trek, AlexW, I watched the interaction between you too, and all I can say, is finally someone (trek) gets it.
Social Security was never insurance, and never was workable. No matter what you do in life, you MUST account in terms of labor worked. Because, you see, that’s the only thing that matters. It matters not whether something is termed in oyster shells, dollars, beads or trinkets, what matters it what it takes to produce the goods you use. And while dollars may make that more easily convertable, it always must be understood that behind every asset valued in dollars, there is a corresponding principle of labor in hours worked.
Now then, having said that, the entire concept of social security is not only stupid, it would take the most ignorant of persons to think it even CAN work (It CANNOT). The fact of the matter is that for everyone living off of a pension, security, dividend, and whatever else, someone else must be producing (or have produced) in order for that first person to live off of the “benefit.” Presumably, for social security to work, a person would have to give up one half of their living (measured in man hours) for an equivalent amount to the time desired to live while producing nothing (Never happened nor will), or a corresponding ratio (ie. 25% for 40 years would yield 10 years of ease). Or, someone else is paying for the benefit (slave labor), while the first is living in ease. That has been the case during the entire time of social security’s existence, from those first beneficiaries down until now (since it NEVER was the case that folks paid half of their incomes, for half of their adult lives, nor even 25%). Nor does this facter the loss of money to Social Security disability or survivor benefits, althout to be fair, Social Security was SUPPOSED to supplement your own savings for retirement, but anyone intelligent enough to know that and act on that fact, and prepare, also knows that the Social Security program can’t work, and probably doesn’t rely on it for anything.
Furthermore, the U.S. ran out of money decades ago, and since we are running a deficit, it’s not even our own populace who is slaving away for social security, it’s the foreigners buying our debt. We have been losing, not saving, not investing, not hoarding, not preserving, but losing TRILLIONS over the years. This represents millions and billions of man hours of work. The rest of the world is tired of paying for our deficits (If the seniors had truly been forced to pay for the country’s deficits through taxation, they would have cared enough to stand up decades ago). The collective youth (under 40) in our own country are tired of being financially pillaged for someone else to live in ease, whether it be open welfare recipients or social security takers. I have met few seniors who are worried about the burden they so willingly place on society through the pillage by proxy of Social Security, Medicare, et al. As another Freeper put it “They’ll say they’re fighting to save their grandchildren from the debt, while happily placing the burden on someone ELSE’s grandchild.” Eventually the youth being forced to pay for the distibution of wealth are going to get really ticked off, it’s already happening, worldwide. Unfortunately, the Elitists and Communists are directing the very appropriate anger, and channeling it towards the wrong ideas (namely to steal, or “tax,” from the middle and production classes, what was stolen by the elites—the communists and politicians themselves).
Social Security is stupid, and unpaid for. There is No money. No one is entitled to social security (Communism by any other name), and it’s going to end, and the sooner the seniors quit acting entitled, the sooner they can prepare for the future. Because the smart choice is to repent of the evil they’re trying to foist upon everyone else, and ask for financial help in sackcloth and ashes, if that’s what they need. In any event since communism (Including the idiotic “Social Security”) never has worked, and never will work, the debate is over, either the social security is abolished, or the nation defaults (and I’m not talking about the debt ceiling nonsense, I’m talking Weimar Republic), and social security is abolished. Because while fiat money makes hiding the fact (that communism doesn’t work) easier, eventually it all boils down to the amount of labor required. And the labor required to pay for an hundred million people (eventually) to not work, is BILLIONS of hours of labor. And someone has to perform that. There is none saved up. It’s time to get real and end this idiocy.
In any Ponzi scheme the amount of the fraud is the difference between the total amount of money collected from the marks minus the amount returned to the marks to maintain the charade. How kind of the Federal Government to make this number available to us. If memory serves the number for Social Security is on the order of two trillion dollars. This represents the net tax revenues raised by the payroll tax not paid out to beneficiaries and therefore available to the politicians to buy votes by other means. This should reveal to all but the willfully blind why this fraud has had such powerful bipartisan appeal.