Posted on 12/20/2007 10:49:56 AM PST by shortstop
Damn Social Security and the thieves who thought it up.
That's my attitude.
As I make a list of reasons why I hate the government, Social Security has to be near the top. It is, for me, the most recognizable and intrusive tyranny in my life.
And that's saying a lot.
We sadly live in a day when the strangling grip of government chokes the life and liberty out of working Americans all across this country. We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.
So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.
But today we're going to talk about Social Security.
And how Social Security has deprived me of my life's dream.
First, the dream. One evening, when I was 19, in a trailer in the Arizona desert near Winslow, I decided I wanted land. Country land. As I stood there talking with my host, he told me about the five acres upon which his trailer sat, and his plans for it.
And it fired my imagination. I thought of all the things you could do with a few acres. And for years I've thought about it. I've read and planned and daydreamed.
I want some country land. Where it rains and the trees grow and you can pasture cows and plant crops and stock your pond with fish. I want chickens and sheep and a woodlot.
I want it for the peace of it, for the hard calloused-hands work of it, for the fruitfulness of it and for the self-reliance of it. It's my heritage, and I'd like it to be my future.
But I am not a man of means. I'm a wage earner. I'm a middle-income guy with a lot of kids and all the money I make goes to supporting my family.
And the government. My family budget has always been pressed toward insolvency by the voracious, thieving hand of government. Year after year I have cut corners and shorted my children while money I've earned has been siphoned away by a government that takes it before I see it. I have less and less and the government takes more and more. All of society is entitled to my paycheck – except me.
And so at 48 I am no nearer my country land than I was at 19.
Which gets me back to Social Security.
I was going through some papers the other day and found that little mailing the Social Security Administration sends out periodically, the one that shows how much of your money they've taken from you, year by year. I looked at the numbers and added them up and the total struck me odd. It occurred to me, looking at the numbers, that I had essentially paid a mortgage over the near 35 years of my working life. A mortgage that, applied to land, would have long since given me my dream.
And my freedom. And a great deal more security and prosperity than Social Security will ever provide.
See, the idea of land is not just some country idyll. It's also a practical objective, a means to an independent end. While the government wants me to be dependent in my old age on a miserly monthly check, I would rather provide myself with the means of self-support.
With just a few acres of land, tillable and forested, I would with simple labor be able to provide myself with food and heat. I could raise and grow what I ate and cut and chop what I burned. I could become at least in part self-sufficient.
And that is a far-preferable retirement plan to a Social Security check. In the name of providing for my old age, the government has taken away my ability to provide for myself in my old age. Instead of investing my income as I see fit – in land or in anything else – it is stolen by the government and put into a Ponzi scheme that has no realistic likelihood of being solvent when it comes my turn to retire. To promise me security, the government must deprive me of liberty.
I have lost the ability to use my own money as I see fit. I have lost the ability to provide for my own retirement. I have lost the simplest right of a free man – the right to live by the sweat of my own brow, and not have it stolen away by a covetous and avaricious government in whose eyes I am little more than a beast of burden.
Country land would provide many of my needs until I grew too enfeebled to work it. Then I could sell it to get myself the care I need. In time I would die, but I would go to my grave having paid my own way and having lived as I chose.
But those are things the government now deprives me of.
I have clung to a dream, and one simple tax has destroyed it. My dream is going into some drunk's SSI check, or into the rat hole of the welfare/bureaucracy complex, the vast industry that lives off the life's blood of Americans who work.
I love my country. I would die for the Constitution. But I hate my government. I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.
We should be free to plan for our old age they way we want. To invest our money in land or a business or in stocks and bonds. We should be free from ridiculous taxes that don't deliver what they promise. We should be free from the socialist dreams of long-dead New Dealers.
But we are not free – we are Americans.
And damn the men who have made us this way.
Excellent rant!
My wife and I are late twenties/early thirties and we are outraged by what is taken from us in socialist security. We pay thousands every year. If I died tomorrow all of the money I paid would be gone.
OUTSTANDING, OUTSTANDING article. Thanks Bob Lonsberry.
The greatest fraud ever FORCED on “free” people.
You are either badly misinformed or in the greatest generation who forced this generational Ponzi scheme on us. Low wage workers without working spouses also do well with social security. Social security is a vast income redistribution scheme. Government has no busines providing retirement income except as a welfare program of last resort. Social security has robbed the typical worker the ability to save for their own retirement. It is not difficult to calculate the wealth that the typical worker would have accumulated if social security taxes (both employee and employer) were invested instead of being taken as taxes. The worst part is that social security will require a combination of massive tax increases and benefit cuts.
Social security returns for those not retired cannot be reliably calculated. Substantial benefit reductions are coming, either directly through increases in retirement age or indirectly through increased taxes and a reduced standard of living. The returns may be much worse than -4%. I prefer direct benefit reductions as the impact on the benefits will be easier to understand. However, the rats prefer indirect reductions so they can hide the real benefit reductions until it is too late. I prefer privatization which form many would be a benefit reduction. However I would have the incentive to fund my own retirement. Social security is a generational Ponzi scheme that will come unraveled in some way.
The money I am putting into Social Security would be approximately $5,000,000 if I were allowed to invest it myself (conservatively). Somehow I don't think I will be living a $5,000,000 lifestyle on my Social Security checks...
In what universe is a tithe (10%) greater than SS payments which are in excess of 12%?
Easy to explain. people who have not paid anything in, but are getting checks every month...
You are partly misinformed. While I agree with your first point about demanding an option to leave social security, your point about sustainable pensions is not accuarate. It is difficult to make a general statement about state and local government pensions because of the wide variance. There are a number of prominent states (California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Washington, and California) with extremely generous pension plans. These plans are just disguised forms of deferred compensation. The amount of deferred compensation could not be replicated with a 401K. The public employee is receiving very high returns with no risk. The 401K employee would need to bear lots of risk to replicate the returns in these defined benefit plans.
Here is my study about the deferred compensation in Colorado pensions.
Abbreviated version: http://www.i2i.org/articles/IB-2007-D.pdf
Full version: http://ssrn.com/abstract=985621
It is unbelievable the responses I have received on this thread.
Apparently, everybody pays Social Security but nobody knows exactly how much comes out of their check. The social security rate is 6.2%, and the employer matches that. Do you REALLY think your employer is going to GIVE you his portion? Be glad he has to pay it to your account.
And besides, I was talking about Lonsberry’s complaint as to how SS screwed up his life, not about social security its self.
.....Bob
Why do you like this insufferable, socialist Ponzi scheme? It is no more than a tool of the hard left to keep us dependent on government, which is cool if you like ever bigger government, but shameful if you call yourself a conservative and honor the Constitution.
Social Security sucks - but get a life!
Ron Paul supports the end of SS, I'd guess.
Well put.
bookmark
If you actually believe that socialist security can last more than 15 or 20 more years you need a serious learning in the nature of money, fractional reserve banking and fiat currency...
One of the primary reasons Nanny G is pulling the inflationary wool over our eyes right now is because if they disclosed the true rate it would bankrupt SSI in a matter of years.
Your right, we work for it but do you know ANYONE who has gotten back ALL of what they put in?
Heh Heh... My grandparents thank goodness, and they're getting out what I put in too which somewhat ameliorates the frustration of the robbery Ponzi scheme...
Additionally, in a quite humorous call summer before last, my Moms father's union contacted him because they didn't believe someone in the union would be collecting the pension 30+ years after they retired!
The worst part is that social security will require a combination of massive tax increases and benefit cuts.
I believe we're already WAY past that point. The magnitude of the unfunded liabilities is such that the only way out is either bankruptcy or inflate their way out and you probably know the preferred way governments always take...
Don’t forget, about 15 years ago there was already a representative calling for skimming 10% off of personal retirement accounts.
I’m not trusting the government as far as I can throw it when it comes to 401Ks or things like ROTH IRAs. They’ll steal from it, or all of it, mark my words...
Did you do the math starting with $300,000 from when you started paying in? If you did you arrived at an erroneous conclusion.
Figure 5% on whatever you paid in the first year only, add that to the second year and multiply 5% and add to the third year etc.
Second that :-)
‘Sup dude?!?!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.