Since retirees are financed by current workers, how will social security be paid when in 5 years, the number of workers per retiree falls below 2?

Question

Social security is a broke Ponzi scheme. 100% of payments are from current workers.

MrOracle · Accepted Answer

It won't work. A lot of retirees will have to move in with families, and those without families will have big reductions in lifestyle unless they have significant retirement savings.

This problem is going to get exponentially worse because of the low birthrates worldwide. The cost of housing will fall, but the cost of maintaining the home will skyrocket because there won't be enough blue collar workers to handle the demand. A huge number of white collar jobs will disappear entirely, whole industries will go away, and technology will regress.

All of this WILL happen and can't be prevented because the necessary children simply were never born. Women who want careers will either be in education (and there will be many fewer of those jobs) or will have to take physical jobs like men. There will be a big resurgence in the value of children and families but it will take 4-5 generations to recover at best - and I expect longer because modern Feminist women will strongly resist, even though they will suffer the biggest drop in lifestyle.

molonski2 · Accepted Answer

100 % it's a Ponzi scheme , and the US system needs to change , and be means tested , I'm self funded ( Australia) with ZERO chance of SS..

If I were a US citizen , I'd be getting paid , no matter what in 4 years..

Warren Buffet takes it..

Aussie Paul Hogan gets it..

CRAZY.

abc3643 · Answer

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. Learn what a Ponzi scheme is before saying shit like that.
3 primary reasons:
1. It is not for profit by the organizers.
2. It is transparent.
3. Unlike Social Security, Ponzi schemes must ultimately collapse. Social Security, like any Federal program, can be updated by Congress.
(Didn't I teach you this like a year or two ago?)

Social Security can be funded in all sorts of other ways if need be. Congress can always make adjustments. For instance, altering retirement age. For example, when I was a kid growing up, "full retirement" - the age at which your Social Security benefit is "full" - was 65 although if you waited to retire you could get a max benefit. However, that got changed. For people like me born after 1960, "full retirement" is now age 67 and the max benefit age is 70.

Meanwhile, what do you think any form of government action is? Government is funded primarily by tax payers and accumulates debts that may take generations to pay off. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - especially since those later generations can benefit from the government programs.

For example, you are using the Internet right now to bitch about the Federal Government.
Well, guess what, that very Internet that you are using was created in the 1960s by the Federal Government as a way to make nationwide research more efficient.

========
ARPANET was created by the U. S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to share computing resources remotely and create a robust, decentralized communication network.

Funded during the Cold War, its primary goals were to:
Resource Sharing: Allow geographically separated researchers and defense contractors to utilize expensive, massive mainframe computers without needing dedicated connections for each one.

Network Survivability: Develop a resilient, decentralized communication system that could survive partial destruction (like a nuclear strike) by intelligently routing data around broken nodes.

Pioneering Packet Switching: Replace traditional, vulnerable circuit-based telephone systems by breaking data into smaller "packets" that travel independently across multiple paths to be reassembled at their destination.

These innovations formed the foundation of modern Internet technology.
========

So, congratulate your ancestors for having the foresight to make your life better. Your taxes are partly paying for that, but you now have a freedom to bitch about the government in a vastly more efficient way than you could 60 years ago.

FreyaRed · Answer

In early 2000 there was a plan of retirement money consolidation. A Professor should get same retirement money as person who cleaned toilets at the Uni. However our politician would be disadvantaged by this mechanic and this didn't happen.
Now will governments create just more debt and demand more taxes. Not even a economical reset will be possible because such an action would demand a positive net income to government budget and this won't happen with political sinecures and parasitic elites.

demonics · Answer

A mass die off of retirees, by the millions. Problem solved. Social security being under funded has been a stupid political football for 30 some years now. The ACTUAL crisis is economic stagnation due to the worthlessness of the younger generations. Like when they vote for raising the estate tax to "stick it to the billionaires." Yet Pop-Pop can't hand the farm down because no one has millions of dollars on hand to pay the tax. You know who DOES have millions of dollars on hand to buy all of that farmland?

Democracy is only as effective as the dumbest voter.

Silver lining though! Medically assisted suicide is gonna be yuuuuuuge. Not enough young people to wipe gen x and millennial butts, and gen alpha are getting diagnose with depression at like age 12 now. Thus even more mass die offs. Self solving problems all around. Things a looking up for anyone paying attention.

BadApple69 · Answer

One thing I disagree with… I remember when the boomers were starting to retire the government was complaining that there are so many of them and they would bankrupt the social security program. The thing that they didn’t mention was that ALL those boomers were putting money into the system at a time when very few people relatively were collecting payments. Where did all that money go? Ohhh that’s right. Politicians for years have been taking that money like it’s one giant slush fund for over priced projects. I think the government needs to go back in time and replace every dime they took from SS WITH INTEREST and then we can talk about how broke SS really is.
I don’t believe in government handouts but SS is one we have paid into for all our lives so we can collect a little money at the end of our lives.
Social security could have been a well funded thriving system if not for politicians stealing from it.

blueonblack22 · Answer

Social security and Medicaid is really about income redistribution. It was meant to a temporary emergency relief benefit during the Great Depression for the elderly. Instead it got voted in as a permanent benefit.

George W Bush was on the right track with doing mandatory mutual fund investing for retirement accounts vs. social security years ago. But sadly it never got pushed through because of the Iraq War took his full attention.

MrChinaski · Answer

Yes, your social security system is unfunded and money will need to be found elsewhere, most likely more federal debt.

But funding is just numbers in a ledger somewhere. The fundamental problem is finding the resources in terms of aged care workers, nurses, doctors, etc required.

lightbulb27 · Answer

We have to tax the robots... print money...

the other option is kill people sooner, possibly turn them into snack bars. ... "soylent green".

which reminds me, I wonder what is in this green snack bar I eat. they say it's one thing but?

oldman26 · Answer

it wasn't supposed to be that way, when reagan had taxes reduced for the well to do and the corporations, congress raided the social security to offset the loss of revenue, now they complain about having to support it, also prior to that, it was not taxed as income,

SeekerOfTruth007 · Answer

Social Security went wrong right from the beginning. The first generation of retirees retired which they were 50 years old, and around half of that entire generation are still alive. We need to push the age of retirement back to at least 70 years old for SS, because it is only funded for 7 years of retirement, but the average man is on SS for 7 to 14 years, and the average woman is on it for 14 to 19 years.

Surely · Answer

Stop giving it to the people who never paid into it. Maybe it will last ten years!

Mike_Hum · Answer

I'll withdraw from SS. Give me what I paid in with interest and we'll talk.

exitseven · Answer

I imagine old people will make the government start selling off all the national parks.

genericname85 · Answer

they won't. you gotta safe your own money to live off of.

NathanDavis · Answer

who knows... maybe they end up giving all that money to Elon as well... just like they're about to do it with the 401k's... lol

AgentG111 · Answer

It wouldn't be like that if the government would stop taking money from that. Also not all retired people money comes from current workers.

MikeTheBartender · Answer

Lifespans are getting shorter, so it will be fine.

Jen_oic · Answer

@kelley1 I’m not very good at reading graphs

Bklynbadboy12 · Answer

They'll do what they always do take the money from some other budget

jamesgoldman · Answer

They'll be executing retirees

jahaims · Answer

If your retirement plan is ss then you are a moron

Since retirees are financed by current workers, how will social security be paid when in 5 years, the number of workers per retiree falls below 2?

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Since retirees are financed by current workers, how will social security be paid when in 5 years, the number of workers per retiree falls below 2?

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