Anyone who's voting for Mittens, refute this. Please.

[Zanchief]

The problem is the money they are paying out is taken from those paying into the program. The government has raided the funds over and over, so there is no savings. When Madoff does this it's called a ponzi. When the government does it, people don't blink an eye.

A good start would be to stop raiding Social Security for other things. Next block grant the exact amount of cash the government can afford to the states instead of writing blank checks, and adding entitlement bloat. FInally, get rid of the overhead and massive administration costs of all these entitlements at the federal level. Ron Paul had the right idea.

Have the money managed by a private board, and it pay it based on a return on investment instead of having the government write IOUs they can't afford to pay out.

[Tossica]

I would have no problem letting a private corp run Social Security, insurance, etc as long as that corp was NON PROFIT. If the government can't do it, let someone else take a shot but remove the GREED factor.

Remove the profit layer from some things and so many problems go away.

[Menelvir]

We should kill off everyone over the age of 65 and start over.

Make it a game - call it 'carrousel' and we can sell tickets to events and generate revenue to boot. As long as your parents (or anyone you would have cared about in that age range) is already dead, then it should be acceptable. It worked for Logan's Run, right?

I see the current situation roughly as follows:

The system as it stands is working (however poorly, unevenly, or inefficiently). There is no savings in place. It is working in spite of this, primarily because:

1) it relies on a continuance of a revenue stream (incoming tax revenue)
2) where that revenue stream falls short (which it does constantly and consistently) it relies on the good faith and trust of creditors (foreign investors, etc.) from whom it borrows to keep it running

There are probably limits on how quickly the debt rate can rise, or how much incoming revenue can fall before one of the conditions fails.

But as long as both obtain, the system in place could theoretically continue ad perpetuum.

I'm no quant or fiscal analyst, nor do I have a crystal ball, but I think if conditions continue unchecked, it will eventually collapse.

Theoretically, in order to start fixing it, you:
1) raise taxes,
2) cut spending

I don't see that it's possible to address the problem without doing both. I treat any idea that it's possible to address it with only one of those or the other with extreme skepticism.

But, asking one generation of taxpayers (in addition to those that would lose their jobs when their programs are cut) to bear the burden seems capricious. There's no guarantee doing so would "fix" the problem, at least not for anything other than the short-term.

It may be that there could be cycles of tax-borrow-spend-save in varying degrees over time that would make the system more sustainable, but again it raises the question of which generation gets to pay for it, and any answer to that to me seems arbitrary.

[brinstar]

Remove the profit layer from some things and so many problems go away.

careful toss, that shit sounds biblical >.>

[Trielelvan]

I would have no problem letting a private corp run Social Security, insurance, etc as long as that corp was NON PROFIT.

^ That.