Deficit of Pension Guarantor Hits Record $33.5 billion

The government has guaranteed much more than the can possibly pay for in the worst case scenerio.

made for pensions. This should be our example of why we need to save social security within the government and why we need a single payer health care program. Programs like these when issued by the private sector do not work.

They work kind of like ponzi schemes. You use contributions from current workers to pay retirees knowing that someday the future workers will contribute to the current workers' retirements.

But what if a company downsizes?

GM has something like seven retirees for every current worker.

You can't design any pension that would work under those conditions.

And companies have to be able to change themselves, sometimes quickly.

To a company the 401 (k) makes much more sense. The workers contribute. You match. When they leave your employ, you shake their hand, give them their 401 (k) money and never think of them again.

Companies with pensions have to have entire departments of people who do nothing but process returned pension checks because former workers have moved, died, gotten divorced, changed beneficiaries, etc. There are some companies where thousands of changes have to be processed every month.

If you make garden hoses, you don't want to employ too many people who aren't part of the making garden hoses proces. You can't afford too many people sitting in an office process changes for people who you haven't seen in 30 years.

We should immediately move, as a country towards a scheme in which everyone is guaranteed a poverty-free income when they reach
retirement age.

I suggest two immediate things to do to help social security be more sound

1. get rid of the cap on social security income.
2. Force every worker into social security