[roccman]

1st of millions of baby boomers tap Uncle Sam...

"I'm going to take it now because I can take it now," she said...

You proud americans think you will get what you put in?

I think not.

[Denny]

What I find most pecualiar and saddening abut the article is that the only recourse raised to deal with the future shortfalls are benefit ccuts. Is there no creative financing and investment schemes devised, including increased social security premiums, which can be brought about to deal with the problem? To just tacitly accept reduced benefit payouots is to embrace failure. That is not the American way.

The U.S.A. is actually lucky in many respects as it still has a healthy sized workforce backfilling the boomer retirees, but it seems the social security fund has been mis-managed, even negligently managed. From what I have read, if the U.S. Social Security Sytems was a privately managed fund, the executives would be investigated by the SEC and likely all would be behind bars today.

If other countries can rework their social security schemes to deal with the boomer bulge, so can the U.S.

Even Canada, just 1/10 the size of the U.S. population, turned around its comparable "Canada Pension Plan" financing about 8 years go, and now it looks relatively healthy. It stopped funding government debt for starters and started invested in real assets. It also raised the payroll premiums, in my case I am putting in about $1100 more per year than before the revisions took effect. But, that is what the plan actuaries calculated it would take, so its just mathematics that determines it, not political intrigue. That's a whole lot better than accepting the kind of reduced pensions being stated in the article.

[Plantagenet]

"If anything, the ones to blame for the entitlement problems are the Boomer presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and all the Boomers in Congress who have put off the painful changes everybody knows will be needed." --From Rocco's link

-----------------------------

Clinton did nothing.

Bush actually took a political risk and tried to push through reforms. On February 2, 2005, President George W. Bush made Social Security a prominent theme of his State of the Union Address. One consequence was increased public attention to the nature of the Social Security Trust Fund. Unlike a typical private pension plan, the Social Security Trust Fund does not hold any marketable assets to secure workers' paid-in contributions. Instead, it holds non-negotiable United States Treasury bonds and U.S. securities backed "by the full faith and credit of the government". The Office of Management and Budget has described the distinction as follows:
"These [Trust Fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other Trust Fund expenditures – but only in a bookkeeping sense.... They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures." Bush's SS reform plan failed. Its a part of the reason his ratings are in the tank.

Now we have a democratic congress. They've done nothing.

None of the current presidential candidates have the guts to even mention it, much less present a plan.

Eventually something will have to be done. I predict the dems will only go along with a "bipartisan" fix that follows the same pattern of past "bipartisan" fixes..... stealthily vote to raise the regressive FICA taxes even higher and increase the retirement age and cut benefits and then loudly boast they've saved social security.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')Eventually something will have to be done.

[eastbay]

My first SS check should arrive in about 9 years. I paid into this system for 30 years. I suspect the reduced buying power of the monthly checks will have very little impact on my monthly budget. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they never arrive with all those nasty storms brewing.

[Plantagenet]

As is typical for "Ponzi" schemes, the first people in the social security system did really financially----they had low taxes and got high returns---but later people are going to get financially screwed by higher taxes and lower returns.

The average person today would be a lot better off if he had been putting the money from 30 years of FICA taxes into a stock mutual fund or even a money market account instead.