Quote:
Originally Posted by randolph
And Republican arguments against Social Security, as Nancy Altman explained today, seem awfully familiar 74 years later.
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Social security basically has the current working population paying for the current retired's retirement. But the thing about populations, that anyone with a brain knows (i.e. not a politician) is that populations grow exponentially.
dN
-- = r N
dt
where r is the rate of natural increase (about .6% for the US), t is time, N is the number of people in a population at a given instant. N = N0 * Exp(rt)
The rate that a population increases depends on r, but it is exponential. Which, when applied to social security means that the working population will have to pay exponentially more tax to support the retired population. Meaning the rate will start off manageable at first. It will raise a bit later. And eventually will start to sky rocket. It will become impossible to sustain.