Krauthammer pi$$es me off sometimes but when he’s on he’s DEAD ON!
Someone here educated me last week on life expectancy numbers. They are much higher now because the infant mortality rate is so much lower. If your life expectancy figures for today and a hundred years ago only inlude people who make it to, say, age 18, people really are not living all that much longer.
Heck, the bible says the life of a man is 70 years. Those that don’t die in childhood, that is.
“Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme. So what? It’s also the most vital, humane, and fixable of all social programs. The question for the candidates is: Forget Ponzi — are you going to fix Social Security?”
Excellent question, especially for those who have paid into it for 35 or forty years at gunpoint, not out of greed, which of course, is the point of the article. This is far worse than a Ponzi scheme.
The headline is enough to make you pretty angry. I first thought it meant he was saying so what, like it was no big deal. You can’t read his stuff lightly, can you? The mandatory component of this is what really should make people riot, with ZeroCare on the way. It compounds the Ponzi felony. We weren’t enticed by profits, we were robbed at gunpoint. Just as we will be with ZeroCare.
You don’t ‘fix’ a Ponzi scheme. OK so it will just be a slightly better ponzi scheme?
We need a system of private accounts where each person has his own account invested in CD’s and bonds. We have tried to argue for this before. But I would NOT however do the whole stocks thing because 1) we have 401k’s for that and 2) Democrats will not be able to demonize CD’s, bonds and money markets.
Once that ‘risky stock’ argument goes away, how can they argue against a fully funded system that still makes more money than SS and can be passed down to your heirs?
SS is a Ponzi scheme insofar as most participants have the impression it’s a “money in -> money invested -> money out” plan, that somehow it’s their money they put in which they’re getting out (with paltry interest, of course).
SS isn’t a Ponzi scheme insofar as the “investment” form is long gone (if it ever existed; I’m still researching that), at it is nothing more than a straight “you pay money in today, someone gets money out tomorrow” redistributive tax, and anyone exerting any attempt to understand the program understands this.
The former amounts to felony fraud, the other amounts to normal taxation.
The difference is mere semantics. Which you choose depends only on whether you’re a member or target of the coming lynch mob.
Either way, we soon won’t have enough money coming in to pay money going out, and that point is a lot sooner than alleged because the so-called “trust fund” bonds in question are paid out of the general fund which is already spent twice over.
As usual, Krauthammer defends sociopaths.
Social security is an intergenerational money transfer
that was screwed up by corrupt people for whom
there is neither accountability nor transparency.
It is NOT a Ponzi scheme but has been made one by
corrupt individuals and THEIR schemes.
Then why haven't they fixed it? Bush tried, and it got shot down. Thus far, it is has been a political poison arrow. I hope that Americans will wake up to the fact that Social Security simply cannot keep going the way it has been.
Absolutely not. Means testing is just another phrase for "spread the wealth", AKA communism/socialism. We need to be moving away from that obviously destructive policy, not embracing it.
The solution is simple - end the program, reimburse everyone that has paid into it, and allow private, tax-free programs to replace it.
Bush had it right people should be able to keep 50% of their Social Security in an account that you can’t draw from until retired.At least you would have more than what the feds could give you.
The draw back is congress couldn’t dip it’s paw into it,must be why they will never pass such a law.
Social Security™ is WORSE than a Ponzi scheme because a when the truth comes out about a Ponzi scheme it ENDS! With Social Security™ your trapped in the lie with no escape under penalty of law.