Deinonychus antirrhopus

Your 'payments' go up at an increasing rate?

If you mean taxation, not necessarily. You can earn more and pay at the same individual tax rate if a) your increase isn't more than the next bracket, or if b) you're already at the top bracket. I believe that simply getting the same real income (but an increase of current dollar income) also yields no increased rate, as the brackets are indexed to inflation.

If you mean higher income people have higher costs of living, sure, but not enough to prevent them from having higher discretionary income totals. On the measure of after-tax dollars, or after-tax discretionary income, a higher income is associated with higher levels of both.

No Sofla, since Drum is talking about SS as a % of GDP it is stupid to say that we can more easily afford SS when it is 22% of GDP.

That, if we assume that GDP grows at say 2.5%/year on average, then for SS to go from 20% of GDP to 22% of GDP then SS is growing faster than GDP.

As a father of 9 children, it occurs that if we increased the birth rate a little bit, this discussion would be less important. It's really not as difficult as it looks.

As a father of 9 children, it occurs that if we increased the birth rate a little bit, this discussion would be less important. It's really not as difficult as it looks.

Where do you live, Bill? Some places are kid friendly and other places aren't. For example, I wouldn't raise nine kids in Silicon Valley. The income wouldn't make up for the grief (most families would need at least two working adults to maintain the loan on the real estate). My point being that a lot of people live in places where they really can't afford many kids.

Second, a strategy of growing your way out of problems doesn't work long term. First, the problem never goes away and may get worse. Eg, we need to fix the pyramid scheme nature of Social Security. Is it better to do it now or after the US has grown itself to say, a billion people?

Finally, there are serious problems to long term population growth.

For example, if it is faster than GDP growth, then the average standard of living declines. You have increased cost of housing, environmental impact, and a greater demand for infrastructure.

Although what you say is true about Social Security in the shorter-term, I think the growth of the deficit *might* asymptotically slow down toward the growth rate in GDP; the outyears of the intermediate projections look a bit flatter to me, at any rate. The actuaries who have run the infinite time-horizon models are the only ones who know for sure.

Regardless, the Left's willingness to screw our children is rather remarkable.

And the heretofore entirely hypothetical children of the future.

Now don't misunderstand me, I support efforts to make social security more actuarily sound, but rhetoric like "screwing our children" doesn't exactly resonate with me.

After all, succeeding generations will only be richer than we are.

After all, succeeding generations will only be richer than we are.

I'm sorry Robin, but that also justifies ponzi schemes. Sure its a rip-off, but hey those future generations can afford it, they'll be richer.

The bottomline is this: the next generation funds the previous generation's retirement at increasing rates. Sounds like a shitty deal to me no matter how you slice it.

Especially as real SS benefits grow over time, even constant real benefits would be a scam but with real growth it's even worse.

You're right, that if any significant component of spending increases faster than the gdp increase INDEFINITELY, it will eventually grow to consume the entirety of gdp.

However, with regard to SS, that isn't the case, or at least, whatever excess growth in SS relative to its share of gdp is substantially due to the demographic hump of the boomers' cohort, which will die off, certainly isn't in the works to be repeated.

Many companies may now, with a more mature workforce, have to expend a larger fraction of their gross income on pension plans for retired workers. That does not mean they are inevitably doomed to insolvency, unless that trend were to continue without end.

But things that cannot continue indefinitely, don't.

Of course, it wont continue indefinitely as once you hit the 100% of GDP point you'll have trashed the economy with certainty. Hell you'll probably do that well before the 100% mark.

The bottomline is two fold:

1. Drum is advocating increasing costs of retirement being born by each successive generation.

2. Drum is patently wrong about it being more affordable. His own numbers (making the rather brave assumption they are accurate) demonstrate this.

I'm not saying its not a shitty deal, Steve. I don't support a policy of shifting increased burden down generation. I'm just reacting to the rhetoric alone.

I'm not saying its not a shitty deal, Steve. I don't support a policy of shifting increased burden down generation. I'm just reacting to the rhetoric alone.

Unfortunately I don't think "shifting increasing burdens down generation" is good enough. While undoubtedly true it just seems to elicit mostly yawns and crap like Drum spews out on a semi-daily basis. I guess I'm just tired of always couching things in the nice pleasant manner and sometimes just want to call a spade a goddamned shovel.

So what you are saying is the gdp is the same now as 36 years ago. Seems to me 36 years ago I was earning about 1.20 an hour.

Uhhhmmm, no neo. I'm saying that since all the measurements here are in terms of % of GDP it is stupid to say that paying a higher percentage of GDP is more affordable.

Not stupid, but perhaps admittedly lacking a suppressed assumption to make the argument.

We used to spend some very large fraction of our federal budget, and therefore a significant fraction of gdp, on military expenditures. We continue to spend a very large amount of money there, the highest amount among all discretionary expenditures, and in real terms, about what we spent during the Cold War period on average (or a little higher than that average, now).

However, as a percentage of gdp, military spending is now far lower than it was in the '50s and '60s, freeing up however much gdp percentage it declined to be dedicated to other budgetary areas.

So, take any area of federal spending, mark it in future years to the same real figure (peg the budgeted figure to inflation increases), and each year it will shrink as a percentage of gdp.

In principle, there isn't anything wrong with what he said.

In reality, of course, you have twin budget-gobbling entitlement programs which together demand unsustainably higher and higher shares of gdp. That means we can afford nothing else, eventually, if you project out far enough on these trendlines.

But it is generally true that, of course, with a higher gdp, it is more affordable to have another 2% share to this or that program.

So, take any area of federal spending, mark it in future years to the same real figure (peg the budgeted figure to inflation increases), and each year it will shrink as a percentage of gdp.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick Sofla. This is precisely the opposite of what Drum said. He isn't talking about a declining share of GDP but and increasing share of GDP. It is exactly the opposite.

In principle, there isn't anything wrong with what he said.

Other than it is flat out false and that you are trying, rather poorly, to portray it as something else entirely no I guess you are right. I mean I can say, Democrats want make permanent tax cuts and there is nothing wrong with such a statement other than it being totally false and 180 degrees from reality.

That was an inapt example on my part, as the point of taxes to gdp remaining the same isn't what Drum is considering. You're right to complain about that example.

But the point remains generally true anyway. If the taxes to gdp ratio goes up from 20% to 22% in the next 80 years, as wages rise over an 80 year period, certainly a 2% point increase in the overall taxation, or a 10% increase in taxation level, will be much more affordable if we've probably more than doubled wages in real terms, i.e., are earning far more than necessary to keep up with CPI increases of costs.

I have already agreed this cannot go on indefinitely, but a 75 year long time frame is plenty long, and probably too long, to worry about a fix. If compounding that rate of growth is a problem in 400 years, or even 111 years, something will be done in the out years, and anything we'd be prone to do would be subject to change later anyway.

I'd say 'rough' actuarial balance, maybe over a 50 year time frame, is about all that can be looked at to any degree of accuracy, and probably, that is too far out as well.

Things are a little more problematic that you state. As public spending increases as a percentage of GDP, increased amounts of private investment and output would get "crowded out". Due to this GDP would probably start falling well before the government spent 100% (and hence taxed) of national income. Things would collapse a lot sooner than 111 years