You get a pension because you pay ~~taxes~~ into it all your life. I literally fucking pay into it, it already is “locked in and guaranteed”, it is not like the US social security.

Not American (or Canadian), but don't you also have to pay into social security in the US? At least that's what I've heard. FICA I believe is what you need to pay.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know, so I don't talk about who should get US Social Security. All Canadian workers have to pay in to CPP, again, not sure about Americans.

The US model is basically what CPP used to be: taxes payed in by workers pay for benefits to current retirees. But people started having fewer kids and living longer and it became clear that this was unsustainable, so the system was changed.

Now CPP is partially funded, meaning I pay in and a portion pays for retirees, but a portion gets invested for my own benefits when I retire. Eventually I think CPP becomes fully funded, it's taken us like 30 years to get here, and with current rates it's solvent until the end of the century.

I have no idea what happens when the US Social Security runs out of money.

[–] festus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Afaik US Social Security running out of money is kind of an illusion as all the money is "invested" with the US government anyway, which is to say that the money is already coming out of the same pot of as all their other spending. It's not as if once that account hits $0 that to maintain benefits they'd have to ramp up their spending - rather once it hits $0 they'll be cutting spending, and to maintain benefits would require them to spend what were before it hit $0.

It's kind of akin to their "debt limit" - it's just an artificially constructed barrier to their spending they impose on themseves but can tweak whenever they want. This isn't to say that real barriers won't appear - for instance maybe the bond market is expecting them to cut spending once it hits $0 and will react poorly if they don't.