Posted on 07/03/2014 11:57:08 PM PDT by quesney
Obamacare has pushed us over the entitlements tipping point. In 2011 some 49.2 percent of U.S. households received benefits from one or more government programs—about 151 million out of an estimated 306.8 million Americans—according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last October.
Currently, around 6 million to 7 million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare are receiving taxpayer-provided subsidies (though the administration’s numbers cannot be trusted, it’s all we have to work with). There are another 3 million who have signed up for Medicaid.
That means some 10 million Americans—or a total of about 161 million—are now getting government subsidies (though the final number might be somewhat lower since some may have been receiving benefits already).
Thus, perhaps 52 percent of U.S. households—more than half—now receive benefits from the government, thanks to President Obama. And Mr. Entitlement is just getting started. If Obamacare is not repealed millions more will join the swelling rolls of those dependent on government handouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Still in the chump category over here.
Point is - there’s no lockbox or anything where your contributions were saved. They spent it all.
The money that goes to pay for your benefits come straight from the government, which gets it from an ever-shrinking number of working taxpayers. Whatever you “contributed”, it’s effectively a government benefit that can be changed at the whim of politicians and the general public.
It’s not your private property. It’s not “yours”. It’s a government entitlement that is as hollow a promise as every other political promise that’s going to go belly up as the US economy continues to decline and the government runs out of other people’s money.
Happy Dependence Day!
“If you listen to a few of the gen-x/y/z FReepers, you/me are just as big a leech as the inner city zombies with Obunga-foams. To them, there is no “earned it” if they think they have to pay for part of it. They do not care how much we paid into it with years of income, blood, whatever.All they care about is getting out from under it.”
It’s sad, but true, and I’m afraid the tension is going to get worse as the pie shrinks and everyone finds it harder to survive. It’s going to get very ugly over the next few years and the safest thing to do will be to count on yourself and the friends and family around you and prepare for the worst.
Much of the American “economy” right now is the land of the dying or the living dead.
” All they care about is getting out from under it. “
Can you blame them - system will be even worse (probably non-existent) for them. They’re basically pouring their income into a black hole.
I still object to it being lumped in with the welfare herd. I have been paying into Social Security since I was 14, and I'm a great-grandpa now (still not retired). With the boom/bust cycles in my industry over the decades, the money I paid into Social Security is as much as I have been able to set aside for retirement (and keep there).
I have paid more in income taxes in just the last 5 years than that amount (well over), so count that, too. Somehow, the stigma of "entitlement" doesn't fit. It isn't like I was some illegal who popped up to draw benefits--I've been paying in for half a century.
One very important distinction about Social Security. From day one, the money taken from employees and employers to fund the program was in no way a “contribution.” It was and is a TAX. It is SEIZED at the point of a gun.
There is no “contribute” to it.
There was a guy on here, I intentionally dis-remember his screen name, who flat out said that the military and veterans were no better than mercenaries and were paid what they deserved when they were in uniform and should get not one more red cent. Are you of the same opinion?
From a legal standpoint, quesney is correct. There are no private property rights attached to Social Security. But you are correct as far as perception goes. Everyone who worked in the private sector paid in to it. Therefore it isn’t “welfare.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor
Mittens was "right" but Obama, even with his first-term record, was re-elected.
To call Social Security, a mandated theft of part of my lifetime earnings, a benefit is like calling an orange jumpsuit a benefit of being in jail.
When tipping points are reached, things tip over. We have reached the tipping point. It's over.
I still object to it being lumped in with the welfare herd. I have been paying into Social Security since I was 14, and I’m a great-grandpa now (still not retired). With the boom/bust cycles in my industry over the decades, the money I paid into Social Security is as much as I have been able to set aside for retirement (and keep there).
I have paid more in income taxes in just the last 5 years than that amount (well over), so count that, too. Somehow, the stigma of “entitlement” doesn’t fit. It isn’t like I was some illegal who popped up to draw benefits—I’ve been paying in for half a century.[/i]
Please don’t misunderstand me, and I don’t think you do, but just to make sure I’m clear: I’m not talking about what’s right/deserved. I’m talking about reality. The reality is, from a purely financial perspective, there is no “pension fund”. There is no savings safebox where everything you contributed has been held. It’s all been spent.
The money being paid to social security beneficiaries comes out of general tax revenue paid by an ever-shrinking number of ever-poorer, ever-more-burdened (on average) working taxpayers. From a pure, financial-reality perspective, it’s a government benefit and, politically, will be treated as such. The government is using other people’s money to pay your benefits. It’s not drawing on any secured stash of your past contributions - those contributions are all gone.
Government benefits are government spending paid for tax revenue from current taxpayers (and borrowing).
The time to argue about that is long past, after years of government spending more or taxing less and saving less than it should have and never treating your contributions as your property in the first place.
Is it right, no? Is it reality, yes. Is it going to get uglier, absolutely. Brace yourself.
There is no “contribute” to it.
Absolutely right. It’s not like a mutual fund or a savings account that remained your property. Your property was taken and spent.
“I believe most receive a social security check. That would be an earned benefit that was not optional.”
I agree that people have been forced to contribute to this, and thus are entitled to something. I do take issue with the fact that 1) I’m being warned by my government that the funds coming out of my check today, while being given to current retirees, will not be available for my retirement (what do I owe them?), and 2) the same government (regardless of which head of the Republocrat hydra is in office) distorts inflation figures so that it doesn’t have to meet its true Social Security obligations.
I am maintaining a standard of living for current retirees that will not be reciprocated when I retire in a few decades; it is cold comfort that the government is offering legal avenues for older people to off themselves...
I think the military is the only part of our government I respect, but that doesn’t change the financial reality I described. Is it fair? Obviously not. But this is the mess, blown up over decades, by the irresponsible politicians we collectively voted for.
G*d save America, because it doesn’t look like Americans will.
There is a real distinction between the legal issue and the practical political issue. Everyone knows about the legal status of SS.
But the “implied contract” was that if you worked and payed into it, you would collect at retirement.
“From a legal standpoint, quesney is correct. There are no private property rights attached to Social Security. But you are correct as far as perception goes. Everyone who worked in the private sector paid in to it. Therefore it isn’t “welfare.””
Let me see if I can make a clearer distinction here.
It is different from other government benefits in that you contributed to what you might have thought at some point was a secure, protected pension that was virtually your private property.
But it exactly like other government benefits in that, because what you contributed was **stolen/raided/spent***, the money to pay your social security comes directly from other currently working taxpayers.
The burden to those taxpayers is the same as the burden to them of funding other government benefits. And that burden is going to grow - dramatically - in the years to come.
“Welfare reform was passed in the 90’s and signed into law by President Clinton. It limited lifetime benefits. I was there when it happened, teaching recipients how to look for work at the state unemployment office. Many of those women finally decided to go to work.”
I remember that as well; it was sad to see how ill-prepared many of them were for the workforce. The lasting legacy of the 1996 welfare reform will be the drop in the black birthrate; within a few years Hispanics, who had been predicted to pass blacks in numbers by 2010, had pssed them ten years earlier than that. “Anglos” should have seen the writing on the wall at that point; they are still being fed absurd projections to prevent a panic or reaction.
Bingo - many of the posts here make that point even more effectively. It’s over, and there is no chance of a reset without a painful collapse.
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