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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (218214)	2/8/2005 9:17:55 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1586981

"And his estimates to justify private accounts are 4.6% economic growth." Which, oddly enough, means that SS won't exhaust the trust fund...

To: Road Walker who wrote (218214)	2/8/2005 9:26:35 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586981

At that point, by law, the benefits are reduced to reflect revenue. If the law does indeed automatically call for the reduction of, even the slashing of payments to retirees if the fund is cash flow negative then social security would not technically be bust. The "trust fund" would be, but it isn't a really important consideration, so if the law does call for that you are technically right. OTOH I can't imagine it going over very well if all the sudden benefits are cut by 25% or whatever % is needed to match the income stream from social security taxes. There would be a lot of pressure to keep general funds rolling in to the system even if there are no more bonds held by the SSA, or to increase payroll taxes. Do you have a link (perferably straight html rather then .pdf, or .xls or something) pointing out the details of how the law calls for automatic benefit cuts when the assets held by the SSA are exhausted if the current payroll tax at the time can not support the current spending by the program? Tim