provfivetine
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
quote:
ORIGINAL: provfivetine
Social Security will destroy itself. It's already running a negative cash-flow, meaning that it's technically bankrupt as we speak. How much longer do we have to borrow money from the rest of the world to perpetuate a Ponzi-Scheme?
What nonsense. Adjust your contributions for inflation and moderate return, and you've paid for your retirement income. Its one of the few well-funded government programs, and it eliminated a huge elderly poverty problem. And for several decades, it has run a surplus--a surplus that will long, long dwarf a relatively brief time of increased outflow (those baby boomers had kids, you know, who also pay social security). That's not the problem.
The problem is that the government consistently borrowed the SS surplus, and now that it's time to pay it back, they don't want to, because they've put taxpayers on the hook for it. Budgeting slight of hand is the problem, not SS.
As for the OP--Republicans have been trying to get rid of SS since Roosevelt created it. The only difference is that more people are listening to the ridiculous spin and ignoring the consequences.
Even with the stealing of the surplus, the matter is readily fixed. Small adjustments would resolve it. Now we need leaders with the guts to do it.
But if you let them trash it, you're a fool. And Obama was a fool to agree to this one year FICA reduction, will will hereafter be labeled "a massive tax increase" as it expires each year.
What nonsense? So you're saying that social security is NOT running a negative cash flow? With more people going on the social security dole, it's only going to get worse from here.
Adjust my contributions for inflation? By what numbers? The CPI numbers do NOT include food and energy in the core. Some measurement. Inflation is what will destroy my social security contributions (yours too!) and it's purchasing power. The money that was put in by the soon-to-be-retired generation has lost considerable purchasing power. The dollar has already lost 26% since 2000, and an astonishing 95% since the FED was created. Inflation hurts social security, it doesn't help it. Maybe it helps the politicians who are able to pay the bills with devalued currency, but it doesn't help anyone that's collecting a check.
Also which Republicans have called for getting rid of social security? Ron Paul has, but I can't think of anyone else. The Republicans are just as for social security as the Democrats are.
It doesn't matter that social security had a surplus. That money is gone. It was spent on fighting World War II, going to the moon, on Vietnam, on the Great Society, on blowing up buildings in the Middle East and then rebuilding them. There's no such thing as a social security trust fund. It never existed! The money that people paid into social security was spent by both Democratic and Republican administrations pursuing their pet projects. That's the reality of the situation. Of course politicians are going to spend the money unwisely when you give them a lot of it.
Social Security will abolish itself. The premiums are going to have to be raised every few years by a considerable amount to perpetuate this scam. Raise the retiring age to 70 this year; in 2012 they'll have to go to 72, and so on. The only reason it's "well funded" is because people are forced to participate at gunpoint (if you don't pay you go to jail). If I could "tax" the entire population for one of my programs, then it would be well funded too!
Bottom line is that social security (along with medicare and medicaid) are breaking the bank and cannot keep going. Raising the retirement age, taxes, etc is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There's massive structural problems here.
The most interesting aspect of this is that social security benefits are not legally guaranteed by the US government because workers have no contractual or property rights to any benefits whatsoever. In the Supreme Court cases: Flemming v. Nestor and Helvering v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled that Social Security taxes are not contributions or savings, but taxes. Social Security benefits are simply a government spending program. Read here: http://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html (and this is directly from the horse's mouth!)
FDR scammed the American public, and the sooner people realize it, the sooner we can fix this monstrosity.
I yearn for the days when socialism makes sense to me. I literally would love to be converted into thinking that all these federal programs are beneficial to the average person. Life would be so much easier being a social democrat; where everything the government does is inherently good.
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