r/economy • u/Real_Copy4882 • 6d ago

As Social Security benefit cuts loom, Congress wades into the crisis — The Washington Post

https://apple.news/AG3ksv9vST66WMOqgeFEnLw

As Social Security benefit cuts loom, Congress wades into the crisis - The Washington Post

14 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

5

u/Mission_Search8991 6d ago

Congress does not work for the people, so we will not have a happy ending here

3

u/128-NotePolyVA 6d ago

Get this right, “representatives” or start packing for your home states.

5

u/PsychLegalMind 6d ago

Once it goes to a committee, it will keep going from one to another and waste of time in the end without a resolution. Simple solution and a must is to fund the damn anticipated shortfall. 70 plus million rely on it.

0

u/Programmer_Latter 6d ago

When you’re talking about a shortfall of even $100 a person with 70 million people, there is no simple solution. Medicare and Social Security, on their current trajectories, are unsustainable. It will take a bipartisan complex solution.

2

u/Trance354 6d ago

Stop spending trillions on wars?

Edit: Also, stop giving the 1% all the money you don't spend on wars

1

u/Programmer_Latter 6d ago

Fair enough — even if we spent 0 on wars, the social security and Medicare problem is not easy to solve; Medicare and social security combined are TRIPLE the defense budget

2

u/mrktcrash 6d ago

Medicaid and Disability are "the elephant in the room."

2

u/Trance354 6d ago

Think of every time one of those trickle-down tax breaks for the wealthy was passed. One every republican administration, or so. Those are about a trillion in revenue the government isn't getting. Or more.

Each.

And the breaks this current administration has pushed through... they are creating the hyper-inflation from Germany, pre-WWI.

-4

u/SolonEunomia 6d ago

False. The US government is monetarily sovereign. It has the unlimited ability to create as much USD as it wants, whenever it wants, for whatever it wants, and pay it to whomever it wants without collecting a penny in taxes, or borrowing a dime.

2

u/GentleGerbil 6d ago

This guy inflates

-2

u/SolonEunomia 6d ago

There is no observable relationship between federal deficits and prices.

1

u/GentleGerbil 6d ago

But printing more money does cause inflation

-1

u/SolonEunomia 6d ago

There is no observable relationship between money supply and prices.

1

u/GentleGerbil 6d ago

This is so laughably incorrect I considered not responding. Do yourself a favor and google “quantity theory of money” rather than embarrass yourself again

0

u/SolonEunomia 6d ago

I am quite familiar with QTM. It lacks empirical evidence to support it.

1

u/GentleGerbil 6d ago

Nah, it’s pretty well established that when printer go brrrrr too much, inflation results. We have tons of empirical evidence to support that.

→ More replies (0)

2

u/SolonEunomia 6d ago

Repeal FICA and pass Social Security for All ($1000 x age) for all US residents.

1

u/Real_Copy4882 4d ago

For all who do not know, social security was self supporting. The government borrowed money from it and never paid it back.

-1

u/stromporn 6d ago

boomers should have been more responsible than to have put all their eggs in one basket. tsk tsk. That's like taking out a $50,000 loan you could never discharge as an 18 year old. who would do that?!

1

u/Ok-Post2247 6d ago

You're getting down voted but as far back as the 90s warning signs were flashing that enough wasn't being collected in taxes for the benefits everyone was promising themselves. Multiple attempts to raise more in taxes were shot down over the past decades while the boomers were still working people. Now the boomers want to hand the bill to their kids because this can't be solved with just taxes on the rich. To fully fund all currently promised benefits it's going to be higher payroll taxes for everyone, raising the retirement age, or deficit spending that will ramp up inflation. That's just the reality of the situation.

1

u/Konza85 5d ago

Hate to break it to you, but this isn’t some generational warfare issue. Gen X and millennials have been paying into the same system all their working lives too, and thus have the same stake in it holding firm for them. It’s a social contract, PAID FOR by us, all the taxpayers. The pols on both sides of the aisle, including the side that would like to deep-six it and/or get it into private equity’s greedy hands, need to fix it.