Number one - You don’t get back your own money. It is not an investment but more like you are buying insurance. If it was yours you could ask for a lump sum withdrawal and do with it as you please. Retirees are not getting back what they put in ... that money was spent years and years ago. They are getting other money paid by current payroll deductions. No coloration, not even a realistic analagy.
It was aa scam. Sold to the American people as insurance but argued before the USSC as a tax. History. Social security is paid into the General Fund by payroll deduction. The government sends a note, not even an IOU, to the Social Security Administration stating so-and-so paid so much. The money is deposited into the general Fund and Congress spends it on the bills/expenditures they incur. Be it federal employees salaries, federal building rentals/up keep or ‘gifts’ to their ‘friends’ (like $200k for fruit fly research in Paris, France).
Social Security now includes many many different clauses so people can get the money. Some of who have never ever paid social security. I have also seen people who have earned it and were injured on the job and denied the additional benefits.
Social Security needs major reform. Social Security was never meant to be the sole income in any ones senior years. Reform is needed to care for our citizens, however it is not the governments responsibility to care for citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave’. The social security and other payroll deductions were NEVER the property of the individual who paid it. It is a TAX and as such when it leaves you pocket it is not yours to claim ... it is the government’s.
I think we are saying the same thing except you go into more detail than I did. I do know that when I would inquire through the years I was told I had made the maximum contribution, so someone was keeping up with it somewhere. I also know that when I went to collect they had a few of my records but the most important ones they no longer had, or so they said. Regardless,someone was tracking my contributions even if not very well.
As far as it not being my money, it was my money before they took it. Were it not mine, that I earned, they could not tax it. Were it not mine I would not have to fill out an income tax return and file it with the government. If I owe more than they took I have to pay it. Pay it out of what? My money! If they took more than I owe they give it back. Doesn’t that prove it was mine? Else, why give it back?
I know it is not my actual money in the sense that what they took from me they spent. I said that in my post. I also know that when I deposit cash in the bank and later write a check for cash I am not getting the same money back. They either gave that money to someone else as cash or it went out as a loan. They didn’t put my actual money in a drawer and save it for me. That is silly, but what is the difference in that and what the government did with my SS contributions? If the bank gives out my money and doesn’t get more somewhere else then I am screwed and so are they. The same is true of the government but the government has a printing press and and the banks don’t. Before you pounce, I know it is the Federal Reserve who issues the money in computer transactions, but it is the Federal Mints and printing offices that actually make the physical money.
You are disagreeing without a difference. We said the same thing.