Trump official calls Social Security 'wrong' with groundwork for cuts | Hacker News Reader

Trump official calls Social Security 'wrong' with groundwork for cuts

independent.co.uk

23 pointsthrow0101a14 comments

OK. Go for it.

I'm Gen X. I'm due for Social Security in a decade or so, but we never expected to see any of it.

So go ahead. See how much waste you can actually find in Social Security. If it's there, I'll applaud that you've saved Social Security for me. If not... well, I'd kinda appreciate if people would back off on the whole "there's so much fraud!" thing.

Are you serious? You actually think they're looking for waste here? You can't actually be this naive.

They're looking to shut down social security and rob the existing funds to pay for billionaire tax breaks. You will get nothing if they're allowed to do this.

I think we are all aware this is not legitimate, but if there is an attempt to impair the program materially, social media could be used to mobilize the segment of the population who both supported this administration and is impacted by any attempted cuts to the program. The J6 folks showed up for far less.

All social media avenues besides X will be shut down or heavily moderated as soon as a hint of uprising becomes evident.

This is unlikely considering the evidence of current competency at the highest levels of government and tech. They can’t even find the people they need to rehire that they mistakenly fired, across multiple agencies. Top. Men.

I paid into SS for a long time and I expect to get all that money back even if I have to annex it. The right way to nix SS is to have a cut-off date where people entering the workforce stop contributing to it and those people and all those after them would have to implement their own safety net.

As usual, all these claims by conservatives of "waste, fraud, and abuse" come with no citations needed. They are just taken on faith that it is so. They claim ppl over 200 are getting SS--"because Cobol." This is some galactic level genius thinking. And yet why do I, who am alive and kicking, fell like I'll be among those taking it in the shorts? Meanwhile, tax cuts to those who already have more money than anyone could reasonably grok; money enough to single-handedly influence the politics of a superpower even.

Make it make sense.

Despite other comments to the contrary, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Social Security. What is fundamentally wrong is the way people promote their ideas about "waste, fraud, and abuse" without feeling the need to provide any evidence whatever to back these claims. This is faith-based, self serving policy making in action.

I think this is going to be the first large-scale "test" for lack of a better word of Trump's base. Because if voters didn't want this it's gonna hurt.

"Paying for his tax plan" is an interesting justification because it seems basically the same for me. Who's getting such dramatic cuts to their taxes to need such a thing?

> I think this is going to be the first large-scale "test" for lack of a better word of Trump's base. Because if voters didn't want this it's gonna hurt.

I assume they’ll roll this out in a way that provides plausible deniability. Maybe roll it out over ten years or otherwise keep the pain limited.

I've paid into Social Security to the tune of $400,000 over the course of 40 years of paid employment. Am I going to get that back? Because, like all rational planners before Trump, I factored Social Security into my retirement plans. If Trump/DOGE does away with Social Security, I'm going to have to work extra years to make up for that. I will be unhappy with Trump, DOGE, Republicans and conservatives who supported him the entire time. I expect I wouldn't be alone in that situation.

I think there are two fundamental problems with social security

1. People think its a lockbox where there's some account with your name on it that your money goes into that's managed and when you retire you get some annuity based off that. When in actuality today's contributors are paying off past contributors that are now drawing. There's a name for this that I can't remember

2. The rate of return is significantly lower than could be achieved in the market. The expected return throughout your life is 5%. However, for such a long time horizon, an investment into the stock market would make sense, and the long term yield there is around 10%. It's a huge difference.

If you work from 22 to 65 and contribute 5k per year, by the end you put in 220k. 5% return would be $755k while 10% return would be $3.2m

I can't understand why anyone would be opposed to re-thinking the system and moving it to private accounts that actually belong to you. Pay off the people grandfathered, but for people still contributing, let them choose. The only reason I see this not happening is that it would be a big up-front cost as we're now coming to reality that the old system was poorly structured and politicians would have egg on their face.

Wouldn’t this increase the risk, for say people who were retiring in 2008-ish?

No.

Suppose you retire in 2008. That means you were likely investing since 1970 so your total return since then has been or 9% per year. Realistically you're weighted in the middle of that, so over the last 20 years the return was 177% (log) or also close to 9% per year.

And note you're not liquidating your savings in 2008. And also note there is a yield that adds a bit more return.

Social security is not an investment vehicle designed to earn profit at any level of risk. It's designed to prevent tens of millions of homeless elderly crumbling our nation because Americans proved the obvious fact that humans have poor long-term risk assessment and planning and cannot or will not do it themselves.

This argument is why people who have VC / business mindsets need to stay the hell away from government. Its not a business, it's not a stock, it's not a profit generator: it's about keeping a stable society and taking care of its people.

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