Then what?
New York City Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani (Anna Connors/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Government accountants recently reported that Social Security is in real fiscal trouble. The system is paying out about $230 billion per year more than it’s taking in from payroll taxes.
Those shortfalls are being covered for now by redeeming the U.S. Treasury bonds that Social Security was required by law to purchase back when it was running a cash surplus. (Fun fact, for decades those bonds were kept in an ordinary locked filing cabinet in a government office in Parkersburg, WV. Today, the records are all electronic.)
When Social Security needs cash to cover payouts to recipients, it presents one of those bonds to the U.S. Treasury Department for redemption. The funds are deposited in Social Security’s operating account, and everyone gets their monthly benefit.
But here’s the rub. At the rate of $230 billion a year in redemptions, those bonds will all be cashed in by 2033. After that, Social Security won’t have enough cash to cover its monthly payouts. If that were to happen today, it would mean an automatic 22 percent reduction in benefits to every Social Security recipient in the country. Things would get politically ugly really quick.
I bring this up not for purposes of doing a column on Social Security but rather to ask a pointed question of the Democratic Socialist mayors and congressional candidates that have lately been in the news.
Ladies and gentlemen, Social Security has been around for about 90 years. It’s not new. So, if there’s not enough money from taxation to cover a long-established program like Social Security, from where do you imagine the money will come to cover free housing, a guaranteed basic income for every citizen, free childcare, free college, free universal health care and all the rest of your grand socialist ideas?
Oh, wait, now I remember. You’ll get it from the rich. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and all those guys will finally have to pay their “fair share.” (Given the current leftist definition of “rich,” so, too will the guy who makes $400,000 a year owning car washes and the woman who makes $500,000 a year selling residential real estate.)
But here’s the problem. If you taxed the net worth of the 10 richest people in America at 100 percent, leaving them completely destitute, you’d cover the current federal deficit (which does not include all of the new free stuff you Democratic Socialists are proposing) for about a year and a half.
If you taxed the annual income of the much loathed “one percent” at the rate of 100 percent, you’d cover a bit less than half the present federal budget (again before all the new free stuff).
Then what?
And never mind that if you confiscated 100 percent of the wealth of guys like Musk, Bezos et. al., and if you confiscated 100 percent of the incomes of the most successful people in the economy, they’d immediately stop doing what they do to be so successful and tax revenue would then fall to zero. (Any of you enlightened lefties ever heard of the Laffer Curve?)
So, again I ask. Then what?
We’ll all hold our breath waiting for your answer.
Not a problem- the commies will just print more money
Which is an even better idea now that we’re in the digital era, because now you don’t even have to seize somebody’s paper to make pretend money. I think I’ll try paying my mortgage with Socialism Bucks this month.
The Federal Reserve sets the amount of money in circulation. For at least the last seventy years, the money supply has been steadily increasing execpt for a portion of 2022 and 2023. So just to clarify, are you saying that the members of the Federal Reserve have been and continue to be communists?
The socialists spew their propaganda without having to answer any questions. They can’t defend the system, they just keep saying it works for the middle class and the “American Dream.” Until they are continuously held to the fire for answers we will watch the spread of socialism. The times socialism has created a thriving empire versus what we have today in America would make for an interesting debate with Mamdani, et.al. I would enjoy.
Our problems with Social Security and the US Debt should be front page news every day because the collapse of our financial system will effect us all and us older folks will get hit the hardest. You do a great job of keeping us aware, thanks!
Well, as we turn blue awaiting the answer that’ll never arrive, I wonder how often they’ll have to redefine “rich” to get it down to the $50k / year mark and then the $20k. These aren’t moral people. They live by the good old fashioned covet, don’t bat an eye at false witness and have no problem murdering to steal what you worked for. As a class, socialists don’t improve society for anyone but themselves. There ought to be a law…
As usual paul – right on -,too bad more people can’t see it!!!
It is the part of the socialist handbook…you tell a lie long and strong enough, it becomes “truth”! Not YOUR TRUTH, not my truth, but THEIR truth!
Since a majority of democraps thinks this is the way to go, why don’t we require piglosi, waters, and those who bow down to the socialist rule, without exception REQUIRE them to back up their beliefs by turning over their ill gotten gains to make their socialist beliefs become “truth”? Let THOSE people take care of the freeloaders they love so much! Let those people let them stay and live in their house! YOU take care of them instead of US, YOU take care of their medical needs…I can’t HEAR YOU…why? You expect US to bear the burden? I have worked since I was barely 16. And it wasn’t easy work either! My Social Security is anything but “Security”! Just like millions of seniors, You have to watch every penny, but these freeloaders get free rent, free food, free medical care, etc! The time has passed to STOP this and help those who are TRUE CITIZENS!
The Genius Act passed last year. This bill seems to be for a digital-currency platform. Questions: will this act, among other things, replace the U.S. currency with a digital currency? Time will tell us more.
Please do not insult my intelligence by telling me there is a “Social Security Trust Fund” out there paying us back for the money we paid in. The “trust fund” is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The money is long since spent, replaced by promissory bonds from our bankrupt Uncle Sam. The money has to be borrowed by the same government agencies to pay us whether it is borrowed under Social Security’s name or under the Treasury. There is no government surplus to pay it nor are there any current funds.
The idea of a Social Security Trust Fund held in government bonds issued by a bankrupt government which has to increase its already substantial borrowings to pay it back is reminiscent of the old joke about the lady who said smugly as the airplane in which she was riding spun uncontrollably toward the ground, “We still have our wing.”
Why are we, the USA allowing Democratic (Nazi) Socialist to even exist in this country? Once upon a time all this subversive stuff was illegal? What happended?
The degradation of the government run (AKA public) schools. The public schools are government schools. Most people who vote there days have no idea how government works, or why socialism cannot succeed. Those reading this column might get it, but the average graduate from the govt schools will not, nor will the so called teachers that are employed there.
So, discovery of the fraud that is rife across the board and the squandering such as five billion dollars to Stacy Abrahms, upwards of a trillion dollars in USAID that is just a Dnc slush fund, makes me firmly believe the national debt is how much money representatives have stolen from We The People.
Our interest payments are approaching our Gnp. We’re going to need to get moving on resolution of this situation or our pets and zoo animals will be in peril ala Venezuela