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Comment by djakjxnanjak | Hacker News Reader

The point of the parent comment is that even without the trust fund, each year’s social security taxes will be sufficient to pay 75% of benefits. This makes it clear that claims that the program is bound to disappear completely are overblown.

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Sure, "gone" is clearly hyperbole. But the sentiment is accurate. GenX will pay for the Boomers to get 100% of their SS while they will likely receive less than the full value of their SS.

Taxes (currently at historic lows) will go up, and GenX will get paid.

Oh good, because everyone knows millennials are just swimming in extra taxable cash

You'd tax those making >$10 million/year, not those making <$100k/year.

That’s not going to work. There just aren’t that many people making >$10M per year and there are way too many collecting pensions.

I mean, there aren't many but they hold the substantial fraction of total wealth. So if we have 100 people who can pay an extra billion/year and another 1k people who can pay an extra 100M and another 10k people who can pay an extra 10M then a total of 11k people are suddenly paying $300B.

The currently missing number is 3T and growing. An extra 300B is 1/10 of the needed funds assuming the debt cycle stopped now.

How long so you think you can charge an individual or company an "extra 100M"? Realistically would you stay in a country that suddenly added an extra 100M to your tax bill?

There’s an exit tax if you leave the US and renounce your citizenship, so flight is less of an issue. Have to hand over some of your skeeball tickets before leaving the amusement park.

The number is not 3T/year. It's 3T over 10 years (as most budget short falls are calculated). 300B covers it.

$300B ain’t that much. Age distribution is skewed older, so you might have 60M collecting a pension. Your $300B gives them all a fat $5,000 per year.

And your numbers are wealth, not income.

The average SS payment in the US right now is $1461/month = 17532/year [0]. SS is long term funded (by on going taxes) to about 75%, so $4383/year/person shortfall. $5k/year/person would more than cover THE ENTIRE SS shortfall since I am not arguing for repealing all other taxes, only additional tax on ultra wealthy.

Also, there are ~600 billionaires in the US, most of them however would pay $100M tax (and realistically numbers can be adjusted down by stretching over say 100k highest TC individuals rather than 11k like my original statement).

[0] - https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/10/28/americans-average...

"the sentiment is accurate"? To how many decimal places?

Realistically, as each generation lives longer the retirement age will rise. Thus the productive time (and net life-time production) will increase.

Exactly how productive do you think a 72 year old will be?

In a behind a desk job doing what they have immense experience doing I think they can be very productive. Even in SWE it doesn't take massive intellectual agility to write 90% of production code and that's a relatively brain-utilizing job. Lots of 72 year olds nowadays are quite healthy and mentally sharp, I think the trend will continue and future median 72 year olds will more like current 60 year old.

Let me put it in another way. I think a 60 year old doing manual labor in 1980s would be less productive than a 72 year old doing desk work in 2030.

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