is less than your expenditures, then your cash flow is negative - it's "in the red". SSSI is in the red, per standard GAAP. And if it continues, then the savings/trust fund will eventually run out - and you either cut benefits (meaning: change the promises you've made) or you close altogether. But it is, truly, running in the red. Ask any accountant if a business spending more than it takes in would be considered in the red...

But then again, you still believe that having a deficit of just $483 billion can equate with adding nearly $1100 billion in debt.

In the case of the SSN, there are some restrictions