Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Right.  Just keep things how they are.  Great way to improve them.

Because you refuse to admit that most things are FAR more complicated than you believe them to be...

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. - H.L. Mencken

A new idea that needs to be fleshed out > a demonstrably broken system

I don't need anyone to agree to find it a good idea.  It's a good idea whether you agree or not.

Nor do I have to flesh it out, because I'm a random a-hole on an online message board.  I'm nobody, just like you.

Identifying who and when a citizen is tabbed for service, there may be prerequisites...or not.  It may be voluntary...or not.  Perhaps people could specify which sector they'd prefer to serve in.  

It's true that there's a ton of different little things that would have to be decided, but that's not a good reason to automatically dismiss a big idea.  

Maybe no term limits is like Sam Howell, QB, UNC.  And maybe my idea is Drake Maye.  Or maybe it's an anonymous bum nobody.  But this isn't really the place where that will be revealed and I don't desire to spend the time figuring out which it is, because I'm well aware of my irrelevance.  

moveon.org

How State and Local Government Employees are Covered by Social Security and Medicare (ssa.gov)

At one time, Social Security didn’t include any of these employees. Over the years, the law changed. Most employees have Social Security protection, because their states have special agreements with us called “Section 218 agreements.” Congress passed a law in July 1991 extending Social Security on a mandatory basis to most state and local employees. These are employees not covered by an agreement or a Social Security equivalent public pension system.

My dad worked for the state / federal government in the Department of Agriculture his entire working career.  He paid into a pension plan instead of Social Security which was not even offered until a couple of years before he retired (after 30+ years) so he figured it was not even worth doing so stuck with his pension which actually was really great - my mom didn't work long enough to get SS, so they lived on his pension and when he died, she got half of the pension monthly and had a bunch of annuities which for her was enough as their home was paid for.  She was able to keep her BC/BS insurance which in addition to Medicare paid for her care in the nursing home she eventually went to.  There was enough left over for each of us four kids to get a pretty nice cash inheritance (which my sister and I pooled together and bought our mobile home).  Still, we both live on SS alone and we still have a couple of years before my hubby can get it early.  Just wish we were all better at retirement planning so it's a paycheck to paycheck deal for us with no room for emergencies.  Yay!  What an adventure.  Scared to think of what is going to happen with our SS at this point. 

I’m cautiously optimistic that some of the people trying to help the government will be able to shore up SS. I’m also fully cognizant that there will be some short term pain and consequences, but something has to be done.

I remember reading your thread when you first started it, but then I didn't keep up with it, so yesterday I caught up on the whole thing.  I have a random thought or two, but to start with your quoted post here, I lean more pessimistic in general and I tend to side with Cincy here.  I have major doubts that this will ever get fixed because the politician who tries will get ousted with record speed.  This country has already voted itself into managed decline, and my confidence is high we'll vote it off a cliff too.  The public won't put up with short-term pain and will keep whistling past the graveyard, blindly believing that the Piper never has to be paid, until it all irreparably hits the fan.  

Another big topic for a while was SS's solvency where @betarhoalphadelta and CD were discussing what's being done with funds paid into SS.  I won't pretend to know what happens to it--that's not something I've ever learned about or paid attention to--but they seemed to agree about it going into bonds.  Just going off of what they were talking about, brad seemed to make the better point there.....it looks like a case of double-spending where the government is trying to show the same tax dollars (debits) under two different expenditures (credits).  It's accounting BSery, and I don't see how anything good comes from it long term.  

The other thing that caught my attention was some comments you (Gigem) made--I think it was you--about wages and cost of living.  How income in the low $100k's isn't that much anymore.  I was glad to hear you say it because I've been scratching my head over exactly that for a while now.  My cost-of-living mental index is still stuck in 2005, it seems, because what my wife and I make jointly affords us a pretty modest life according to what I think our income ought to afford us.  Granted, our budget includes a lot of stashing away into a savings account I keep separated with a spreadsheet for upcoming expenses.  I know a lot of people don't do that, and if we didn't do it, we'd be able to loosen the belt considerably on discretionary spending.  But I don't know how else to run my life......I only save for things that I know are coming, so that they don't wipe us out on the months when they finally show up.  Most every recurring annual expense (or any length of cycle) I save precisely for, and a lot of other things I estimate (pretty well, I have to say).  Things like new tires.....I know about how many miles we drive each week, how many miles we can expect to get out of our tires, and what tires cost, so I divide that out into monthly savings contributions in a high-interest savings account, and when it comes time to buy new tires, it's not a meteor strike on the budget.  We don't really feel it.  So again, I know a lot of people don't do that, and we'd be able to "do more stuff and afford more things" if we didn't do it, but I just don't understand what people do if they don't save and then an irregular budget-buster hits them.  Like, I know the damn dryer is gonna break again and I'm gonna have to call Sears to come fix it.  I know stuff is gonna break or need repairing around the house or the yard.  I know Christmas is coming.  And I know about how much we're likely to spend on that stuff, and how often, so I just spread it out over "payments" in the form of monthly savings, so we're not crushed or putting stuff on credit cards when the time comes.  That's a nice peace of mind to have, but it has left me bumfuzzled more than once, that we make what I've always thought was pretty decent money for our area, but it doesn't seem like we keep up with the Jones', so to speak.  

The only meaning behind the SSTF is that by law, when it is exhausted (currently projected ~2035), the SSA is demanded to restrict benefits to be equal to their payroll tax income. But right now they're ALREADY paying out more money than they're taking in, so you can (and I do) argue that the system is not exactly "shored up".

When the Japanese surrendered at the end of WWII, Emperor Hirohito broadcast a message to his people explaining the surrender.  Within that message he said that "The War situation has developed not entirely to Japan's advantage".  

Your comment that "the (SS) system is not exactly 'shored up'" rivals Hirohito's for greatest understatement of all time.  

I think that understanding what is coming in and what is going out is important.  The inflows are SS and Medicare Taxes.  These are:

• 6.2% SS Tax charged to Employees
• 6.2% SS Tax charged to Employers 
• 1.45% Medicare Tax charged to Employees
• 1.45% Medicare Tax charged to Employers
• 15.3% total tax on wages

In both cases, self-employed individuals pay both halves.  There is a cap on SS Taxes which is $176,100 for 2025.  Income beyond that is NOT taxed for SS purposes but the cap does NOT apply to Medicare Taxes.  

IMHO, the distinction between SS and Medicare is silly.  The money is in one giant system so breaking them out separately serves only as a legal fiction.  From an accounting standpoint, they are one and the same.  

Outflows are in four main categories:

• Old Age Medical Benefits - This is the Medicare portion.  
• Disability - This is the least considered of the outflows since most of us will never receive anything from this.  More on disability later.  
• Old Age Minimum Pension - This is basically a welfare program as it has no relation to earnings.  
• Old Age Pension - This portion of the old age pension is loosely based on the amount that you paid in.  Ie, if you earn around the cap of $176,100 you'll get a larger pension than if you earn a fraction of that, say $35,000.  

Disability:
I pointed out earlier that when my wife as an addiction counselor for the County Health Department, nearly all of her clients were on SS Disability and their disability WAS their addiction.  Someone, I think it was @Gigem said that he had heard of that and that around his location those are called "Crazy checks".  Same thing here, my wife's clients all called those, "crazy checks".  

I hope this isn't getting too political but IMHO, this is tantamount to fraud.  If Trump/Musk really want to trim Government fraud, waste, and abuse, they should tackle SS Disability.  

I also think that this would be a massive win politically.  How many voters actually think that SS should pay people to sit around and get high?  

Trying to keep my own ideology out of it, one of the problems that SS has encountered ever since it was established is that there has always been disagreement and conflict over what exactly it is.  Is it an insurance/pension system or is it a welfare system.  The reality is that it is a little bit of both.  When they established it in the 1930's they immediately started paying out benefits which suggests that it is a welfare program rather than an insurance/pension system because insurance/pension systems only pay out to people who paid in.  OTOH, there is a relationship between what you pay in and what you receive so that suggests that it is an insurance/pension system.  On the other, other hand, the charge for Medicare is a flat percentage of your earnings which suggests welfare program because an insurance system would need to charge per person.  

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the reality is that SS/Medicare are both a welfare program and an insurance/pension system.