Posted on 01/15/2011 10:25:37 AM PST by MostlyAnti-Lib
Some say Social Security will be solvent for decades to come. Others say the Social Security fund is nothing but a bunch of IOU’s. Who’s lying to us? Are they all lying to us?
I contend that, in varying degrees, they all are.
They treat us like school children. They answer our questions with half-truths and little white lies, because, to quote Jack Nicholson, “We can’t handle the truth!”
On Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” recently, Nancy Altman, the Co-director of Social Security Works, stated that there is plenty of money available to fund Social Security for many years to come, and Cavuto rebutted with, in so many words, “No there isn’t”.
And that was it. End of discussion. Cut to a commercial.
Nobody howled, “Well, that’s a darned lie!”. Nobody whipped out a stack of evidence substantiating their claim. The viewer was left sitting there, open-mouthed, wondering, “What did I just see?”
Back in 2003, when the Bush administration questioned the management of Fannie and Freddie, Barney Frank said, “I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis”. In 2008, after the S.S. Fannie and Freddie had hit the sand big time and the country had damn near gone into the dumper, good ol’ Barney was singing quite a different song, but he, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and others came out smelling like a rose (while surreptitiously stuffing millions of dollars in their pockets), while the beleaguered taxpayers pondered, “What the hell just happened?”
The Federal Reserve, with Ben Bernanke at the helm, operates in some kind of Twilight Zone where there is no congressional oversight and no one dares to question the decrees that are formulated behind the closed doors of that august office.
Of course, the manipulation of interest rates by the Fed were instrumental in the housing meltdown, and the current “quantitative easing” and other financial sleight-of-hand measures apparently have unintended consequences that leave the American people asking, in disbelief, “Are they trying to destroy us?”
The incumbent crop of politicians (on both sides of the aisle) certainly appear to be a lost cause, but perhaps we can put pressure to bear on the newly-elected freshmen to live up to their campaign rhetoric and “drain the swamp” (that Nancy Pelosi deepened and made ever more murky) and ask the hard questions that have gone unanswered for decades.
The difference is: Madoff went to jail!
Your post didn’t answer the question. Is social security just IOUs or is there any money in it right now and if so how much?
Its easy to understand. The Congress raided the Social Security “lockbox” years ago. Now its called pay as you go or basically IOU. There is no SS fund, no SS lockbox, no SS trust etc etc. It just gets paid out of the yearly appropriations.
Kind of like “congressional intelligence”.
It is just IOUs.
Learn this. Know it. Tell others.
There NEVER WAS A LOCK BOX. The surplus was ALWAYS SPENT.
The it has always been pay as you go. The scam part of SS was that they tricked us into OVER PAYING. Any payroll tax in excess of the benefits payed out has always been a simple general tax.
Check out: “5 posted on Saturday, January 15, 2011 10:32:30 AM by kabar”.
That’s a better answer than I’ve got.
Thank you!!!
“Is that a rhetorical question or do you really not understand it.”
If you have to ask that question, maybe you don’t understand it.
Maybe you should try reading the whole “rant”.
I didn’t ask about what happened to him (and the government). I asked about what he did (and what the government continues to do [ present tense ])..
IS THE SOCIAL SECURITY LOCKBOX A MYTH?
Of course.
When seniors retire the goods that they consume must be produced from someone else that year. More people on the government, less working, no matter how you try to add it up. If on the other hand, they had been storing grain and TV’s all this time, they would be able to get by on their own. Even if they invested that money in the stock market, they will live off of someone else.
Did you know that about 45% of the $14T debt is SS debt, i.e. money the government owes to itself?
Maybe you could try writing it more coherently.
Demographic killed SS. In fact it was dead in 1965 when the baby boom ended.
Oh, the lock box exists alright. The money fell out and the slot in the top was stuffed with IOUs. The location of the lock box is at the Social Security Office, and I’m sure if you ask for a tour, they’d be happy to show it to you. Ask for Lenny.
Oooooo!!
Good one!!
Here’s another little factoid about SS that everyone misses. It isn’t a contract an any normal sense of the word.
If congress passed the law and the president signed it, SS could be ended tomorrow. No one is “entitled” to any benefits from the program. Courts have ruled on this definitively.
Seriously, your post rambles in a feeble and pointless effort to posit a question that was answered long ago.
So tell us how someone who points out the salient fact that the Trust Fund is not a real asset is lying?
It's an absurd premise that is indicative of your inability to stick to the subject further along.
We both know that Madoff and the government are guilty of the same kind of chicanery, but what in the hell do we do about it if our own guys are pulling the wool over our eyes (or trying to)?
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