WHAT THE TRUSTEES REPORT ACTUALLY SAYS
by Dale Coberly
WHAT THE TRUSTEES REPORT ACTUALLY SAYS
WORST CASE: we wait until 2035 and then have to raise the payroll tax 4.13% (2% for workers, 2% for employers) in order to pay for promised benefits. OR have to cut benefits by 25%.
The trade-off is about 20 dollars per week extra “tax” (really “savings”) for an average worker making 50k per year, versus a 500 dollar per month cut in benefits, from about 2000 dollars per month to about 1500 dollars per month, when he retires.
People won’t be able to live on 75% of promised benefits unless they have other sources of income. About 50% of retired workers will not have enough other sources. Please remember that those future retirees would be paying for ALL of the required tax raise.
NOT SO BAD CASE: an “immediate and permanent” increase in the payroll tax of 3.14% (1.6% for workers, 1.6% for employers), or about 16 dollars per week. OR a 20% cut in benefits.. from about $2000 per month to $1600.
This is really the whole story. Everything else you hear is misdirection: arm waving and shouting “Fire! Fire! We Are All going To Die!”
There is an even BETTER OPTION: raise the payroll tax a little more than one tenth of one percent per year (about a dollar per week per year). This must be done very soon; delaying will require a larger gradual increase. The ultimate increase needed will be about the same 4% that will be otherwise needed in 2035 if we wait. But that 4% (2% for the worker) will be delayed about 30 years. And the per year increases will be reduced to much less than one tenth percent per year, because the gradual increase will reduce the “actuarial deficit” each year while providing an Increase in income to the Trust Fund.
The interest earned by the gradual increase will actually reduce the ultimate tax needed by about 1% of income. AND it will eliminate the need for Congress to repay the money it borrowed FROM Social Security over the past thirty eight years.
I can’t see how any sane or not-lied-to person would prefer a benefit cut to the small tax increase needed to avoid it. Remember that the workers will pay that tax increase themselves, out of an income that is expeced to grow in real value ten times as fast as the tax increase, and they will get their money back twice over when they retire, due to the effecive “interest” from pay as you go financing in a growing economy. And the insurance value of the SS program is priceless.
Moreover, I can’t see how any intelligent… not fooled… person would fail to see the advantages of a gradual increase in the tax starting as soon as possible. Not only financial advantages, but avoiding the political stampede that will be caused by the hysteria generated when the Trust Fund finally does run out.
Note to my progressive friends: calling for an expansion of Social Security benefits, to be paid for by “the rich,” will give the rich what they have always wanted: turn SS into welfare as we knew it, so they can can cut it down to a size where they can drown it in the bathtub. Every year they will say “we have the will but not the wallet.” This is exactly what Roosevelt avoided by insisting that Social Security be an insurance program FOR workers paid for BY the workers themselves.
If progressives really want to help those whose earned Social Security benefits are not enough, they can create a new program, paid for by general taxes (“the rich”). Or just use the existing SSI program, which is NOT “Social Security” but is designed to do exactly what they are calling for.
Better option:
Leave taxes where they are and have Federal Reserve buy Treasury bonds and place them into the Social Security Trust Fund.
Will this lead to inflation? The Fed has bought trillions of Treasuries without detectable inflationary impact.
We should tax workers and business less, not more.
The recurrent problem in the US is weak aggregate demand, not supply shortages (except of property-zoned housing).
Damn Cole, you must be hammered. That does nothing. Every answer is already given.
1.payroll tax increases
2.federal government pays back trust fund
3.health care costs are simply cut down and medicine rationed.
What the 2020 SSI report did say was:
The projections and analysis in this report do not reflect the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Social Security and Medicare programs. Given the uncertainty associated with these impacts, the Trustees believe that it is not possible to adjust their estimates accurately at this time.
Coberly just ignores the realities we face.
In 2021 SSI will report that the devastating recession caused by CV19 will have significantly shortened the window left to repair SS. 2035 will become 2030. The Coberly plan is “Off the Table”.
The plan was never viable. “Just Raise Taxes on Workers” was never going to fly. There many other alternatives than sticking it to workers.
Coberly – Please don’t respond with your usual “It will turn SS into welfare”. That is a nonsense argument.
BK:
Dan and I were just talking about you via phone. Glad to see you are well at least and still an AH.
If Congress had the courage to up the tax rate gradually, it would work and it is viable(big period here). What we have today is a minority political interests favoring themselves and corporations while making decisions for the majority. This can be seen in Michigan where 37% of the population disapproves of Whitmer’s lockdown as opposed to 57% approving it. Of course, the fascists’ with their toy pistols and rifles plus the proud boys are at the capitol stairs attempting to intimidate. And in the midst of both groups is Slotkin’s opponent Detmer. A perfect example of what Republicans have come to represent today.
Your forecast of what 2021 will report is speculation and we have seen this drop dead date go back and forth. I would think you would be more concerned with the sunsetting of the tax breaks in 2025.
I believe the message is pretty clear. Congress should be telling people what can be done rather than what they will not do such as raise taxes.
Fear not Coberly. With the present federal plan to combat Covid-19 there will not be that many Social Security beneficiaries left to pay. Same with Welfare. Mission accomplished.
Benjamin Cole – I wrote awhile ago about Congress directing the Fed to buy the Special Treasury Securities held by the SS Trust Fund, establishing a purchase value or price to ensure that the cash transferred into the fund is sufficient to cover outlay needs for some time, with the interest paid to the Fed reasonable too and subject to offset agreements with Treasury to ensure even more ‘solvency’ for the SS fund. Accompanying this with a public communications of strategic effect to ensure the public about the insurance and retiree earnings that arbitrates the economics to ensure economic security for the society.
JF
Working on making AB IPhone and Android friendly.
JF–
I am not sure I follow you.
Anyway, I see no problem with the Fed helicopter dropping into the SS Fund, or having the Fed buy Treasuries and gift them to the SS Fund.
Demand-pull inflation is a long-time gone.
Will this cheapen the US dollar? Well, maybe some. But inflation really not a concern these days.
BTW, the Swiss National Bank recently bought about $100,000 in foreign sovereign bonds, in a bid to keep the Swiss franc cheap and stable. Swiss inflation is dead, like everywhere else.
In effect by printing money and giving it to the SS Fund, we are lowering taxes on productive people, somewhat increasing output. The world is glutted with commodities and product anyway.
The only shortage is in property-zoned housing. If anyone is concerned with inflation, they should wipe out property zoning.
JF – Congress never ordered the Fed to buy SI Treasuries from SS. Treasury redeems the bonds whenever necessary. The Treasury redemption has been going on for 10 years now.
Krasting
Thank you for your reply to JF so I don’t have to. Like most people he knows noting about the workings of the Trust Fund, but he has a fantasy that explains everything.
As do you. By this time calling SSI Social Security is NOT a forgivable error, it is a sign of determined ignorance.
As for “please don’t tell me…” I will take that as a figure of speech..meaning more or less “I am comfortable in my ignorance so you are wasting your time trying to tell me the facts.”
You may be comfortable in your ignorance, but I am here to try to tell people the facts.
I am aware of the likelihood that the response to Covid-19 will change the Trustees projections significantly. But i only deal with the facts. When the projections change, I will tell you what they mean, my current guess is that they will bring the depletion of the Trust Fund date closer, maybe much closer. At that time wie might as well forget the “gradual approach” and just raise the tax 4% (2% for workers etc.). That’s why I am trying to make sure people understand that this is not unfair, not a crushing burden, It is still the cheapest, safest, way people have to insure they will have enough to live on when they need to retire… or get disabled… or die with dependents.
That said, your idiocy is matched by the idiocy of those who think they can magically pay for SS without it costing them anything.
SS works because it is paid for by the workers themselves. That is not the coberly plan, that is the FDR plan. All coberly has done has been to point out how low the cost really is instead of screaming “Trillions and Trillions of Dollars of Unfunded Deficit” into the gullible ears of politicians and pundits and people who can’t think
Covid-19 is likely to make it a little less cheap. But at twice the price it is still the cheapest and safest way to make sure you will have at least “enough” when you can no longer work,
Run – You surprise me. You write like you’re informed and reasonably intelligent. Your writing also tells me you are a liberal at heart.
So how can you possibly support the Coberly Plan? Any plan that address shortfalls at SS MUST INCLUDE A RESOLUTION OF THE CAP ON EARNINGS.
Don’t trust me on this. Check with a real expert. Bruce Webb understands that the current structure for the cap is flat out unfair. Ask Nancy Altman. Ask anyone you like.
I say again. Any plan that addresses shortfalls at SS by only raising taxes on workers is a flawed plan. It will never happen. You are backing a silly idea.
Take a ball player making $25m a year. His tax on income that goes to SS? $7,750!! Do you really think that FDR would let something stupid like this exist? Never!
Do some reading, do some thinking. Be fair, be reasonable. If you do that, you will drop your devotion to a bad plan.
Glad you’re still kicking too.
When cutting the payroll tax was first suggested, and then ignored by the media, and then enacted on the quiet
many people pointed out that it was stupid as a stimulus… as unemployed people do not pay the payroll tax. and among the employed the payroll tax cut would do very little for the lower wage earner..because his tax was too low to mean much to him, or to the economy, if he spent the rebate. while the high wage earner would get a significantly higher rebate, he would be less likely to spend it.
it was suggested that the payroll tax cut was just a way to weaken SS.
i suggested at the time that a better way to stimulate the economy and protect SS would be to immediately raise the payroll tax by 1% so the payroll tax income would rise to meet the ongoing need to pay benefits during a time when many people, out of work, were not paying into SS.
If that tax raise proved insufficient to meet current benefits, it would be reasonable for the government to lend money TO the Trust Fund, to be paid back FROM the Trust Fund when the economy recovers.
The benefits received by the already retired will go directly into the economy as those people buy the things they need. The people paying the higher tax will get their money back at least twofold when they retire in their turn, and the payroll tax is going to need to be raised fairly soon anyway, so all that will have really happened is that those who are going to be living longer than my generation will have an earlier than expected start in paying for their eventual benefits.
and the relation between paying for – what you get will have been preserved. which is better than either expecting someone else to pay for your needs, or being left to starve in the streets by the “moral hazard” wing of the fundamentalist pfree-marketeers.
Krasting
I can’t let that go. You are confusing your strong emotions with actually thinking. FDR is the one who insisted upon worker paid. It works.
Cosmic Justice (make the rich pay) sounds real good, but doesn’t seem to have ever worked.
Besides, given your previous comments on this subject, I doubt your sincerity…. or your ability to manage reasonably consistent thoughts.
Try to get it through your head that we are talking about taking a few dollars a week out of a thousand dollar paycheck to save against the day you will no longer have a paycheck.
Or are you proposing that Warren Buffett should buy my groceries because he has more money than I have? Or are YOU offering to buy my groceries because you have more money than I have?
If you have any information that Bruce Webb is still alive, I’d be glad to hear it. Nancy Altman knows what I think of her tax the rich plan…after she wrote a pretty good book showing that Social Security was NOT a tax the rich plan.
Another memorable gaff from Coberly:
“a better way to stimulate the economy ………
would be to immediately raise the payroll tax by 1%”
So Coberly fails Econ 101. And you folks think he is the resident expert?
A post on AB a few months back was from BW. I thought it odd at the time. But I did not know he died?? He was an expert.
Krasting
raising the payroll tax would make up for the money lost to SS because so many are out of work. the increased tax money would go directly to the current retired people who would immediately spend it into the economy.
This would be a stimulus on it’s own, but it is certainly a stimulus compared to the policy of cutting the payroll tax, which just puts more money into the pockets of the near rich who will save it, or use it to buy French champagne…. while clearing the way to kill SS forever, leaving old people to starve and contribute nothing to the economy at all
Yes Bruce was an expert. He knew enough to recognize that I was right. He referred my “plan,” which he called the Northwest Plan, to the National Academy of Social Insurance, who thought enough of it to include it in their booklet of solutions to the Social Security “deficit.” and my Congressman referred my plan to the Social Security Chief Actuary’s office who confirmed that it would make Social Security solvent for the foreseeable future.
I got an “A” in Econ 101 and 102, but I eventually became too good a mathematician to take it seriously.
I am trying to avoid talking to you the way you are talking to me, because it wastes both of our time, and some of my friends don’t like it when I sound angry.
If you were in an advanced economics class, the professor would call you up to his desk and quietly suggest to you that his class was too advanced for you, and maybe you should drop out and take something easier.
Bkrasting, you noted that the Special securities are converted to cash as needed. Yes, know that.
I was trying to solve the propagandist’s claims that it’s ‘insolvency’ will arise, my solution pointing out how we can just fill the fund with lots of newly printed cash, so to speak, and tell these people to apologize for all the misleading fear-mongering, and then make people know all the cash is there. Directing what the Fed pays and what interest they then earn (and then transfer to Treasury under the remittance laws), well this would be calculated to cover claims for many many years. Perhaps at that time we can increase payroll taxes, or sell some more securities to the Fed.
I was being tongue in cheek initially, as the idea just shows how of this fund accounting is almost absurd, used for red-herring screeds.
But now we see that the Fed is doing this very thing now. They are printing money anew, though under my proposal there are little to no inflationary effects.
We can do this, and then we won’t have anything to write about here.
JF
i have trouble understanding you. could be my fault.
i have no objection to just printing money. we do it all the time anyway. and it won’t be inflationary as long as it is done carefully. but it can’t be done just because we want more money. it does need to be matched to resources or the realistic probability it will call more resources (human invention) into being. not my field. but i did try to say somewhere that for purposes of managing the covid recession, printing money or borrowing it to keep SS benefits flowing could work.
but the politics is against us. and in the long run people need to pay for their own groceries…including the ones they will need after they retire.
as for Social Security, the Trust Fund almost doesn’t matter. It could disappear tomorrow and as long as taxes were raised about 2% (each) SS could keep on going without a hitch. OR, if taxes are raised about one tenth percent per year starting tomorrow, the existing Trust Fund could remain right where it is… a paper debt Congress would never have to repay.
These things are not hard, but very few people take the trouble to understand them… certainly no one in Congress…they prefer to just open their mouths and worship whatever comes out.
What is beneficial about Congress not repaying the SS Trust for money it borrowed? I don’t get that part. Yeah a bit more tax at the right time squares the funding problem, but why let SS Fund creditors off the hook? Wouldn’t the tax increase be just a little less or even more gradual if SS got back what it will be owed?
Eric377- I promise you, promise you – Treasury will repay 100% (every single cent) of the monies owed to the SSTF. Treasury has been doing this for 10 years now without a hitch. The repayments will continue for the next 15 years until it is all paid back in full.
SS will get back what it is owed. period. Worry about something else.
Eric
the main benefit is to shut up the people who are always worried about the debt.
But the money would remain in the Trust Fund… which needs to be kept at 100% of a full year’s benefits just in case something happens… like a long recession.
as for Krasting’s “promise you,” Krasting really doesn’t understand any of this, but if the tax is not raised gradually, I am almost sure that the TF will be paid back entirely. only “almost” because in the era of Trump anything can happen. And as long as the idiots run Congress “paying back” counts as “SS driving up the deficit.”
“In the era of Trump”… the payroll tax holiday was/is a moronic idea. It has no value as a stimulus or even a “holiday”, but it does tend to hurt SS politically: they can point later to the Treasury paying SS the money it would have collected without the holiday… there is no legal requirement it do so (as there is in the normal repayment of the money Borrowed from the Trust Fund… and we may well face “see, SS causes huge deficits” and “we can’t afford it,” neither of which is true. But try explaining that to people. even people smarter than Congressmen.
it is worth noting the payroll tax holiday was tried out in the era of Obama, and the money WAS paid back. nobody noticed the tax cut or the “tax raise” when the “holiday” ended. But even then it was a stupid idea.. except as a trial run for killing SS entirely. And all that happened under a Democrat administration, You can’t trust nobody.
The reason the TF would never have to be paid back with the gradual increase I recommend is that the tax increase would eliminate the need for the TF to cash it’s bonds to pay for benefits. As time goes on the “one year’s reserve” would increase to the level where it equalled the amount owed to the TF now. That “money” would stay in the TF as the required reserve, but would not have to be paid in cash from general taxes. Interest earned on that TF would allow the needed tax increase to stay at a level about 1% lower than it would be if the TF were “paid back” and no longer collecting interest. Which the Congress would have to find cash to pay… as it must find cash to pay interest on ALL the money it has borrowed from “the public,” which includes China and most millionaires,… who also buy bonds and “contribute to the deficit.”
As I have said, you are welcome to learn all this stuff. It’s not hard, but it does take a little work, which most people, especially Congressmen, just don’t have the time to do..
Eric – US Treasury bonds have “Full Faith and Credit of the USA”. It is the ultimate guarantee. Treasury Bonds are “money good’. The Special Issue securities held by SS and other TFs have the same Full Faith promise.
If one day Treasury did not redeem SI bonds they would create a cross default to all other US Public debt. That is an end of the financial world event. It will never happen.
The US has created $3 Trillion in the past few weeks. We could create another 3 Trillion next month. When the SSTF needs its cash back, Treasury will just print what is necessary. Like I said – this business of redeeming SSTF SI Bonds has been going on for ten years already. Not a single problem.
Krasting
agree with you mostly here (surprised me too).
the reason “only mostly” is, first, i don’t claim to understand “cross default” or the bond market generally.
but meanwhile the politics of the situation is (mostly) all lies all the time. and most people know less about SS than I know about bonds.
I don’t think the creating 3Trillion can go on indefinitely. and in general i think it’s bad for people to expect that the government can just create money whenever they (people) want. because they (government) can’t be relied upon to want to save Social Security.
meanwhile, the people need to know and understand they can save it themselves for a low, low price; for a short time only.
And there is this:
The people who hate Social Security DO NOT CARE if the Trust Fund runs out. Thats just a talking point, a screaming and shouting point, for them. Actually they WANT it to run out, so they can say “SS is broke. We can’t afford it”.
On the other hand, whatever not redeeming the TF’s bonds would do to the bond market, the payroll tax holiday never has to be recouped. It is just money that never went into the Trust Fund in the first place. If it is not recouped SS will go broke that much sooner, with no law or bond market to prevent it. Trump and the Senate can just say “we don’t have the money.”
“Remember that the workers will pay that tax increase themselves, out of an income that is expeced to grow in real value ten times as fast as the tax increase, and they will get their money back twice over when they retire, due to the effecive “interest” from pay as you go financing in a growing economy.” Well, if it really will be so.
Daniel
it should be so. I am saying here what the Trustees Report says… if you do the math. They are the experts. I really don’t want to get into everyone’s personal vision of what the future will bring…especially since their vision is based on the lies they have been hearing fo thirty or more years.
But, meanwhile, there are a number of “plans” afoot to destroy Social Security that are not even bothering to pretend there is anything wrong with it…maybe they think they have already won that argument .
They include (1) “letting” you take cash out of your Social Security savings to spend during the recession.. in return for having to delay your retirement.
(2) having a payroll tax holiday… so you don’t have to pay into FICA… at the risk Social Security will run out of money and not be able to pay benefits. (3) appointing a bi-partisan commission to recommend changes to SS that will pass Congress on an accelerated basis… in other words, cut it fast before anyone has a chance to think… or even know it is being done. “bi-partisan” is not our friend. SS has enemies in both parties, and NO congressman seems to know the truth about how it works.(4) “making the rich pay” for it… which will turn it into welfare which the rich will destroy at leisure… the workers will no longer be able to say “I paid for it myself.”
Coberly – On your thoughts above.
#1 Letting “you” take out cash from SS today”. Can you please provide me with a legitimate link where this is proposed? I don’t think you can.
#2 Re PR holiday, “at the risk SS will run out of money…” This is hogwash. Obama did the first PR holiday a decade ago. It worked well as a stimulus. It did not cost SSTF a dime. Not a penny. AND you know that full well. So why do you say stuff you know is untrue?
#3 Congress will sneak in cuts, “cut it fast before anyone has a chance to think”. More rubbish. Do you really think Trump would do this if re-elected? Do you think Biden would in his first term? As you have said many times, there is no need to change anything at SS for another decade.
#4 “… the workers will no longer be able to say “I paid for it myself”
Coberly – NO SS recipient can say that.
You and I have gone on and on re this. SS is an intergenerational transfer. Workers today are the ones who pay for current beneficiaries.
That is the fact. Just face it and stop with your lies about it.
Krasting
you and i have gone round and round… because you can’t learn.
if i take the trouble to refute your errors above will you shut up and go away?
Cob- Have at it.
Krasting
your “1 Letting “you” take out cash from SS today”. Can you please provide me with a legitimate link where this is proposed? I don’t think you can.
This is from Forbes:
“According to reports by The Washington Post, economic advisers within the Trump administration have started to consider a policy proposal from a pair of conservative researchers that argues for allowing those impacted by COVID-19 to borrow against future Social Security checks.
The thinking goes, those that need to pay for expenses now, can borrow a sum of money from the government, then repay the amount through Social Security checks in the future. It would be in lieu of further stimulus checks. It comes from a Hill article, authored by Andrew Biggs (a Forbes contributor) and Joshua Rauh, in which they argue that it’s a tactic to prevent the ballooning of the national debt, while refraining from writing a blank check.”
Aside from th fact that SS has nothing to do with the national debt. I assume you can find the Forbes article and get someone to read it to you. ut you may need to find an honest person to explain it to you.
This takes care of your #1 error, or, as you would say, lie.
I was just going to post the Forbes article. I read that one a while back
Krasting,
your #2 lie: ” Re PR holiday, “at the risk SS will run out of money…” This is hogwash. Obama did the first PR holiday a decade ago. It worked well as a stimulus. It did not cost SSTF a dime. Not a penny. AND you know that full well. So why do you say stuff you know is untrue?”
I realize you have trouble with reading comprehension, so I will try to explain to you that i do know “full well” that a payroll tax holiday was tried under Obama and it was repaid. This does not remove the risk that the one under Trump will not be repaid. I think the argument that it was not stimulus now and was not one then, has been made elsewhere, but just in case you haven’t heard about it: the payroll tax holiday provides very little money to the poor whose SS tax is very low. It provides nothing to those who are out of work. It provides a good deal more to the rich who are more likely to save it than to spend it.
This takes care of your number two.
Krasting
your “#3 Congress will sneak in cuts, “cut it fast before anyone has a chance to think”. More rubbish. Do you really think Trump would do this if re-elected? Do you think Biden would in his first term? As you have said many times, there is no need to change anything at SS for another decade. ”
yes I do. if we let them get away with it. as for the “another decade”, we have run out of time. we will now need to pay an extra two dollars a week per year to avoid SS running out of money. the AVERAGE increase will still be less than one dollar per week per year. but if we wait much longer, SS will be in “short range financial insufficiency” for much of that time. not broke but low on its prudent reserve.
but i said all that in my posts here, which, that reading difficulty again, you failed to notice. your previous comment said that witht the corona virus recession all bets were off. i did some arithmetic, something else you have difficulty with, that showed we can whether a 25% cut in SS income with no default. i am not sure how long we can keep that up. which is why I post these warings and warnings against warnings.
That takes care of lie #3.
Krasting
your #4 “4 “… the workers will no longer be able to say “I paid for it myself”
Coberly – NO SS recipient can say that.”
workers have been saying that for eighty years. to explain your fallacy I would have to explain to you what money is and how it works, which is something else you have difficulty understanding.
money is “promises to pay” ultimately by the government, this has always been true even when money was gold and silver. the worker pays his FICA and the money is credited to his account, same as if he put it in the bank. years later when he wants to take his money out to pay his expenses in retirement, the government looks at the money in his account and pays him a benefit bases on how much he has paid in.. an amount very close to what he would have earned in the bank or other “safe” investment, guaranteed against inflation and market losses, and even personal bad luck.. that’s what makes it insurance. the fact that the money the government uses may have come into the Treasury the same day it is paid out to the benfiiary does not mean the worker did not pay for it, just the same as when you withdraw your money from the bank, the money the bank gives you most likely came into the bank the same day from some other person wishing to save against a rainy day.
Anybody who paid attention in Econ 101 understands this. Those who did not pay attention, or never heard of Econ 101 except as a buzzword, are still looking for gold and jools.
This takes care of your lie #4, and all the stupidities you keep thinking you can get someone to believe… after all, why not? the Congress does, the reporters and colunists who cover “economics” do. so do most of the poor ignorant people the Big Liars have been trying to fool since about 1936.
Oh: your fifth lie: you said you’d shut up and go away now.
Run
please note that Forbes puts a positive spin on it.. essentially saying that if you have saved a lot of money and can afford to retire without a SS check, you can use the $5000 “loan” from the government to invest at a higher rate of interest than SS provides.
They don’t really discuss the advantages to someone who can’t afford to take the chance that SS won’t be there for them… because they spent their SS “savings” on current needs and wants.
Like famous Harvard graduates who write books on a “balanced approach” to “saving” Social Security they forge that SS is insurance and not an investment opportunity.
Experience shows that 50% of the population cannot afford to retire without their Social Security.
Mitt Romney probably can.
Famous Harvard graduate: Peter Orszag.
coberly:
Of Diamond and Orzag of which I had a discussion about many years ago with Bruce at EV on SS. He convinced me to come to AB and read hius and your posts.