Wildly successful at giving away other people's money, but not wildly successful at sustaining itself without congress intervention every few years, to the point where the fund would collapse and cease to exist without intervention (ie. capital injection, ie. printing money).
I don't count that as "wildly successful" by any means.
I thought the issue of potential congress intervention was future funding, for full benefits, not current and past funding.
1937 to 2009 historical receipts/expenditures/balance: https://www.ssa.gov/history/tftable.html
1957 to 2020 reserves/income/costs: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4a3.html
Seems overall to have funded itself well?
Personally, I don't think the government should be involved in your financial life at all, especially retirement. IRA's should be available to anyone, and maybe even required. The difference is you are in charge of your retirement, not politicians and their political objectives at the moment you just so happen to retire. Why would you want to trust the government with your financial future?
But, that's not to say some system run by the government can't work... it just says social security as was implemented doesn't work. We know it doesn't work because it requires printing money or raising the burden on today's youth unfairly. It doesn't work because the amount of money you put into the system doesn't equal what you will get out, and it doesn't grow with the markets or inflation. Few people can actually retire on social security because it pays so very little.
Any way you slice it... it's really, really tough to objectively call social security "wildly successful", which was the original contested assertion.
With the state of wealth inequality in the states, the number of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, ever increasing attacks against the finances of the elderly in the form of scams and schemes, and our culture's dislike of multigenerational housing it seems like a choice between a government wellfare system like social security or tens of thousands to millions of impoverished, homeless elderly folks.
Libertarian ideals like "the government shouldn't be involved in your finances" seem fine in a perfect world, but reality is certainly not ideal.
Counterpoints? I'd also like to hear your thoughts on an alternative that takes care of those less fortunate? Thanks for your time! :)
Debt financing is how we got out of the great depression and just about every major economic crisis since. Where would the markets be without government intervention in 2008? Where would the markets be now without QE? If "printing money" and "raising the burden on today's youth unfairly" are systematic failures, then it seems that American capitalism has been a sham for a long time.
Let's also see the real consequences of the rapidly increasing inflation too in the coming years from the last couple stimulus bills. I wouldn't be too quick to look at QE as a panacea.
Seems like we've been treating symptoms instead of addressing various root causes for a long long time.
How has the latter happened for Social Security? It's pretty much delivered as advertised. Would you trust everyone's fate to Wall Street?
> IRA's
Not everyone is equipped to handle investment, especially elderly people who are easily confused. And it creates reinforcing problems: If the economy is bad and Wall Street has a bad year, people need the money more but have less of it.
> it requires printing money or raising the burden on today's youth unfairly
How has Social Security required that? Why should today's youth have less burden their their predecessors, who paid for a many long-term investments that other generations benefited from?