Posted on 01/22/2004 8:51:58 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:11:24 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"History is bunk," said Henry Ford, and today's deficit hawks are just as disinclined to use the past for divining the future, at least as far as the national debt is concerned. True, these economists say, the United States has managed chronic indebtedness in the past and, yes, long-term interest rates remain relatively low. But the US economy has never experienced anything such as the demographic time bomb it will confront over the next few decades, when baby boomers retire.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Naturally, I'll be like every other old person, and scream and howl and beat on a fleeing politician's car to get what I want.
However, cap the amount of employer contribution to what it is now. Otherwise, alot of companies will shut down.
That's the only immediate solution I can see right now to this mess.
And let our younger generation pick and choose where they want their hard-earned dollars to go and phase out this illegal pyramid scheme.
First, Instead of the ridiculous ever increasing FICA wage base, (87,900) this year, remove the threshold, and collect from every dollar paid. (half mil home/half mil in assets, you shouldn't need to collect.)
Second, Immediately institute Means testing at 1 million dollars of net worth...(half mil home/half mil in assets, you shouldn't need to collect.)
Thirdly Privatize without delay, starting with the Full employee share, then slowly phase the employer share from gov't reciept to employee reciept on a fixed and unalterable schedule, as you means test people out of the program.
And for those that dont like it (mid forties and over) F*** them, as a segment of society they have been voting for 30 years or more and have ignored the problem, and let politicians do the same.
Are you sure you're on the right web site?
How about we sell this:
) They didn't means test the low income folks who get more than they contributed so they shouldn't means test the people who work hard and manage to be responsible for their own retirement.
I am sugesting that those most responsible do the heavy lifting while society cleans up the mess the helped perpetuate...and if you consider being responsible and providing for your own retirement, counting on continued government largesse with other peoples money, then you are directly responsible for the current situation, after all it has been clear for over 20 years that there are no inherent property rights in the system, and , allowing Socialist Insecurity to be the so called Third Rail of American Politics, until Bush ran is an unconscionable Denial of reality
It's been theft since day one. However, that having been said, you cannot transition cleanly...And my previous post pointed out the eventual demise of the theft based system. I am only suggesting the most painless way to get there.
Perhaps you shjould go back and re-read my original post, this was my starting point (Cato, not the idea itself)
The remaining 6.2 percentage points of payroll taxes will be used to pay transition costs and to fund disability and survivors benefits. Once, far in the future, transition costs are fully paid for, this portion of the payroll tax will be reduced to the level necessary to pay survivors and disability benefits.
So the employee gets shafted out of what is currently considered a form of compensation...? Personally, I think it should go 50/50 net after OASDI... (If OASDI=1.2% on all compensation extended w/no ceiling 3% to the employee, 3% to Profits....everyone benefits, and no one has a gripe about having gotten screwed, for instance keep in mind the following situation..., a Republican President giving the 6.2 after netting back to corporate america.....Never gonna happen....two words Electoral Liability.)
And going one step further, those that were willing participants in perpetuating this system, should bear some of the lifting, not just those transitioning to private accts.(and assuming risk/liability is a cost)... Hence the 1 mil NW means test, and the lift of the ceiling. In case you missed that lecture in childhood, Responsibility entails cleaning up a mess you create.
I am intimately familiar w/the Cato data, it is my starting point for all research/and or theorizing.....
Immoral? For allowing the theft to continue on their watch? For assuming that the Government would screw whoever comes behind them, while they wallowed on in ignorance or worse, complicity ?
They surrendered LEGAL rights to the money at the ballot box, And if you are over a mil in net worth being means tested out will bring down your SoL a bit, but you aren't going to the poor house.
Allowing a single generation, in the course of just several years, to sell off significant amounts of public lands will also create an unfair burden on the following generations. Such a process will have its own share of injustices and corruption.
The solution for a program which is unjust and failing is not to make it bigger, but to make it smaller. Immediate cessation of benefits would work a hardship on people.
Let's not worry about how fair the present limits or shape of the program is, but just leave it alone. The transition should take place over twenty years. Each year, the benefits and burdens decrease by 5% of present levels. Those who fall through the SS safety net can hoof it down to the welfare office and make their case. There thay can compete will single-mother, high-school dropouts who have also failed to plan for their futures.
In twenty years, the Ponzi scheme will be over.
What you are in effect saying, is "Person A allowed his money to be stolen , all these years, Thinking that Person B would come along and tolerate it so he could get paid too.....
I have a newsflash for you SCOTUS has already decreed quite clearly that you are owed NOTHING in retirement funding from Socialist Insecurity. To Wit
One of the most enduring myths of Social Security is that a worker has a legal right to his Social Security benefits. Many workers assume that, if they pay Social Security taxes into the system, they have some sort of legal guarantee to the system’s benefits. The truth is exactly the opposite. It has long been law that there is no legal right to Social Security. In two important cases, Helvering v. Davis and Flemming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Social Security taxes are simply taxes and convey no property or contractual rights to Social Security benefits. (Guess where that came from....)
Now, if you are a HNW individual, and all of this time, you allowed it to go on, why is it that you should not be asked to shoulder the burden of your mistake. (and lets be clear on this. I am 40, and would means test out, if my idea magically became law overnight....)
That is precisely why means testing HNW individuals out of the program, while starting privatization (Which will hopefully put everyone beyond the means test threshold in time) is the way to Transition the system.
It's called Responsibility.
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