That’s not true at all. Social Security is one of the few institutions that runs on a surplus every year.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.htmlTo summarize, social security and medicare took in 1.267 trillion.
They spent 1.235 trillion.
In other words, they earned more than they made.
Where the issue comes in is way down the line in 2030 as the baby boomers will have lived to an age when the money they put in will have been used up, and with a shrinking population you’re not getting the revenue in to make up for the loss. Not until the 2030s does it become a problem. The reason there is a push is to fix the problem now would be easier than fixing the issue when it arises. A simple nominal raise in taxes now could save us trillions down the line. The Health Care Plan had addressed many of the issues with Medicare already, and there are multiple solutions to the social security problem.
You’ve made two fundamental errors.
- you expect economics to make particle sense.
- government does not run for profit
Remember that economics is the study of an invisible force, demand. It won’t make sense at the end of the day no matter how much we understand it.
And government has always had that odd quirk to it. The goal of a government in the modern world is not to make money but to provide others with the means to make money. Debt isn’t a problem, excessive debt is. The only type of government that needs to always be in a surplus is an empire, monarchy, or any form of government that runs for the benefit of the leaders.
Modern governments have always done this, you can see it parodied in the book Alice in Wonderland.
“Here in our kingdom, you must run at full pace to stay where you are, and run at 200 percent to move forward”
That’s not true at all. Many countries still use the US dollar to back their own currency. Our debt problems are miniscule compared to what the Greeks, Iceland, and Spain face, and by association Italy. I’m not really sure what sources you’ve been listening to, but they’ve done a very good job at scaring you.
The energy crisis won’t be nearly as bad as people make it out to be. There are multiple solutions and for the past 5 years big bucks have been pored into improving the efficiency of alternative energy and fuels. The efficency of solar pannels has sky rocketed while their cost has plummeted. While the numbers still aren’t at truly substainable levels, it is still rising, research is still going, and funding is right there. The same can be said for Natural Gas, which America is a hot bed for, wind power, hydro electric, the only dead end we’ve found in America is in Ethanol, which is not a viable food source for us.
The “energy crisis” won’t just be a solvable problem, especially if addressed in time, but one that America stands to profit off of with our large and numerous natural resources.
All of which are solvable.
Nothing America faces today can’t be solved. There is no dust bowl, no bank rushes, no civil war aside from Texas being dumb in the head, no world war, no nuclear threat on the shores of Cuba (who actually kind of likes us now.) Every problem we face today is completely solvable. Nothing is nearly as bad as what our ancestors had to put up with.
