Posted on 01/05/2005 2:23:02 PM PST by The Loan Arranger
Prediction: The Social Security debate is going to turn pretty ugly pretty fast.
It's quite civilized at the moment, with reporters and op-ed types jousting over economic assumptions and actuarial rates. But New Year's Day brought a Washington Post report that the coming campaign over Bush's privatization plan will take on the coloration of a full-fledged political war, complete with television ads. Such groups as Progress for America (which spent millions on Bush's reelection), the Club for Growth and the National Association of Manufacturers are planning big-budget campaigns, and the AARP is already spending 5 mil on full-page opposition ads over the next two weeks. Total propaganda spending could easily top $50 million.
Perhaps I'm being a tad cynical, but can charges of lying and distortion be far behind? Shots of seniors standing in soup lines while fat-cat bankers count their cash?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Thought this was referring to last night's Orange Bowl.
The Big Lie is that Social Security is some kind of retirement savings plan.
It is NOT.
Social Security is a socialist income redistribution scheme, nothing else.
Those who are working are taxed to provide a "safety net" for those who are less fortunate.
Originally, this meant retirees and surviving dependents.
Congress has, of course, complicated it far beyond this over the last 65 years.
But one fact remains: it is NOT a "savings plan", it is an income redistribution scheme.
A major facet of The Big Lie is that "we have to do something so that Social Security remains solvent in the future.
Poppycock!
In today's age of modern computerization, the computation for operating an income redistribution scheme that remains perpetually solvent is quite simple:
The only change necessary to the current system is that monthly payments to eligible recipients would be a variable amount, not fixed.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR A MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR "TRUST" FUND!!!
Congress should NEVER have been permitted to confiscate so much money from the American People in the name of The Big Lie. This fund is nothing but a slush fund that Congress raids to pay for other government expenditures. If private sector employers did the same thing with their companies' pension funds, they'd be placed in prison. The "privatization" plan proposed by Bush is merely an attempt by Wall Street brokerage firms and financial institutions to get in on the scam: grab a portion of a constant revenue stream (guaranteed by taxation) from which they can skim their commissions.
The American People need to wake up and put these liars and thieves in prison.
It's going to be a mess. And if it is not handled well, it even could cost the GOP the House in 2006. Possible.
Bravo.
If private corporations tried to run a social security program like our government does, they would all be put in jail for fraud. This government program is run exactly as a scheme that Charles Ponzi tried to run. Our Senators and Representatives have used all of the surplus monies and put Government Bonds in the trust funds that the citizens are obligated to pay for, Not very good stewards of the citizens money. Oh thats right, we don't have an honest money system do we. Abolish the 17th amendment.
LOL! that was as funny as Kim Jong mentally Il singing
in Team America.
Thanks to that great American Larry Flynt destroying Livingston, most Americans still believe in the mystical "trust fund".
I hope honest accounting will be part of the president's final proposal, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm young and realize I won't see any of it anyway. I'd be willing to just accept the fact that the government stole it along with the income taxes I pay and just walk away from it. I don't want to pay in. I don't expect ANYTHING to be given to me when I get old. No one owes me anything, especially not strangers.
Great post. Too bad even most Republicans won't say what you said in public. They need that phony slush fund to make the "deficit" appear smaller.
If we did that, then Senators wouldn't be able to retain their power by buying votes from the people. Do you really want to go there? What exactly do you want them to be? Statesmen? Advocates for their states? /sarcasm off
We'll see it get really messy, rhetoric-wise, right here, as well. Will be interesting to read the threads once the political players start sending up trial baloons.
Me? I'm for saving this creaky old ponzie-scheming, socialist income redistribution plan. The trick is how?
That's fine. But millions of us have had a large portion of our incomes confiscated over the years. If they want to end this thing, no problem, but they either pay it back or there would be *&#@* to pay.
Bottom line here is, government continues to proceed unchecked and out of control. These governments, states AND the feds have totally mismanaged government to the point where it's eventually really going to start hurting a lot of people.
We are suppose to be a free people, and then you look at your taxes. It tells a complete different story.
You're absolutely right.
I fear that this issue could even divide Freepers into rich v. poor, young v. middle age v. old... And this is normally a very hard thing to do.
I'm NOT looking forward to reading the threads. I least hope we can ALL agree that the program is so screwed up that we shouldn't have to be having this debate in the first place.
Yep, you've been ripped off. I'm all for paying those who want to stay in. Find the money by cutting spending. That's what I'd do.
We are suppose to be a free people, and then you look at your taxes. It tells a complete different story.
Absolutely. You ever read Frederic Douglas' autobiographies? There's a story in there about how he was a skilled laborer. He caulked boats/ships. He was still a slave then. He was let off his owner's property to go find work for himself during the week. He'd make $7 to $9 bucks a week, negotiating his own contracts. That was good money at the time. On the weekend he had to go back to his master's place and hand over everything he made. His owner said Douglas got a fair deal because his food, shelter, and clothing were provided for him. Inside Douglas plotted his eventual, successful run to freedom. I remember this story every time I look at my paycheck or write a check out to the tax man.
Too many US citizens are happy houseslaves who like the clothes, food, and shelter and not enough like Douglas.
And, just because things get misunderstood in a text-only environment, I don't mean any of that about you or anyone in particular.
I think Pres. Bush is on the right track, though it will take a long time. I think what's really needed is to officially turn it into what everyone mistakenly thinks it is now, a retirement savings plan, rather than what it was designed to be, a worst case safety net.
A real plan would mean everyone contributes 100% of social security money to personally owned retirement accounts, which could be invested in conservative stock, bond, and CD options. This has been a great success in Chile.
The problem is, proposing mandatory 100% private retirement accounts would inspire the Democrats (including their media wing) to new heights of virulent propaganda, and their lies would scare seniors to death. It couldn't pass.
If we get 2% going to private accounts, though, year after year people will watch their accounts go up, and the pressure will build for 5%, 50% and eventually 100%. Especially when people notice that the government is cutting their guaranteed benefits to offset the extra income they're making in the private accounts.
With respect to this subject, I think quite of few of us, me included, should translate this into a tagline. :)
Too many US citizens are happy houseslaves who like the clothes, food, and shelter and not enough like Douglas.
Your point was well and truly made, I think.
But Douglas' later life also shows a dependence upon the government, I think. When he accepted the presidency of the failing Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, he invested his own money to prop it up and called upon the government to help out with additional funding. It failed anyway. He also accepted political appointments which eased his financial situation a bit, including Recorder of Deeds in Washington D.C. Whether or not he could have supported his autobiographical writing without the patronage, I don't know.
And where is the government supposed to get the money to do that?
The money the government has taken from you over the years has mostly been paid out to Social Security recipients. For all practical purposes, it's gone.
The fundamental question is whether it would be more just for the government to stiff you (basically admitting that it stole the money you were forced to "invest"), or whether it would be more just for it to pay you back by taking money from someone else.
What people need to realize about SS is that its fundamental mode of operation is to pay off existing "creditors" by borrowing from new ones. Originally, the people it was paying off weren't creditors in any real sense--they were just people to whom the government gave free money. In later years, though, more and more of the SS recipients have been people who were forced to pay large amounts of money "into" the system, and as such they are "owed" repayment.
If someone continuously moves credit card debt from one card to another, it's possible to avoid delinquency and satisfy all of one's obligations as long as one can keep borrowing more money. The size of one's total debt will grow exponentially, but its effect on one's cash flow may be negligible as long as one can keep borrowing.
The important thing to realize in such a situation is that repaying the debt costs nothing, but cycling it costs enormously. To be sure, repaying the debt will have a huge impact on cash-flow whereas cycling it does not, but unless one plans eventually to default on all the debt, every dollar of cash flow diverted toward debt repayment will represent more than a dollar that won't someday have to be used for that purpose later.
The Democrats try to portray privatization as an action that will "cost" zillions of dollars. The reality is that it will cost hardly anything but will force the government to acknowledge and start to repay a huge debt that has hitherto been largely ignored. Repaying the debt isn't an expenditure. The money was spent when people were given payments that were grossly disproportionate to what they put in. The question now is how it will be repaid.
You nailed it, Willie........SS is nothing but a government perpetuated and enforced Ponzi scheme.
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