Holi crapoli!!!!--------Social Security Crisis Closer than You Think

Social Security Crisis Closer than You Think | Mercatus:
"When the trust funds are depleted, the upcoming year’s benefits will be suddenly and immediately reduced by nearly $200 billion (in 2013 dollars), and not just for that year alone. 
The 23 percent haircut will persist indefinitely without legislative action. 
....And don’t mistakenly believe we can just raise payroll taxes to cover any shortfall without also causing drastically harmful effects on the economy.
If we raised the payroll tax rate today, it would have to rise from 12.4 percent to about 15.2 percent — that’s a nominal 23 percent increase in the payroll tax rate.
If we wait until 2033, the rate would have to increase to approximately 16.5 percent; over 4 percentage points higher than the payroll tax rate is today and a nominal 33 percent increase.

But wait, it’s actually much worse than that. 
Because Social Security benefits decline at a much slower rate than GDP and payroll taxes, the benefit formulas result in benefit level changes that considerably lag behind other changes in the economy, especially during periods of decline.
Further, disability applications jump dramatically during economic downturns (increasing about 25 percent during the Great Recession), and disability payment increases then quickly follow.
This puts even more financial pressure on Social Security. Finally, fertility and immigration rates tend to decline during times of economic stress — which, over the longer term, reduces revenue coming into the program and adversely affects Social Security financing.
What this all means is that the Social Security crisis that appears to be coming in 2033 is actually here now.