Obama claims GOP trying to destroy Social Security

[werepossum]

ROFL.

You guys that think its "your" money once the government taxes it from you are hilarious. Once they tax it and lets not bullshit about the subject, social security tax is a TAX, they aren't sticking your money in an account for you to later spend they are TAXING you and spending it on other shit. At the same time they are currently promising to pay you when you retire by taxing other people at that time. Bottom line, it ain't yo money no mo. They aren't going to give anything back to you and they aren't gonna let you opt out. That would be like being able to opt out of property taxes because you don't use the roads or schools, just not gonna happen. The best you could possibly hope for (assuming you want out of the system) is a complete elimination of Social Security and whatever you have "paid" in you simply lose (benefit being you don't have to pay anymore in).

Sadly, that's probably true. We could elect an all-Libertarian or all-Constitutional Party Congress and within ten years we've have the same muddled mess. Politicians are never going to let a huge pile of money set around simply because it's not theirs to spend. We'd have to have a privatized retirement system, but money would have to be withdrawn a decade or so before you wanted to retire so that should the market crash, you'd have time for it to recover before you needed your money - and thus, a slightly smaller huge pile of cash that, again, no politician could resist. We're screwed.

 

[Pulsar]

Which is solvent, when planned right. People said it would go bust within a couple years.



It's not a Ponzi scheme; you clearly don't know what one is. People paying in now to current recipients to get paid later by workers then isn't a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is one in which people are enticed to get big returns on 'investment' by getting more new people to invest than there are old investors, which clearly has limits.

Sounds nice, 'you manage your own money'. That had a 90 percent elder poverty rate. SS works.

That's the thing, you're pushing an ideology 'wah wah I don't like anything with the government involved' - and has no substance as to what works.

Social security is a scam. A scam that the government has forced down our throats for 70 years now. Don't believe it? Let's use a little common sense.

You are using entire population under 65 to finance the retirement of the population over 65.

People generally aren't productive until 23-25. Let's call it 25 just for a nice round number. People who live to 65 generally live till about 85. Again, a nice round number. So you've got people working for 40 (65-25=40) years to pay for the people retiring (85-65=20) for 20 years.

To make that truly solvent at todays rates, you'd need those folks working for 40 years to pay half their salaries so that the older folks can get paid for their 20.

Go ahead. Now start talking about compound interest, rate of return, and everything else. Of course, the only way you'll get that is by putting the money in the stock market, or by having the government pay interest on the money - which is our tax dollars paying interst on our tax dollars. Think about that bullshit for a second. The sad fact is you'll still be talking about paying at least 1/4 of your current salary into this program. And then more tax dollars to pay interest in the bonds that that gets put into.

Fuck that.

Go play with your numbers to try and make them look better. Of course, I didn't include all the money that the SS administration has to spend to PAY the people who administer the program, to pay to mail out all the fliers, etc etc etc etc.

This stuff IS NOT COMPLICATED. People complicate it to hide the true nature of what is going on. You can ALWAYS simply finances down to a simple formula.

What goes in = What comes out.

Any thing else is masturbation.

Oh, and did they mention that as the US's birth rate declines further (except for the birth rates of the imigrants...) that the portion each one of you is expected to pay will increase?

 

[Throckmorton]

I don't even know why Obama would need to "claim" this. Haven't some republicans and libertarians publicly stated that social security was bullshit and should be ended?

I'm pretty sure I've heard it before. In the last election, I specifically remember McCain bitching about entitlement programs. He's talking about entitlement in general, but social security definitely counts as an entitlement program. This is not some kind of secret! News not found.

Because a lot of people are too fucking stupid to realize that Republicans OPPOSE Social Security and Medicare, to the point that they'll accuse Obama of destroying those things.

 

[Darwin333]

You are right as i said, i do agree with you in theory. But you have to remember 90% of the people are pretty much dumb asses. Most people are this website are in the other 10% i would assume. But those 90% still need to be accounted for one way or the other. You either force them to save via SS or you abolish it and they dont save and then they go on welfare or something. Either way tax payers are going to foot the bill. Just one way is better.

Give them .gov bonds, backed by the full faith and security, that are actually theirs but can't be cashed in till they reach retirement and then they can only cash in a certain percentage a year. That makes it "their" money, it can be left to survivors if they die before retirement/have a substantial amount left over and it is as risk free as the US government basically. If the .gov goes broke we are all pretty much fucked anyways (that goes for you gold nuts too) so not much argument there. All other social security benefits that aren't paid for upfront would have to be moved to some other entitlement program (disability for children, young adults, etc).

Of course this will never happen because its not really your money. They don't want to let you keep it. They want to spend it NOW and they don't want to take on actual "debt" when they spend it. It was always intended to be a revenue generator for the government, the payments were just a carrot to get everyone to go along with it. I will grant that they fixed an actual problem with the program but make no mistake, it was and has been nothing but a fat ass stream of revenue for the government.

 

[Fingolfin269]

ROFL.

You guys that think its "your" money once the government taxes it from you are hilarious. Once they tax it and lets not bullshit about the subject, social security tax is a TAX, they aren't sticking your money in an account for you to later spend they are TAXING you and spending it on other shit. At the same time they are currently promising to pay you when you retire by taxing other people at that time. Bottom line, it ain't yo money no mo. They aren't going to give anything back to you and they aren't gonna let you opt out. That would be like being able to opt out of property taxes because you don't use the roads or schools, just not gonna happen. The best you could possibly hope for (assuming you want out of the system) is a complete elimination of Social Security and whatever you have "paid" in you simply lose (benefit being you don't have to pay anymore in).

Oh I totally agree with you. I know it's not a system where they take 'my' money and then I get it all back when I retire. Basically we're paying for the people who can't pay for themselves. I'll take your 'best' scenario though. We'll call whatever has been paid in thus far my fair share and then anything from this point forward 'mine'. Totally okay with me.

 

[Darwin333]

Sadly, that's probably true. We could elect an all-Libertarian or all-Constitutional Party Congress and within ten years we've have the same muddled mess. Politicians are never going to let a huge pile of money set around simply because it's not theirs to spend. We'd have to have a privatized retirement system, but money would have to be withdrawn a decade or so before you wanted to retire so that should the market crash, you'd have time for it to recover before you needed your money - and thus, a slightly smaller huge pile of cash that, again, no politician could resist. We're screwed.

New law:

All "intra-government" borrowing, such as borrowing from the Social Security trust fund, must be done with bonds that are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. All intra-government bond sales must be done within 24 hours after a public bond offering and the bonds rates and terms shall be the same as those sold at the public bond offering.


-End of new law

Wanna borrow from the trust fund? Gotta put up a real .gov bond backed by the full faith and it goes on the books. The bonds would also be at the "going rate" so no cheaper money either. They would no longer have any incentive to borrow from the government unless they really needed to and if they did it would be no different (at least as far as the accounting is concerned) than borrowing from China. Who would you prefer to owe a shitload of money to, the bank or yourself?


Problem solved, they don't get to borrow "off the books" anymore which, at least in my opinion, is why raiding the trust fund is so provocative. Currently they get to borrow money but back it up with worthless IOUs and it doesn't get counted towards "official debt/deficit" which provides incentive, simply remove the incentive and the problem should correct itself in the future. Doesn't solve the problem of the stacks of worthless IOU's we currently hold but it stops them from continuing to do it.

 

[feralkid]

Its almost impossible for people to die now unless they have cancer.

I can think of a few thousand ways.

 

[feralkid]

IF you are younger than 40, it does not matter which party you vote for, you are going to get screwed on SS.

The current system is not sustainable. Demographics have radically changed since this program has started and it is headed for a trainwreck.

Republicans have been screaming this for the last 50 years.


Do you sense a pattern here?

 

[Budarow]

No, it sounds like your binky just hit the floor. Whhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

LOL! And NO, I know I'll never see much of anything from SS either!!

 

[Budarow]

Why are you stealing my money? That is money I put into SS and belongs to me. The only way to do as you propose would be allow people to opt out of social security completely. Otherwise you are just flat stealing people's money to give to others who didn't prepare for retirement properly. 3 million to retire on right now is not a whole lot of money and no matter what you make that figure, you're still stealing peoples money to give to those that made bad decisions (didn't save for retirement).

Steal your money? Consider it just another tax that you won't be getting back and a necessary measure to keep a broken system going for a little longer to help keep society sane.

If you've got $3M+, I'd say the "system" has been VERY generous to you and you'll still do just fine without the SS $$. Life isn't fair to a lot of deserving people. And I'm not trying to judge you, but please don't respond with "I've worked really hard all my life and earned this money." I've been around long enough to know via real world experiences MANY of the ways people "work" to earn more or keep more of their fortunes.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Republicans have been screaming this for the last 50 years.


Do you sense a pattern here?

If I don't get back what I put in then I consider that to be 'screwed'. Maybe we have different thoughts on what being screwed means. If I give you $100 now and you give me $100 30 years from now when I retire... well, actually I might be ahead of where I'll be with SS.

 

[spidey07]

Steal your money? Consider it just another tax that you won't be getting back and a necessary measure to keep a broken system going for a little longer to help keep society sane.

If you've got $3M+, I'd say the "system" has been VERY generous to you and you'll still do just fine without the SS $$. Life isn't fair to a lot of deserving people. And I'm not trying to judge you, but please don't respond with "I've worked really hard all my life and earned this money." I've been around long enough to know via real world experiences MANY of the ways people "work" to earn more or keep more of their fortunes.

There it is again. Stealing people's money because "they deserve it". And "oh you have enough, I must take from you and give to others more deserving" You got one thing right, life isn't fair and overall that's not my problem nor concern.

This is America, we don't want that kind of thinking here.

 

[Thump553]

I entered my first officially paying job in the late sixties. The fact is the libertarians (believe me they may be the flavor of the month but are hardly a recent invention) and righties have been making the same claim that "Social Security won't be around when you are ready to retire" back then. Too many people have accepted this lie as truth because it is repeated so often.

In 1982 SS was close to insolvent and both parties actually acted together to restructure it and basically fix it. The main hole they left open was rolling the SS "surplus" into the general funds rather than treating it as a seperate trust fund as it should have been. This left an irresistable attraction to members of Congress (from BOTH parties) to spend up that surplus on other expenses-both war and social needs ans well as unfunded tax rebates-rather than be honest in their accounting.

The facts are SS will be around for the twentysomethings as well as being around for me in a decade or so. It's a crying shame that Al Gore's idea of a lockbox (ie, proper trust accounting) for it was widely laughed at and ignored, but the fact is SS will be around as long as the US government is.

To you younger workers, I say be very, very wary of those trying to privatise SS. What they are doing in effect is setting in place a mechanism to absolve the federal government of it's responsiblity to make good on the trust funds it has looted in the past three decades. If SS is privatized and your account tanks due to the stock market or some other market fluctuation, the government and righties will argue it is all your fault.

The neverending effort to privatize SS is, in all honesty, one of the most nefarious schemes to loot the middle class in favor of the ultrarich, all carefully framed in teaparty type patriotic language. Don't be sold a bill of goods.

 

[SunnyD]

I'm not going to see a dime of SSI anyway. Who cares where he puts it?

 

[WackyDan]

To you younger workers, I say be very, very wary of those trying to privatise SS. What they are doing in effect is setting in place a mechanism to absolve the federal government of it's responsiblity to make good on the trust funds it has looted in the past three decades. If SS is privatized and your account tanks due to the stock market or some other market fluctuation, the government and righties will argue it is all your fault.

The neverending effort to privatize SS is, in all honesty, one of the most nefarious schemes to loot the middle class in favor of the ultrarich, all carefully framed in teaparty type patriotic language. Don't be sold a bill of goods.

Bullshit. I can invest in the market and over two years lose money certainly... But invested wisely, over 40 years the fact remains.. the market has always had a positive return. Stop confusing short term gains and losses as something that would play in privatizing SS, because short term losses and gains are not a factor over a span of 40 years.

 

[soulcougher73]

There it is again. Stealing people's money because "they deserve it". And "oh you have enough, I must take from you and give to others more deserving" You got one thing right, life isn't fair and overall that's not my problem nor concern.

This is America, we don't want that kind of thinking here.

Actually its about 50/50 even here Some want it, some dont.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Actually its about 50/50 even here Some want it, some dont.

In a country where over half the people owe no federal income tax I am not surprised by your statement...

 

[Budarow]

There it is again. Stealing people's money because "they deserve it". And "oh you have enough, I must take from you and give to others more deserving" You got one thing right, life isn't fair and overall that's not my problem nor concern.

This is America, we don't want that kind of thinking here.

It's my right to speak my mind and if you don't like it, move to another country where free speech isn't generally free, or at least stop pleading your case that you need ever more to be content in life no matter what happens to anyone else. It's flat out greed you're conveying.

 

[Hacp]

It's my right to speak my mind and if you don't like it, move to another country where free speech isn't generally free, or at least stop pleading your case that you need ever more to be content in life no matter what happens to anyone else. It's flat out greed you're conveying.

What's more greedy? Taking from one man's pockets to feed yourself or working hard and earning enough income to feed yourself?

 

[Budarow]

What's more greedy? Taking from one man's pockets to feed yourself or working hard and earning enough income to feed yourself?

At this point in time, I'm completely indifferent to SS and everyone else's view on "fairness" with respect to SS.

I've paid my actual share of taxes as both a W2 earner and a self-employed business owner for 25+ years and saved a fair amount along the way. So if anyone (to include myself) doesn't get to collect SS, and they didn't save up much $$$$ on the side, that's too bad. And if the rich (you draw the $$$ amount in) need to surrender SS in order to provide "steam control" for the poor, that might just be the way it has to be.

Would it be nice and fair for everyone to collect SS who has paid in? Sure it would. But I'm a planner, so even if SS dries up before I can collect, I should be fine for the most part and the rich should be MORE than fine. There's some SS philosophy for you.

 

[Mursilis]

ROFL.

You guys that think its "your" money once the government taxes it from you are hilarious. Once they tax it and lets not bullshit about the subject, social security tax is a TAX, they aren't sticking your money in an account for you to later spend they are TAXING you and spending it on other shit. At the same time they are currently promising to pay you when you retire by taxing other people at that time. Bottom line, it ain't yo money no mo. They aren't going to give anything back to you and they aren't gonna let you opt out. That would be like being able to opt out of property taxes because you don't use the roads or schools, just not gonna happen. The best you could possibly hope for (assuming you want out of the system) is a complete elimination of Social Security and whatever you have "paid" in you simply lose (benefit being you don't have to pay anymore in).

This is the hard truth so few people are willing to address when discussing SS - the Supreme Court has already stated that SS contributions are, just like Darwin333 says, a TAX (See Flemming v. Nestor), and you have no contractual right to get TAX contributions back from the U.S. gov't. And THAT'S what's wrong with SS - individual contributors don't OWN one cent of their "contributions", and have no contractual right to get anyting at all back. Just like Darwin wrote, it's not YOUR money anymore. There's a reason it's mandatory under the law (with few exceptions) - sane people wouldn't "invest" in the program otherwise.

 

[ShawnD1]

This is the hard truth so few people are willing to address when discussing SS - the Supreme Court has already stated that SS contributions are, just like Darwin333 says, a TAX (See Flemming v. Nestor), and you have no contractual right to get TAX contributions back from the U.S. gov't. And THAT'S what's wrong with SS - individual contributors don't OWN one cent of their "contributions", and have no contractual right to get anyting at all back. Just like Darwin wrote, it's not YOUR money anymore. There's a reason it's mandatory under the law (with few exceptions) - sane people wouldn't "invest" in the program otherwise.

This is really the only way it can be made to work. If people could opt out, they would opt out, not save anything, then they would die broke and homeless.
People really are too stupid to save money. My design teacher is an older gentlemen who stated several times that the only reason he's still working is because he didn't save money for retirement. Eventually he's going to be too old and broken to work, so his government pension would be the only thing preventing him from being homeless.

It really comes down to whether or not you're ok with old people dying in extreme poverty because they are incapable of working and didn't save anything. It's ok if that really is your position on this, but you need to understand what the consequences of destroying SS are.

 

[QuantumPion]

I just don't know how to force personal fiscal responsibility,

You tell them they are on their own. If they completely fuck up, then it is up to their friends/family/church/community to voluntarily help them out. Not force the taxpayers to.

There is no reason to be fiscally responsible when you know the government will bail you out no matter what you do. It's human nature to maximize laziness.

 

[QuantumPion]

It really comes down to whether or not you're ok with old people dying in extreme poverty because they are incapable of working and didn't save anything. It's ok if that really is your position on this, but you need to understand what the consequences of destroying SS are.

The government is not the sole provider for social needs. There are churches and community organizations which voluntarily help poor people without the need for the government to unconstitutionally confiscate their property.

 

[Mursilis]

This is really the only way it can be made to work. If people could opt out, they would opt out, not save anything, then they would die broke and homeless.
People really are too stupid to save money. My design teacher is an older gentlemen who stated several times that the only reason he's still working is because he didn't save money for retirement. Eventually he's going to be too old and broken to work, so his government pension would be the only thing preventing him from being homeless.

It really comes down to whether or not you're ok with old people dying in extreme poverty because they are incapable of working and didn't save anything. It's ok if that really is your position on this, but you need to understand what the consequences of destroying SS are.

First, you're wrong - this isn't the "only way it can be made to work". You're not understanding what I wrote. The fact that SS is mandatory has nothing to do with the fact that SS is also a TAX, without property rights. I don't mind if the gov't makes some sort of 401(k) plan mandatory - I do mind if I'm forced to contribute to such a program, and it's not actually MY money! SS should be privatized such that your contributions remain YOUR contributions, not the gov't's property. Just like a 401(k), SS contributions should remain YOURS, with full inheritence rights, etc. Otherwise, it's just a scam.

Second, stop pretending SS is the only thing keeping seniors off the streets. How many of them don't have families to take them in, or their own private investments, etc.? Seniors as a demographic are quite wealthy, certainly more so than the young workers they're looting.