I guess that for any gov’t program, someone somewhere thinks it is unjust. I don’t know anything about Ranger to think his feelings are any more important than anybody else’s.
So, I wouldn’t oppose SS because Ranger finds it unjust.
[quote=“Nick_Papagiorgio, post:121, topic:1333”]
Why would we remove that?[/quote]
Because it’s a poor use of funds that could be either be spent in ways that increases economic growth (and thus future prosperity) in return for the money spent or simply not borrow the money. You realize every year a larger proportion of the budget goes to pay for interest on the debt. You can wave that away as solved with growth, transfer payments is not how you do that.
Again, this is pure strawman. I haven’t even brought up Medicaid and the only cuts I have argued for are for wealthier people.
What would that look like?
Friedman’s negative income tax, could do the same concept but for SS
Every spending thought should go toward inflation. If we want to spend money on X then we need to think about what inflationary pressures are present for X. Then create policy and taxation to offset that pressure. For instance universal healthcare access would be inflationary on healthcare costs and physician wages so a coinciding bill that targeted at allowing more physicians and nurses into the country and also removing tarrifs and taxes on the importation of healthcare equipment and supplies would counteract that pressure. You can also tax healthcare providers for poor and low value care they provide citizens.
We should have been doing infrastructure work for most of the 21st century IMO. Our economy would be much stronger and we would have much better infrastructure. Instead we sent those workes over to fight wars in the Middle East and instead of building they destroyed things. Then they came back to find a country that didn’t need them for anything else. We also could have avoided large scale disenfranchisement that has occurred for those left unemployed.
Government spending and taxation is not intended to fix inflationary situations it just should strive not to cause them. The government ahs 2 levers that leave more money in the economy. The obvious is that they can create it through spending, the less obvious is that they can stop removing it by ending or lowering taxes. The example you cited above removed taxes on Chinese tarrifs another example is the tax cuts of 2017. Those tax cuts have put quite a bit of inflationary pressure on the price of capital ownership in the United States. Real estate has gone through the roof, stock prices have gone through the roof, etc. These have not slowed one iota even through this pandemic. I think these are tremendous opportunities for taxation now and I think Biden has some pretty good ideas on how to remove money from these markets. Removing the inflationary pressure on capital makes capital easier to buy and makes it easier for the workers to become capital owners.
I will answer more later. Got to work.
Or The Flat (sales percentage) Tax with a flat dollar refund.
As always, I recommend a gradual movement, as Economies can get effed-up with shocks.
I’m in favor of cutting the defense budget. Given that we had a $1 trillion annual deficit before covid, I wouldn’t use that money for SS.
Are you thinking that a negative income tax is the same as Universal Basic Income, or something different?
I love the thread drift. We went from false claims of election fraud, to government should be far smaller, to abolish (or strictly means test SS), to reduce the defense budget, (with a tangent to MMT), to negative income tax, and now on to a national sales tax.
FTR, I’m opposed to a national sales tax or VAT tax.
Yeah I agree they’re effectively the same thing, but I more just mean to illustrate the notion that you don’t need some cliff in means-tested benefits
Right, “drift” 
Using actuarial present values this is very unlikely. Especially looking at people who had material earnings before the tax went up to the current 12.4%.
Back of the envelope calculation… for simplicity, assume everything is in 2020 dollars. Cap is around $130K. So if you paid in on $130K for 40 years (age 25-65) then that’s 12.4% x $130,000 = . But wait! In addition to old age insurance, you’re also getting disability and survivor coverage, which is obviously worth something. Let’s assume that the survivor benefits are covered by the taxes collected on folks who die before they collect old age benefits. (My guess is that this isn’t sufficient, so this is a conservative estimate.)
The disability coverage is probably worth at least $100 a month. For simplicity we’ll say that leaves $15,000 a year that’s for the old age insurance. (Actually a little less, but again, building in conservatism.) Over 40 years, invested at the risk free rate of return, the income is pretty close to the rate of inflation so I’ll ignore it.
So that’s $600,000 paid in for old age insurance by people who live to retirement age.
You’d have an annual benefit of $38,676 under the current benefit formula, which is then indexed to inflation using a generous technique. It would take 15.5 years and to recoup your taxes. What’s the life expectancy for a 67 year-old who earned $130,000+ a year for 40 years? Or better yet, what’s their annuity purchase rate?
People who earned less come out even better.
This is why there’s a problem… most people paid in less in taxes than they’ll get out in benefits.
Saved by the twig!!
Yeah, that’s true. Obviously there’s an opposite side with opposite feelings (coming from Nick for example).
Maybe I just mean that we are running into “Identity Politics”, similar to LGBTQ or Gun Control, where the feelings are bigger than practicalities, so I’m happy to let people have those feelings? I’m not quite sure.
The SS actuaries do calculations like this for you
There aren’t a lot of numbers above 2 on that list.
They do not use a 0% real interest rate. They use the SS Trust Fund rate which is the average rate on marketable Treasuries with maturities over 4 years.
Most people who complain about SS assume they have 20/20 foresight and invest well and hence use numbers a lot higher than the risk-free rate. I agree that is an incorrect approach.
But, I think I get NormalDan’s point now. He’s saying we’re not collecting enough tax to fund the current benefit schedule. That’s true.
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Yes, so much ^this^
It is disappointing how actuaries fail to grasp the basic economics involved.
Ummm. That’s not MMT.
The problem of inflation is a matter of keeping supply and demand in balance. Increasing money supply without a corresponding increase in things to spend it on (supply) causes the prices to go up.
And this part about “Debts our grandkids will have to pat back” is just in direct opposition to the facts. In the USA, we haven’t even retired the debt from WWII. Your grandparents didn’t pay it off. Your parents did not. And your generation has not. what makes anyone think their grandkids will?
At this point is there any way to say how much of the current debt is unpaid WWII debt? We can see the net change in debt each year, but if that is a mix of some repayment and some new borrowing, is there any way to figure out how much of each? Or how the repayment reduces which era of debt?
Oof, let’s please not call any counterintuitive 20th century economic solution “simple”. That’s like step 1 to wondering why you ever thought it was a good idea to use burritos as your currency.