Ponzi scheme is intentionally deceptive and illegal fraud. Social security is intentionally transparent about earlier generations getting a gift. Your making a false analogy.

Ponzi scheme implies hidden accounting. It’s transparent from the start that the first generation received a gift

tech professionals that make more than $160,000 or less than $250,000 are big campaign donors?

Earned income tax credit offsets that issue. Or are you making an argument to replace the flat payroll tax with a progressive tax ?

Obviously it was a joke. But not all bribes are in the form of campaign funds. Other bribes are the paid speeches and future employment offers

Depends on life expectancy gender and spousal benefit

>The result in this study implies that the differential mortality between low earners and high earners reduce the progressivity of Social Security. Estimates show that, under current Social Security, the IRR (i.e., the rate of return of lifetime payroll taxes) for the 1930 cohort in the bottom income quintile is 1.67% compared with 2.28% for those in the top income quintile. This difference in IRR is widened for the 1960 cohort due to larger mortality differences—0.6% for the bottom income quintile compared with 2.46% for the top income quintile.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44846

It’s increased every year

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/02/should-we-eliminate-the-social-security-tax-cap-here-are-the-pros-and-cons

If the campaign funds improve their chances of winning election,they personally benefit

They are a small part of the overall national debt . Not sure what you mean by not guaranteed but as the law stands they are.

Flat population growth is fine. Negative is a problem

Deposits not insured by the FDIC

Signature Bank 90%

SVB 88%

Citigroup 85%

First Republic 68%

JPMorgan 59%

BNY Mellon 56%

Citizens Financial 49%

KeyCorp 47%

PNC 46%

Truist 46%

M&T Bank 45%

Fifth Third 42%

Bank of America 33%

Goldman Sachs 33%

Huntington Bancshares 33%

https://www.businessinsider.com/signature-svb-us-banks-have-over-1-trillion-uninsured-deposits-2023-3?amp

Does this only take into account assets for sale? Fifth third ceo said on cnbc today his bank holds all securities as available for sale. So does this chart penalize this banks while obscuring banks shifting securities to assets held to maturity?

Means testing is tricky because people will spend down savings faster to avoid it. The scary thing about means testing is it’s a slippery slope. We already have means testing sort of. When they added taxes on ss benefits in the 80s it was never inflation indexed. so now most people have to pay income tax on their benefits. Raising the cap brings in a lot more money than means testing according to the ssa analysis. Another possibility is to fix ss by shifting the medicare payroll tax to the ss trust fund so that ss is still a pay in to get benefits design. Medicare is only half funded by payroll taxes anyway and is mostly paid for by the general fund.

Wealthier people live longer and draw social security longer. The percent of gdp over the cap has increased since the 1980s even with the yearly increase in the cap. It’s also why there is a big jump from 24% to 32% in income taxes at $183,000 but that could be up to $200,000 using 401k deduction. The way I look at it is once you make that much money, you are probably lucky that whatever career path you picked is in demand. Democrats generally say they would create a donut hole by applying the tax on income over $250,000

But the tax rate used to be a lot lower due to that. We raised the tax rate form 3% to 12% bc people wanted longer retirements. Also, infant mortality plays a big role in increased life expectancy but doesn’t effect retirement

Lots of issue at play but there aren’t a lot more boomers than younger generations. Their were more boomers than previous generations which allowed boomers parents to get a gift. Add immigration and population affects are a wash. One issue is wealthy hoarding money above the payroll income tax cap more so than in the past

> Had the fed not used up s.s. as if it were just another federal tax, it would've been fine, i guess

That has zero affect in solvency. The IOUs are legally obligated to be paid back. This is a fake issue pushed by republicans. The government will find a new buyer of the debt when it comes time for ss trust fund to sell it

>Well, considering those "assets" are really just IOUs from the taxpayer, who is already on the hook if SS goes belly up, I am not sure this graph is really a good interpretation of reality. It isn't like they have a stock portfolio for this-- it is treasuries. The money has been spent already.

The trust fund will sell the bonds and someone else will buy them. Demand for us bonds is immense bc it is the exchange currency of the world.

> And look at when those assets were acquired. We just saw a huge bank fail because they were holding treasuries with low interest rates. With treasury rates around 4% or higher, we should probably discount some of that asset line.

The bank failed due to a run on deposits triggered by a concentrated customer base in ventures capital startups. Bonds only decrease in value if they are sold before maturity so the slow and predictable draw down of the trust fund is a non issue with regards to interest rate fluctuations

they raised the age and the tax for boomers back in 1980. Since then, more income has gone to wealthy people over the payroll tax cap which has decreased the trust fund balance.

I’ve never seen them that cheap without a significant income based tax credit

That’s the typical price for health insurance.

Price varies based on your income and age and county. Enter this information in the Pennie website to see available plans

the csvt cooridor is still a busy road especially for trucks. Having driven both the csvt and mon fayette I feel the csvt is more beneficial due to the truck congestion but that’s just anecdotal. The csvt isn’t feasible to be served by public transit.

The mon fayette is going to cost $5billion or more by time it’s finished while some of the mon fayette should be transit oriented like the old inter urban to California, PA.and a busway to monroeville

I’m not saying I like either project but it is interesting to compare them. I’m going to do some more reading. I wouldn’t really care about them if they weren’t built at the expense of city transit

Where is Pittsburgh the 29th largest metro area?

These long duration projects always go up in cost due to inflation. It’s really not a big deal except if you want to write hyperbolic headline like this article

> Unit prices were established at the time of bidding but the contract does include provisions for adjustments associated with standard price indexes such as diesel fuel, asphalt, and steel

Some projects have major unexpected obstacles like the route interstate 99 when they realized they exposed acidic rock and had to spend $100 million in remediation

I used to drive the new interstate 99 portion of 15 from NY to Williamsport and then down to Harrisburg. This new project goes nicely with that