Reply To: are Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid sustainable?

#19272
ehamersly
Member

Actually if I understand it correctly myself, it’s worse than that. Someone correct me if my understanding is off.

The EPJ article says “Social Security incoming tax cash flow is less than outflow to SS recipients…”, so the favorable demographics are already gone.
If SS were run privately by Charles Ponzi, he’d have been headed to jail starting in 2010 or so.

The SS interest sounds like interest paid on the “surplus” money taken from SS years ago (going back decades). So that “interest” was paid back in the form of yet another “interest-earning” IOU.

Since the money going out is already greater than that coming in, the tip of the growing “IOU” iceberg is starting to be paid. But that payment is only going to increase, the rest of the budget is also moving in the wrong direction, and interest rates paid on our growing debt can only rise…