A brighter economic outlook has helped push Social Security's projected trust fund depletion date to a year later. But there's still urgency for Congress to act.
  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    6 months ago

    ah, the quarterly drive-by hit piece on social security. love the uncritical platforming of the austerity psycho at the end of the article.

    induced panic is the only play on the table to privatize social security. it is not going broke, it does not add a cent to the national debt, and it is one of most popular, successful and enduring social programs in the US.

    real context:
    https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-194-the-graying-population-panic-and-the-90-year-war-on-social-security

    if they lifted the ceiling on contributions on rich assholes, it would be even more flush. of note: only the first $168k/yr of income is taxed for social security, which is insanely regressive and speaks to how well managed it is, seeing as how it's funded almost completely by the actively employed working class.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
      ·
      6 months ago

      It's always amazing to see how any social programs are always decried as being just too darn costly, yet cost is never a question when it comes to spending billions on forever wars.

    • davel [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      and speaks to how well managed it is

      To me the only metric for how well it’s managed is whether people get paid the correct amount on time. Ultimately the money comes from the same place as all Federal money: it’s willed into existence on demand. Any SSA “sound money management” is theater. Our income being taxed in order to fund Social Security is essentially theater as well.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        6 months ago

        and yet, in a political economy where the theater is a requirement and this program has been under ideological assault since its inception, this program manages to succeed and maintain a heightened requirement of auditing/reporting that other progams elide, while having negligible administrative/overhead costs.

        personally, i am impressed by the civil servants who get it done while being shat upon constantly in the press and by "non-partisan" think tanks, both owned and operated by anti-entitlement billionaires who pay more to destroy the program than they have ever paid into it.

        • davel [he/him]
          ·
          6 months ago

          There’s a great example of such a character in the first season of Homecoming, a show I highly recommend, the first season especially.