Posted on 11/26/2007 3:00:11 PM PST by Delacon
Older Americans tend to think of Social Security as something we ought to be able to afford. Indeed, many seniors tell themselves that when Washington pours extra cash into the New Deal pension program, the action is something like investing in a new Volvo. The purchase may look extravagant but is, in reality, deliciously necessary. This attitude is also held by some of our most respected pension officials. The longtime Social Security Administration commissioner Robert M. Ball wrote on this page recently that "it's the essence of responsibility, in my view, to insist on no benefit cuts" ["A Social Security Fix for 2008," Oct. 29].
Ball is partially right. American retirees can have a Volvo. There is a way to keep Social Security with no benefit cuts. It is the upgrade that's the problem. There is no way the country can afford a newer model for each new cohort of retirees. Not when the economy grows at a rate of 1 percent or 2 percent or 3.9 percent -- the rate it expanded in the third quarter this year. The reasons for this trace not as much to the New Deal as to postwar authorities, including Ball himself.
Franklin Roosevelt explicitly limited Social Security's commitment, saying in August 1935 that the goal of the new program was not a total pension but "some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family." I.S.C. 9, the legendary pamphlet that laid out the program, likewise delineated a ceiling on Social Security payments through the decades. "You and your employer will each pay three cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever have to pay," it said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Because, damn it, we paid for it!
No you did.
That’s right, I did pay for it.
We forty somethings(and under) are going to have to pay for the boomers and those before who will have put in less than they took out.
As a boomer who has maxed out payments into SS for 30 plus years I won’t recover what I put in if you also figure the interest I would have earned on those dollars at just 5%. You also have to consider my employers has matched my contribution over the same period.
No I won’t be seeing everything I put in.
The generation before us did take more than they ever contributed.
The longtime Social Security Administration commissioner Robert M. Ball wrote on this page recently that “it’s the essence of responsibility, in my view, to insist on no benefit cuts...”
Hmmmmm.... That’s what we’ve been doing for 74 years. So far, it’s not worked, and in fact, that’s what got us into the mess to begin with.
The FDR way was to set the age of retirement a couple of years past the estimated life expectancy.
Raise the retirement afe to 80 and SS is fixed!
In other words, it will buy your food, but it won't pay your rent. Were that goal kept in mind, the fix would be easy.
Rent can be dealt with by your subprime mortgage bailout check, delivered under separate cover. ;)
“The Social Security program might have been able to afford this if American families had continued to produce three, four or five children. But they did not. Families shrank.”
So the New Dealers assumed in their calculations that we would have exponential population growth from then to infinity? Not the brightest bunch afterall.
“Americans have an exaggerated sense of respect for the New Dealers who created the original Social Security model. Questioning them or the Great Society heroes seems impolite.”
Only if you are a rabid liberal.
Don’t worry... The aliens in their UFO’s will save you:
“a much-publicized poll suggested that more members of Generation X believed they would see a UFO than believed that Social Security would help them when they retired.”
“That’s right, I did pay for it.”
So you are saying you paid in as much as you have or will have gotten out before you die? If you died a week ago and this is your ghost typing you can not have PAID for it. Your generation and the ones prior to that AND my own are in the process of spending up all those accumulated ss tax dollars on other things as well. You haven’t paid for your benefits that you may have recieved to date. Your SS money went to pay for a highway built in 1997 or some such. Even if you said that you shouldn’t be faulted for your money being spent on other things, but that you should get back exactly what you paid in for the SS taxes you spent over your lifetime, there is the highest probabilitly that you will spend more than you paid in post retirement. In short, you won’t have paid for it. I will.
“Raise the retirement afe to 80 and SS is fixed!”
Or, stop your SS benefits when you exceed that average life expectancy age at the time you started receiving benefits.
Don’t worry... The aliens in their UFO’s will save you:
I sure hope so. The politicians......wait, that’s who you were referring to.
Oh I question the sense of the New Dealers, The Great Society freaks, and pretty much all the people that set this government up before I reached voting age and then some. They set up a failed system and I don’t see why I should have to pay for it.
The very same congressional blowhards that held Enron up for ridicule and prosecution have misappropriated many thousands of times more. Commingling of funds is illegal, unless one is congressman. D@amn them all.
Lots of people get screwed when it comes to SS. My grandmother for instance.
My grandfather dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of 59. He never saw a dime of his SS. He was self employed and payed in the maximum amount.
My grandmother never earned a paycheck once in her whole life. She lived off their savings untill retirement age, then filed for SS. You know what she got??
THE MINIMUM!
You know why? Because she herself never earned a dime and therefore never paid a penny into SS. The fact that her husband WAS her income and paid the MAXIMUM did not matter. He got nothing back because he died too soon. And she got the minumum and was told to feel blessed for the charity.
That’s bullsh1t in my opinion.
I believe you are correct.
The IRS never should’ve had anything to do with SS taxes. The system was doomed when they did.
We didn’t set it up either and you have to pay for it the same we have for the past fifty years. So go ahead and bitch, it will get you just as far as it got us.
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