Posted on 09/14/2011 2:38:29 PM PDT by Nachum
Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said that most Americans do not understand that federal entitlements are not “bank account” programs that hold their money, adding that Social Security is not even a legal guarantee -- "Legally, they're not even promises." Cooper, asked about potential reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, said that the core problem was that the public does not understand the true nature of entitlements. “Many Americans don’t really realize that Medicare is a government program,” Cooper said at a press conference with fellow Blue Dogs on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Not a big fan of that. So from the time I was 16 to whenever I basically got screwed out of thousands upon thousands of dollars.They can take it out of their Federal taxes i.e. eliminate my Federal deduction.
(I know you're just trying to provide solutions which is more than most of us do on here.)
Has anyone told Al Gore?
A government big enough to give you everything you need is strong enough to take everything you have.
That's just actuarial. If you could get a cash equivalent, the amount you'd need at 62 to pay your reduced benefit, would be the same as the amount you'd need at 65 to support the full benefit, assumning you live to the same expected lifespan.
What part of MY MONEY aren’t they clear on?
But that is the point, it's not your money. Your money was spent when you put it in to support the older generations. IOW it was a Ponzi scheme. :)
What was left over was spent by Congress on whatever they felt like, and they felt like a lot.
“Well then, if the government doesn’t have to pay benefits, then I don’t have to pay into SS. Sure would give me extra money in my pocket. The other thing that sticks in my craw is that we have to wait til 65 to ALL of OUR MONEY. If you apply at 62 you only get 75%. What part of MY MONEY aren’t they clear on?”
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I don’t really kick about that part, after all it is pretty standard in any kind of retirement plan that if you take early retirement you get a smaller monthly check. You couldn’t expect those who wait until 65 and pay more into the plan for those three years while drawing nothing to get the same check as those who retire at 62.
Now the rest of it is crap, including the fact that you have to pay in whether you want to be part of the plan or not.
Well, I was thinking about a scaffold for a hundred or so nooses but the nails might be an amusing alternative. I do insist on having a piece of the ox cart concession, though.
MontaniSemperLiberi, OK let’s look at a few numbers.
the average monthly SSI check is $1,180.80
This amounts to $14,169 per year.
If we use age 65 as a starting point, the average life expectancy of 78 years would mean that we would end up paying a total of $184,204.80 over the next thirteen years per average recipient.
Using twenty million recipients as a guess as to how many might be willing to accept a one-time average buyout of $75,000 each to leave the system we need to borrow 1.5 trillion dollars. Lets say we do this at an annual percentage rate of 3 percent and pay it off entirely in those thirteen years we would otherwise have to send SSI checks out to these folks. Here’s the net result after all is said and done.
Total paid by taxpayers to do this after thirteen years is $1.856 trillion.
Total that would have been paid by taxpayers if no buyout is $3.684 trillion
To me, this seems to be a no-brainer, a 50 percent savings overall.
CommieCutter,
Ending social security would be the best thing financially for those with twenty or more years to start saving on their own. For one, what you save will be yours and no politician could take it from you or whomever you leave it to. Two, as current recipients die off, your rate of taxation decreases until over a period of time you pay no SSI. This is a 15 percent raise over time compared to what you are currently taking home. Investing just this alone would probably match or exceed what you think you might get from Social Security. The ones who end up being stuck somewhat are those who refuse the buyout opportunity and those between ten and twenty years away from being eligible.
At least those who refuse the buyout have a choice. The ten to twenty group won’t get this choice, BUT, they will get reduced SSI taxation so as to enable them to put money aside in their own private accounts. All of these scenarios involve a little sacrifice and a little reward, the primary one being an end to to this awful theft plan so that future generations are not screwed over by it.
Where do we get the $75,000? We have to tax it, borrow it or print it.
“Lets say we do this at an annual percentage rate of 3 percent and pay it off entirely in those thirteen years we would otherwise have to send SSI checks out to these folks.”
Okay, you want to borrow it. I don’t agree with that. We’ve borrowed enough, IMHO.
Frankly SS is not the cause of our deficit today. The cause is excessive spending, ineffective tax cuts (pay roll tax cut is one) and poor revenue from a poor economy.
My plan is pretty straight forward. In any year that SS runs a deficit, the retirement age is increased by three months. Put it on a cash flow basis.
Not entirely true. Many low wage earners never live long enough to collect social security, while many high earners live into their 80’s and 90’s.
The biggest transfer of wealth is from working black men to wealthy white women (shortest lived to longest lived). Many of these women never worked outside the home and receive SS based on their husband’s contributions.
Actually, I suggest folks read the entire decision.
The case states:
The "right" to Social Security benefits is in one sense "earned," for the entire scheme rests on the legislative judgment that those who in their productive years were functioning members of the economy may justly call upon that economy, in their later years, for protection from "the rigors of the poor house as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey's end is near." Helvering v. Davis, supra, at 641. But the practical effectuation of that judgment has of necessity called forth a highly complex and interrelated statutory structure. Integrated treatment of the manifold specific problems presented by the Social Security program demands more than a generalization. That program was designed to function into the indefinite future, and its specific provisions rest on predictions as to expected economic conditions which must inevitably prove less than wholly accurate, and on judgments and preferences as to the proper allocation of the Nation's resources which evolving economic and social conditions will of necessity in some degree modify.
To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of "accrued property rights" would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands. See Wollenberg, Vested Rights in Social-Security Benefits, 37 Ore. L. Rev. 299, 359. It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility that Congress included in the original Act, and 611*611 has since retained, a clause expressly reserving to it "[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision" of the Act. § 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U. S. C. § 1304. That provision makes express what is implicit in the institutional needs of the program. See Analysis of the Social Security System, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 920-921. It was pursuant to that provision that § 202 (n) was enacted.
We must conclude that a person covered by the Act has not such a right in benefit payments as would make every defeasance of "accrued" interests violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The decision continues:
This is not to say, however, that Congress may exercise its power to modify the statutory scheme free of all constitutional restraint. The interest of a covered employee under the Act is of sufficient substance to fall within the protection from arbitrary governmental action afforded by the Due Process Clause. In judging the permissibility of the cut-off provisions of § 202 (n) from this standpoint, it is not within our authority to determine whether the Congressional judgment expressed in that section is sound or equitable, or whether it comports well or ill with the purposes of the Act. "Whether wisdom or unwisdom resides in the scheme of benefits set forth in Title II, it is not for us to say. The answer to such inquiries must come from Congress, not the courts. Our concern here, as often, is with power, not with wisdom." Helvering v. Davis, supra, at 644. Particularly when we deal with a withholding of a noncontractual benefit under a social welfare program such as this, we must recognize that the Due Process Clause can be thought to interpose a bar only if the statute manifests a patently arbitrary classification, utterly lacking in rational justification.
Such is not the case here. The fact of a beneficiary's residence abroad—in the case of a deportee, a presumably permanent residence—can be of obvious relevance to the question of eligibility.
This is actually a fairly narrow decision relating to one specific portion of the Social Security Act.
My plan ends social security altogether in about thirty years and allows folks to create their own retirement nest eggs that thy alone would own. How do you achieve this if at all your way?
Yes, yes you will. Somebody's got to get screwed. People bitching about all they put in and not getting a check act like we have a damn time machine or something.
The money's spent. It's long gone. It could be in a scrapped out Howitzer, a bridge in Kentucky. or could have bought Pampers for some broad's kid on welfare in 1987. But it's gone and there's nothing we can do about it.
And there's possible way by laws of economics and mathematics we can pay people back past a certain point.
So get over it so we can save our nation from economic collapse.
We got people on this country who think it most honorable to sacrifice one's for their country, but they won't sacrifice a damn $1,800 dollar check from the government.
They "worked so hard for so long" and their entitled. They "deserve" it.
Yeah, well I worked hard too, and I deserve to have Alyssa Milano in my bed tonight. You won't see me whining on an internet forum that she isn't ringing my doorbell.
Ya mean like taxation without representation? Too bad for corrupt government.
Like I said, I'd pay to see them tells those that live off what was confiscated from them, they spent it all, on things like freebies, medical care etc, for tens of millions of illegal aliens.
I suggest at that point, those in D.C. build a large wall around that city.
I don’t. Some people won’t save or they will outlive their savings. The penalty for irresponsibility shouldn’t be death.
I’m not into a secular libertarian survival of the fittest future world.
Just a general note to anyone looking to reduce the SS burden who also makes it to the end of this thread. (Includes me.)
A lot of elderly people and near elderly people are very afraid of what the future might bring. I think we should be nice to them when discussing this issue. As right or as wrong as they might be, they are people too and deserve politeness.
Yeah,and they could put their SS check into slot machines and bottles of Jim Beam.
The penalty for irresponsibility shouldn’t be death.
At some level of irresponsibility it always will be. It always was. What you're arguing about is the threshold. The higher the threshold the lower the level of liberty. I think the threshold should be lowered and liberty raised myself.
You’re correct. The Govt doesn’t have to pay me a cent of SS. However, in that case they WILL have to return everything that I and my employers contributed to SS in my name over the last 35 years, of course adjusted for inflation.
No, it would not.
The liabilities of the Social Security Act can be eliminated or changed by mere legislation, and are nothing like bond debt.
In short, if SS payments are not made, it does not affect either the credit rating of the US, nor would it result in any “credit event” causing the payoff of a CDS on US Treasury debt.
The central issues of Flemming v. Nestor, IMO, are two:
1. Is SS a pension, ie, does it create a property right upon which you can collect at the pre-determined age with the right to seek redress in the courts if Congress denies you the benefits you thought were promised?
The answer is “no.” The court described Social Security as a “social insurance” program:
“The Social Security system may be accurately described as a form of social insurance, enacted pursuant to Congress’ power to “spend money in aid of the `general welfare,’ “ Helvering v. Davis, supra, at 640, whereby persons gainfully employed, and those who employ them, are taxed to permit the payment of benefits to the retired and disabled, and their dependents. Plainly the expectation is that many members of the present productive work force will in turn become beneficiaries rather than supporters of the program. But each worker’s benefits, though flowing from the contributions he made to the 610*610 national economy while actively employed, are not dependent on the degree to which he was called upon to support the system by taxation. It is apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments.”
2. The Congress reserved to itself the right to change the Social Security Act (it is in the original legislation, plain as day), and all the court is saying in this instance is that denial of benefits cannot be arbitrary, ie, that they must follow due process in denying them to individuals.
Going through the legislative process and setting the standards by which people can make claims upon the system would meet that test.
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