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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

The article focuses on a woman aged 66 who is delaying collection of social security to age 70 in order to maximize the monthly payout. So it's not quite as dire as you make out, as long as you stay healthy until 70.

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> as long as you stay healthy until 70.

That's a pretty big question mark though.

Many people start developing dementia before 70.

If you can't retire at 66, do you think you will have enough to cover rocketing health care costs and needs as you turn 70 and then 80? At 66 you should be installing accessible bath tubs and stair railings and lifts. If you don't lay the ground work now, it'll get grim sooner rather than later.

She's getting $0 in social security now and will be likely getting over $1500 a month at age 70. Her medical expenses will be mostly covered by Medicaid.

$1500/month is not sunshine and rainbows, but it's not starving in the streets either.

Because what people need in their 70s is "just scraping by"

For many, $1500/mo is living in the streets level of income. I have family that collected early and get like $900/mo. It's grim. Medicare/Medicaid is not free at all. There are lots of things that cost you additional money, that they don't have so they don't get all the medical care they need. Just what they can afford.

Medicare, not Medicaid, although she may be eligible to use Medicaid to supplement.[1]

[1]: https://www.medicare.gov/basics/costs/help/medicaid

What happens if social security is no longer there?

It means you're listening to a false narrative propogated by "US is broke" doom-slingers.

If your left hand owes money to your right hand, your left hand might be broke but you as a whole aren't.

Your hands can move around all the money they want, the question is how much that money will buy. This is the issue countries with declining labor force participate rates are facing. Someone actually has to clean those bedpans and do all the dirty work.

Exactly. It's the capacity of a country to do things that matters, not the number of pieces of paper it has that nominally count that capacity.

Luckily there are still lots of people willing to move to America to clean bedpans.

Social security pays out at 80% when the trust fund is exhausted in a decade. It’s then a policy change to increase benefits back to 100% (no cap in income exposed to SS taxes).

Math might improve a bit with US treasuries paying almost 4%, as that is what the trust fund invests in (specifically special issue treasuries).

> By the end of 2021, the trust funds had accumulated $2.9 trillion worth of Treasury securities, earning an average interest rate of 1.4 percent during that year. The Social Security Administration provides monthly reports on the investment holdings of the trust funds, their maturities, and interest rates. The trustees project that the trust funds will earn $64.6 billion in interest income in 2022.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/understanding-...

So sustainable that the government is looking to take a 'low' interest loan, bet it, and if that doesn't pan out well they'll just tax us more:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sovereign-wealth-fund-biden-...

It’s sustainable so long as the US economy has productivity and activity to tax. Of course they’d tax everyone more, what else would you expect after all of that wealth in earlier decades was squandered.

If you’re angry about it, be upset about past garbage governance and irresponsibility in not planning for the future by politicians. If you strip mine the economy in the past, you can’t be all surprise pikachu when the bill comes due in the future. Trillions of dollars on useless wars and tax cuts for the wealthy didn’t help.

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