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

To: michael97123 who wrote (390879)	6/13/2008 2:53:43 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1574273

I have long been a supporter of the NST (and now the Fairtax). But the FICA tax (and the SE tax) were to fund Social Security. However, the system is actuarily unworkable at this point, and I doubt if the the FICA tax as envisioned can be modified to fix the problem. I would not favor any increase or change in FICA or SE taxes unless it came with an actuarial analysis that shows how those changes will create a system that gets SS to a place where it is solvent when normal accrual accounting procedures applicable to commercial pension plans is applied. I'm not sure, but I don't think this can be done at this point. I'm not a proponent of standing back and throwing money at what is fundamentally an actuarial problem. At this point, I doubt if SS is viable. When they were "fixing" SS under Reagan, I read an article by a former chief actuary for SS in the CPA Journal in which he explained the actuarial problems with the program. He predicted that by 2030 or 2040 you would have to have a 40% payroll tax on all earned income simply to sustain the then-current benefit payout rate. I believe his numbers probably still hold today. When you get to that kind of tax burden, you get tax revolt. I don't think you can fix this problem by raising taxes; you have got to do something about benefits. Either future generations are going to have to agree to fund current retirees, or they're going to have to draw the line and say, "THE PROGRAM HAS FAILED, YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN".