Recently, the Trib covered some of the fiscal problems that experts see facing Social Security today and in the future (http://www.ericksontribune.com/Home/TopStories/tabid/63/newsid404/5934/Whats-wrong-with-Social-Security/Default.aspx), and readers are weighing in on the issue.

One of our readers had this to say:

 ”The story about Social Security in the November edition of the Erickson Tribune is misleading. There is no reason to be concerned about Social Security at this time or in the near future. Workers have paid in surplus funds since 1983, and will continue to pay them at least until 2017. Those surpluses have been invested in U.S. Treasury securities that pay interest that will be and are redeemable at face value. They are cashed in now on a regular basis. The trust fund works like your checking account, you put money in and you write checks on your account; that is what Social Security does. The real problem is not with Social Security but with the huge deficits that George W. Bush has run up since taking office in 2001. He has added over three trillion dollars to the national debt with his annual deficits that were created by his tax cuts for his rich cronies and by his criminal war in Iraq. Every month 12 billion dollars are spent in Iraq fighting a war that did not need to be fought. Meanwhile Social Security surpluses have been used to finance those tax cuts for the fat cats and to buy bullets for our troops. When the Social Security System must start to cash in some of its surpluses invested in Treasuries, the government will not have to raise taxes or borrow not to pay Social Security benefits, but to pay for the extravagant tax cuts made by George W. Bush for his rich friends and to pay for his criminal war against Iraq. The actuarial forecasts that predict Social Security insolvency have been consistently too pessimistic. In fact Social Security is in much better shape that the projections. If Bush can find hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for the war in Iraq and to cut taxes for the rich, then the government can guarantee workers that Social Security will be there for as long as they live. ”

Based on our reporting and what our sources have told us, however, problems loom for the near and distant futures. Generally speaking, the issue is that with the retirement of the baby boomer generation, there will be more people collecting Social Security than there will be tax payers contributing to it.

Ultimately, this places a strain on both the trust fund, which has been building since 1983 and, in turn, those paying into the system currently and in the future. The issue that many experts have raised is the question of where Social Security will be in 50 years if the problem persists without remedy.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.