Well at least the better half.
Posted on 03/08/2011 1:51:02 PM PST by kcvl
Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.
Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”
The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
The one just about to retire. We’ve worked to pay into social security for our parents and grandparents (most of whom paid little or nothing into it). Our fathers died young and collected nothing. We supported Johnson’s Great Society Give Away for all our lives with little or no say in who or how the money should be directed. We just worked. There won’t be a retirement for most of us — just the silence of the grave — all so that other could act without consequences. We were good little scouts. We followed the rules and got what? You tell me.
In reality this will bring as in Europe a luke warm dimly lit economy that just sort of malingers and goes no where slowly. In the macro: Market inefficiencies grow, innovation slows, customer service/orientation goes lost, flexibility/adaptability decreases. You end up with a very safe place that guarantees everyone minimums and assures the masses are destined to a form of benevolent and soft tyranny. We all end up with the right to a mediocre education, a shoddy compact car and cheese box home but denied the opportunity to live free and break from the mold living our own lives the way we want.
Freedom in America has degenerated in meaning. Today it means no more than a complete and unrestricted sexual and reproductive freedom in complete disregard of all other considerations and a right to certain services administered by the state and federal governments. Sad but true reality of the nation that once called itself the home of the brave and free.
“The government took my money for over 40 years, over three million dollars worth and I’m getting about 2 grand a month and you say it’s my turn at the teat.”
So I guess expecting a “thank you” would be out of the question?
The reaction of some on this thread is exactly why we’re never going to solve this without default.
People tend to get angry when they realize that they are the last ones to figure out that they’ve been ripped off their entire lives, and there is nothing left for them.
Naw, most of us figured that out years before you posted on FR. What's irritating is little craps coming on FR years later and telling us the train is coming to an end.....and telling us to suck it up........pfffffff.
Knew 40 years ago not to depend on social security and took steps that I wouldn't need it (worked my a$$ off).
I'm still mad as hell at being forcefully robbed by our political crooks.
Well duh! You're a genius. LOL!
At my Walmart most of them are too obese to work, are on "disability" and drag baskets full of junk food while riding scooters because they are too fat to walk.
If food goes up much more, I think I'll apply for food stamps.
What’s irritating is little craps coming on FR years later and telling us the train is coming to an end.....and telling us to suck it up........pfffffff.
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OK then ,,, I’ll just say “take it like a man.”
Well at least the better half.
If you count the percentage of people who receive government handouts, it’s already over 50%. It appears they have already won.
“Naw, most of us figured that out years before you posted on FR. What’s irritating is little craps coming on FR years later and telling us the train is coming to an end.....and telling us to suck it up........pfffffff.”
I’m sure that is irritating. But if you just figured it out in the past decade, you’re one of the last ones to figure it out. I figured it out, with my dad’s help when I was 11, nearly 40 years ago.
You aren’t the only one to get screwed. Everyone who has ever worked hard and paid their taxes has gotten screwed. So try not to pretend you are in an exclusive club.
In the gym yesterday I stopped to talk with a very young man who was lifting some weights that looked much too heavy for his small frame. He told me he had recently received a bachelor’s degree, he majored in marketing but he said that the only job he has found is working through a temporary agency doing something that a child could do and earning nine fifty per hour. He said that when he started out to earn that degree recent graduates in marketing were starting out at seventy thousand a year. The maximum for unemployment compensation here is SC is lower than in some states but still almost equal to what this young university graduate earns working forty hours a week. He is doing the sort of work that used to be done by someone with a fourth grade education.
I'm on my second career, and second retirement, non funded by the gov, SS nor medicare. I'm taking it like a man.....see you at work.
Sad but true. Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme just like Maddoff’s investment business. If people want to get angry, they should go to their parents’ graves and scream til they are blue in the face. People getting Social Security in the 30s through the 70s and perhaps into the 80s are the ones who got a windfall. The anger amazes me too. No one is saying get rid of Social Security. The most anyone is talking about—even the “radicals”—is cutting back on benefits for the wealthy and raising the retirement age. And yet alleged “conservatives” scream bloody murder about this based on some illusion that they “paid in” and thus should get full benefits. Unfortunately, the nature of a Ponzi Scheme is that someone is left holding the bag and it is us. And I love the assumptions that I’m some young kid trying to screw the older generation. I’m a 50 year old man who has paid a ton of taxes and has no illusion that I’m going to “get back what I paid in.”
“I’m still mad as hell at being forcefully robbed by our political crooks. “
As everyone should be, not just the folks who get the inter=generational transfer payment checks.
“...can you enter the work force without paying the social security tax?”
Yes, you can. Local and State government workers for the most part are exempt from Social Security. Some of the pensions are fully funded, supported by real assets from contributions that are roughly equivalent to Social Security taxes. Some are Ponzi schemes. I recommend doing your homework on any retirement fund before joining that work force.
Plan B is to study for the Seminary, many preachers are exempt.
Plan C is to go underground and buy and sell using cash or barter for a living without reporting proceeds to the Government.
Problem solved.
Sounds great.
Unfortunately there are a sh!tload of folks receiving SS who never paid a penny.
That is one of the problems with the system.
I'm 50 bro......already have one private pension down and one to go......I haven't relied on the gov for diddly......for obvious reasons.
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