That's reality.
/johnny
I see your point but to call it an entitlement is pushing it. An entitlement basically means the government passed a law “entitling” you to certain things (such as SS) but you paid for it - you are entitled to your own money. Kinda sounds weird.
SS is an entitlement paid out of the general fund. The SS taxes you were forced to pay at gunpoint were stolen and put into the general fund and spent.
That’s reality.”””’
PLEASE explain in very complete detail how that is anywhere near the fault of the seniors who paid into the fund for all of their lives.
Democrats stole the money out of the Social Security fund when they started the massive Welfare system under President Johnson. This was the most massive wealth transfer ever in the USA.
Where do you think they got the money to pay for all the welfare, food stamps, WIC, Section 8 housing, free medical, free legal, free meals at school and most recently-—FREE Obamaphones??????
They stole the funds that all of us who were working had paid into and they kept on doing so.
SO-—PLEASE explain how any of us seniors are responsible for this empty fund?
By law, (quaint notion that laws actually are followed) the SS funds received in excess of what is needed to pay current recipients, can only be used to invest in these bonds. These bonds become part of the national debt.
Back when Reagan was in office the percentage amount paid in was raised. This additional amount was to be invested so that there would be sufficient funds in the system to pay for the baby boomer's retirement.
Hence the baby boomers became the first generation to pay in for their parent's generation as well as for themselves. IIRC, SS was an “off budget item”, but when Clinton and Gingrich worked out their compromise, it was put “on budget” so that it would make the deficit appear smaller.
The bonds were not actually cashed, they were still in their special account on the books. Whenever SS receipts are less than what is required, the Treasury redeems the bonds and this reduces the national debt.
That's why the threat to withhold the SS payments is so bogus. Right now there are sufficient bonds for the government to pay social security with out raising the debt ceiling.
Down the road when the so called trust fund (special bonds) runs out, everyone will get an approximate 25% reduction in the amount of their social security check, unless something changes. Maybe more, if the jobs don't come back to provide current payments into the system.
Most countries have already switched from this “Bismark” system to a “private” system. So it's a sad state of affairs. Even sadder when you realize that the government has already effectively given everyone a reduced amount of their check through the mechanism known as QE.
This decreases the purchasing power as surely as an outright cut in the dollar amount would do. Yet many people don't understand it well enough to know it.
So all the while that the politicians are pretending to stand up for Seniors, and saving Social Security, they are just being first rate con artists all the while letting monetary policy steal the buying power.
They are also making the stock market appear to be doing great, implying that business is great. Not true. The purchasing power of the dollar is going down. Hence the price to buy shares of stock is inflated to reflect the inflation.
It's a mess to be sure. I am not sure that even if Washington sincerely tried to solve this mess, it could even be done. There's a tipping point-a point of no return for a country who follows loose fiscal policy and inflationary monetary policy. We are more than likely past that point.
Pay off all the debt you can, and invest in non-monetary assets, I suspect things could get worse before they get better.