Let’s not forget folks, there are a few factors:
1) More and more retirees living longer and less and less working people to support them ( we operated on a pay as yo go system for social security, there is NO LOCK BOX IN THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND ).
2) Same applies for Medicare as above. With Obamacare ADDING younger folks to the rolls ( many unemployed ) and you have MORE working people carrying the load for the rest.
3) 47% of Americans pay no taxes... which means 53% of those who DO pay taxes have to work extra hard to support government spending.
4) Less people are working because companies are not hiring. The result is those who DO have work will have to take on more responsibilities and MORE WORK.
That hits the point.
In my job, we lost several people and the powers to be have decided not to hire new people to replace the now gone folks. Now it is mandatory to work at least one Saturday per month and vacation, a lot of red tape to take that time off is required. I already put in my vacation time request for next year !
We have a director in Belgium and he doesn’t care for us American folks too much. And being a global company, work is divided where if we have to deal with an overseas customer, we are expected to work off shift to work with the customer. However, US customers don’t have to work with overseas folks, the overseas folks transfer that work to us as well. Kind of a one way street. I had one customer get p*ssed off and escalated. They didn’t transfer the work to India but I was told that I was expected to work off hours to take care of him.
Our director also put in complex rules on taking vacation that doesn’t apply to his folks in India, Egypt and Europe. Someone brought up the idea that we should work smart not hard and the response was that we Americans are lazy and he even remarked that Obama said that we are lazy and need to work much, much harder.
> 4) Less people are working because companies are not hiring. The result is those who DO have work will have to take on more responsibilities and MORE WORK.
**we operated on a pay as yo go system for social security,**
What! Do you remember the government promise from 1964?
http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
And HERE is where the money went! Read and weep!
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4
Ever notice how hard it is to find these two web pages on the SSA web site?