Social Security

[Buster]

Social Security fund now seen to be empty by 2037
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This year alone, Social Security will pay out $45 billion more in retirement, disability and survivors' benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said. That figure nearly triples — to $130 billion — when the new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110127/ap_on_re_us/social_security

 

[Bquat]

They steal from the "G" fund when ever they want, I suppose they would find a way to CONTINUE stealing from the SSA coffers.

I posted this else where but it's good here too:

Social Security was a safty net. The goverment created FERS to help keep SS more solvent down the road and make it part of our retirement to show that they were paying less out on their buget when we retired as a savings to taxpayers.
Now one tier of our retirement is comming out of SS and making it even worse but to the public doesn't see it. They just see saving Social Security is in their best interest and dont think about the FERS drain on it as more and more of us turn 62 when the SS suppliment runs out.

I agree that if we could have the option to put SS tax and the employee matching into TSP would be a great idea, but the goverment knows that the general public will be willing to bailout Social Security but not TSP. They even mention about making TSP more like SS to save us from making bad investment choices.:suspicious:
They already made automatic TSP deposits into the G fund to help all the new employees retirements. I think this is just to increase the cash availiblity to borrow against to kick the can down the road. Just my opinion.

 

[tsptalk]

Retirement Crisis Faces Government And Corporate Pensions

When President Roosevelt first enacted social security in 1935, the intention was to serve as a safety net for older adults. However, at that time, life expectancy was roughly 60 years. Therefore, the expectation was that participants would not be drawing on social security for very long on an actuarial basis. Furthermore, according to the Social Security Administration, roughly 42 workers contributed to the funding pool for each welfare recipient in 1940.

Of course, given that politicians like to use government coffers to buy votes, additional amendments were added to Social Security to expand participation in the program. This included adding domestic labor in 1950 and widows and orphans in 1956. They lowered the retirement age to 62 in 1961 and increased benefits in 1972. Then politicians added more beneficiaries, from disabled people to immigrants, farmers, railroad workers, firefighters, ministers, federal, state, and local government employees, etc.

More: Retirement Crisis Faces Government And Corporate Pensions - RIA

 

[nasa1974]

If you are FERS you pay into Social Security and will collect as part of your retirement. Those that retired under CSRS are not eligible for Social Security unless you earned the points outside government employment. Then you are penalized because you are receiving a government pension. But yes, something does need to be done to keep Social Security from running out of money.