h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If we can figure out what the issues are, and what a reasonable solution to them would be, then we can accept this entry and get a sub-editor to sort them out.

the biggest issue see4ms to be money
see http://www.usdebtclock.org/

We could do with another US citizen to read through this for us, please.

Also the issue is raised
there are 112,528,979 taxpayers putting money into the trust fund and
there are 66,273,000 people drawing retirement checks.
the funds they are getting their money from was not put in by the 66,273,000 (that money is already spent), but rather from the 12,528,979 taxpayers. this is why it is being compared to a Ponzi scheme.

But that's the way pension systems work; the current generation pays in for the next generation to draw out

Of course the ratios have changed drastically since the system began.
Now there are 1.7 people paying for every one collecting.

Are you saying, Shagbark, that this is a change that needs to be mentioned in the entry? I thought that the entry made it clear there are problems.

What I am suggesting is that at the beginning of the Section Funding Crisis a sentence be inserted.
Sixty years ago the ratio of people paying into the trust fund versus those collecting was 16:1
today it is 1.7 to 1. This means that each taxpayer has to assume more than eight times the burden they did then just to keep the program solvent.

According to http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3523 during the 50s there were sixteen times the number getting checks. This was when the boomers were those paying in. Now the boomers are those collecting, and despite the changes listed in the article, the trust fund is shrinking, and those in the US workforce 20 to 30 years old doubt whether there will be anything left for them when they reach 70.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

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[note to the sub-editor to discuss any lingering doubts with one of our US volunteers.]

I'm not sure who we are congratulating, but for all those who did work on this well done.