Posted on 02/19/2010 9:56:15 AM PST by bronkburnett
On Glenn Beck's show on Fox News Channel Tuesday, the discussion turned to how retirement payments from the Social Security System are not sustainable.
There are some who argue that Social Security is in trouble because people are living longer.
Those arguments are absolutely wrong.
The money that should be available for each person has been stolen by politicians for other projects.
This is a simple question: How is it that government employees can pay about the same into their retirement system that the rest of us pay into the Social Security system, yet their retirement plan has no insolvency problems and has higher payouts?
The answer is also simple: No one used those savings of government employees (including elected employees like Congress) for things other than growing their retirement accounts. Therefore, retirement incomes of government employees are not dependent on revenues from the current generation of workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Starting with LBJ and the Democratic Congress of the '60s, our federal government "borrowed" from the huge trust fund in Social Security for other programs. But the government never paid it back. So the government "changed" Social Security to a pyramid scheme where current contributors pay for current retirees. Then, as the effects of negative population growth from the '70s and early '80s decreased the number of workers versus retirees, the government Ponzi scheme fell apart.
The U.S. needs to encourage more childbirth – 2.1 children are needed per family to maintain a population. The U.S. needs to value life more than things or professions and encourage childbirth. Otherwise, this problem will only get worse for following generations.
Social security was always a ponzi scheme. The solution is to eliminate the program. It takes a !@$!&# idiot to think it can be saved..and mark my words, it will not be saved. Social Security will default - probably incrementally, but possibly catastrophically.
Don’t forget the big push by states to transfer welfare recipients from state welfare rolls to SSI during the “welfare reform” of the 90’s.....especially for children.
Two unrelated things happened:
01. ) During World War II Social Security monies were “given” to the war effort with the promise by Big Brother that the money would be repaid. It never was.
02. ) LBJ moved the Social Security funds to the “General Fund” so that the monies could be spent by Big Brother instead of “socking it away” for posterity.
My understanding is that the government owes Social Security $2 Trillion plus. They don’t even pay the interest, let alone the original loan. If it’s going to be a solvent system it must change while keeping the promise made to our seniors. We also have to keep politicians hands off of Social Security. It needs to go back into a true lock box.
I may be wrong but I think Beck has stated more than one time that there is no SS fund in a lock box because the lock box has being raided by the U.S. Gov.
The government wouldn’t dare let SS run out of money. Just because there’s no “trust fund” means nothing, since there never was a trust fund, lock box, or anything else. It’s all on paper. The government will always print money to make SS payments.
Once the interest on the debt dwarfs entitlement payments, stick a fork in us.
Lat I remember, interest on the debt had hit 400 billion a year. That would be 1/5th of the governments total collections from taxes last year.
400 Billion interest (2008?)
2 trillion income (2009)
3.8 trillion budget (Is SS even in budget?)
13 trillion debt
Even new math won’t make this work.
Absolutely right. The first recipient Ida Fuller put $22 into the system, then retired and collected a total of $24K until her death in 1975.
Medicare has gone way over the sustainable amount point. Fraudulent claims by shrewd Doctors, etc. Adding of non paying recipients is drowning us in huge medicare debt. Welfare recipients,, immigrants, etc.
America has totally over a 100 trillion dollar debt NOW. An on going debt of some years plus all the recent (last 11 years) of flagrant free spending.
We are coming to a screeching halt or else. Father God, help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.
I'm aware of this, but what I've never been able to find out is, which programs and which politicians were the first to start the pillaging of our retirement money?
Had I been able to invest my “contibution” wisely, instead of having it pissed away to buy votes for liberal politicians, I’d likely be doing a lot better today.
And the author is wrong ...government employees do not pay nearly enough into their plan to fund it ...it is only solvent because the taxpayer subsidizes it liberally during their retirement with tax dollars.
End of story, he is wrong.
They could also save ALOT of money by performing fraud and undercover operations on “disability” recipients like the worker’s comp insurance companies do and removing these able bodied individuals from the rolls.
The government got their hands on the money and simply couldn't resist stealing it and using the money to buy votes.
If all of the money that has been paid into SS over that past fifty years by the Baby Boomers had been conservatively invested, there would probably be a surplus that would stagger the imagination.
The theft of this money by the government is something that should be hammered into every student in America.
This is the kind of chit that-once understood by the population-will see politicians throughout the country hanging form streetlights.
What do you propose? Stealing from another generation to transfer assets to the victims of a prior generation that benefitted from a Ponzi scheme? Like Madoff’s scam, it has to end. Moreover, it will end. SS and Medicare account for perhaps 90 TRILLION dollars in unfunded liabilities. It shouldn’t and can’t be paid.
“If the program was eliminated, what to you propose with the millions of baby boomers who paid into SS over their life time? Take their losses and move on?”
Yes. Every boomer, including myself must accept that we where hosed by the government. We paid, and the money is gone. It’s not really that hard to understand.
What do you propose that doesn’t involve “printing money”?
That may have been true under the old plan, but it was phased out by the late 80s. Any federal employee starting in 1988 went under the new plan, FERS, which uses Social Security, a 401k type plan (with employer matching up to 5%), and another small allotment sort of like a pension, but not anywhere near what CSRS was. IIRC, it would be less than what SS pays out.
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