Re: [Pen-l] PK on the Madoff Nation

[joel blau <jblau@xxxxxxxxx>]

Are you less confident that social security will be paid than any other 
government obligation? Unless your point is that social security is mere 
social welfare, and hence readily dispensable, why is government 
borrowing from the trust fund any less an obligatory debt?

Joel Blau

David B. Shemano wrote:
> Of course the benefits will stop being paid.  "Entitlements" make up an increasing larger share of government budgets.  Eventually that trend will stop.  We might all be dead by that point, but the trend will eventually stop.  Some governments will default.  Others will inflate away the obligations.  Others will switch over to 401(k) type plans.  Maybe we can reach a point where we all so wealthy that one taxpayer can support one or more beneficiaries, and I really hope that happens, but I am way to skeptical to think the odds are good.  I live in California, where the voters of a bankrupt state continually vote for large bond measures, apparently upon the assumption that they can get immediate benefits while the taxes are pushed far into the future, by which time they will be dead or have moved to Nevada or Arizona.  I am not optimistic about our ability to manage social security and other entitlements.
>
> David Shemano
>
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