What’s the alternative? Certainly they shouldn’t collect the surplus and just sit on it, right? Do they invest it. Should they invest in penny stocks? No, they want a secure investment do they buy govt securities.
The $$$ went to the previous/currently retired generation in my opinion. They benefited economically during working and investing years by large gov’t SS subsidized spending without a matching tax burden. And then again by collecting full SS benefits before the fund drained down.
So the generations that had a surplus (more workers, less payees) spent the surplus on themselves indirectly, and the next generation (less workers, more payees) is supporting their full benefits while facing both a bigger debt crisis and a rollback of the SS benefit.
They lived in a true utopia, and went extinct as a result of societal collapse. They lost all purpose from having everything provided for them. Every single time.
Pick up a guitar and never be bored again. Reminds me, brother in-law will be here soon, annoyingly better than me on guitar but he started thirty years earlier.
It’s just an idea. I haven’t planned out every detail to the penny.
Consider it the biggest group life policy pricing in the world.
Same way as life insurance.
I proposed a life insurance payout of 10x the worker’s salary at the time of death. (Or 10x minus the value of the accumulated private retirement account.) Give the spouse/kids a lump sum. Interest on such a lump sum would approximate a lifetime Social Security income. And it’s just a suggested round number. Maybe it needs to be 20x. It’s the concept I’m proposing, not a fully vetted program.
Didn’t mean from you or in detail. Just musing about how much we have to discount from “market returns” to account for the conservative elements of the investment.
I’m general discussion I’ve heard ppl try to swap in stock market gains as if SS taxes could just go right into stocks.
So perhaps privatized SS would achieve 3-4% gains instead of the market average once we add in the insurance instruments. I’m not sure it would hit that hard.
Yes, when the govt sells t-bills, treasure binds and securities they use they proceeds present day. This isn’t specific to SS alone, it is the way govt runs.