Posted on 03/19/2016 6:14:19 AM PDT by george76
The number of people receiving benefits from the Social Security Administration topped 60,000,000 for the first time at the beginning of 2016.
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The total number of beneficiaries includes retired workers and their dependents, survivors of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their dependents.
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In February, there were 151,074,000 people employed in either full or part-time jobs in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics ...
There were 123,206,000 people employed full-time in February, according to BLS’s seasonally adjusted numbers. That equals approximately 2.05 full-time workers per each beneficiary of the Social Security Administration.
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The 60,199,914 beneficiaries in February included 40,338,983 retired workers, 2,342,674 spouses of retired workers, 659,198 children of retired workers, 6,064,984 survivors of deceased workers, 8,896,604 disabled workers, 139,269 spouses of disabled workers, and 1,758,202 children of disabled workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Then the sentence would end in a prepositional phrase. I learned about prepositions and prepositional phrases in eighth grade. Mrs. King was a grammar Nazi.
‘From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.’
Winston S. Churchill
There is plenty of money in the Social Security “trust fund”—just ask any politician and that is what they will tell you.
Unfortunately they got to that position in life by being pathological liars.
yep....but drunkards’ markers aren’t really cash, is it?
Churchill and Twain have some great quotes.
I’ve read it’s over 12 million on disability.
My neighbor is. She gets medicare (or medicade - one of them).
She can’t work be she can cut the grass, trim weeds, trim shrubs/trees, wash and wax her boyfriend’s jeep and truck, and on, and on, and on.
Her dad can give (nice) houses away to his kids but not care for his own child.
Meh, let the tax payer handle that.
I’ve paid into this rotten system for 43 years (some years the max).
Sell d@mn Yellowstone Park if they have to..
It is the veritable invasion of the disability leeches. Lawyers have convinced them for the meager sum of 1/3 of your disability payments, they can contrive some excuse and back it up with legalism, fake doctors and persistence for that big free government ride.
This rise in applicants came about from those unemployed who maxed out their unemployment and got used to SNAP, EITC, Section 8, AFDC and all the rest and are willing to give some shyster lawyer firm a cut of the booty so they can get on that damned gravy train.
[[The total number of beneficiaries includes retired workers and their dependents, survivors of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their dependents.]]
Yep- the gubmint puts able bodied people onto disability because they won’t go out and find work, or can’t find work, then turns around and complains about how many people are on disability
Just par for the course with idiots running our government
A married couple, with both working, each pay into Social Security. Spend all their working lives *both* paying into SS as a partnership.
They begin to collect, and after a time, one passes away.
The survivor of the partnership continues to collect on the payments that the partnership has made, right?
Wrong. The survivor only collects on one of the SS accounts (the larger of the two). Oh, you’ve had your family wages confiscated for 40 years and you think you’re getting it back? Nope.
Here’s a thought. How about making what folks pay into social security theirs to pass on to their families when they die, including covering their funeral expenses.
That way, any of their heirs that actually needs the money to live or survive on, will have it. Those on nice cushy pensions that don’t need to live on will still have the benefit of what they paid in passed on to their kids or loved ones. Instead, what we have is “legalized theft by government”.
If government were not so greedy (big if), government would not spend all that money intended for folks’ retirement on what government wants to spend it on instead. Again...big if.
“The government has no right to take money for the greater good.”
Why would you say that? You were paid with our money taken by the government “for the greater good”. Never mind retirement funds; taxpayers have been paying all your regular bills for years.
Disability is still not easy to get. I am 55 and worked since I was 12 (babysitting) and at 14 started working fairs or whatever else I could find. I have been fighting for 3 years. I have had 7 surgeries including 4 in the last 3 years due to bone and joint issues. Recently, I had metal plates put in my wrist due to cartilage loss and my thumb was collapsing so it needed to be fused. This leaves me with very limited use, pretty much one hand. In addition, I have hyperparathyroidism, osteoporosis, bursitis, slipped disc in lower back and several other bone/joint issues. I worked as a bookkeeper/office manager making decent money all my life but am not able to keyboard with speed and accuracy anymore. Now, it’s punching away with one finger. My husband is retired so we live on fixed income. I would love to work. At 50 and disabled, nobody wants you.
Fortunately, we have always lived frugal and saved for this rainy day. I certainly didn’t think our retirement savings would be going to support me in my 50’s. And don’t get me started on Obamacare. I pay a hefty price to have a policy with decent benefits since I do use it frequently.
It pisses me off because I see the young ones with the handi cap tags jumping out of their new trucks and running into Walmart to use their EBT cards. I guess it’s easy to get if you know how to game the system.
The real story is when those 20-50 million illegals become ‘legal’ and the government is forced to give them credit and status for SS they paid all these years under their fake and stolen SS numbers.
My daughter had her ss number stolen when she was 8 years old. Nightmare and 3 years to straighten out. SS refused
to give her a new number and said she should be happy she has credits in her account.
Illegals - Victimless Crime - I don’t think so
Do state employees pay into the Social Security system via FICA deductions.
No, but I did when I worked at a landscaping company.
Okay. Remember that if your house catches fire.
That would be a great point if people in NJ were still buying houses; the costs of the government workforce specifically (which has given us ridiculously high property taxes) have caused a mass exodus of American taxpayers and employers from the state to places with lower built-in “workfare” overhead.
Many towns in NJ have volunteer fire departments, and those employed in the municipalities with paid departments usually live (and pay property taxes is) towns with volunteers. Apparently the fire protection services they insist are necessary for the town employing them aren’t necessary where their beloved wives and children sleep...
Even better, many of our state employees (in Trenton) live right across the Delaware River in beautiful, lower-cost PENNSYLVANIA.
We’re not that bad here in Ohio. There is no doubt that gov costs must be cut. If that would be my job, so be it. My original point still stands: SS is a Ponzi scheme. We need to phase it out.
Not only did you pay much less into SS (when you were contributing), but your retirement benefits are so far above what is offered to most of the taxpayers on the hook for yours.
A local police officer complained to me that he wouldn’t collect Social Security when he retired because of their own pension system; he retired at 46, after 25 years on the job. My town will be paying his pension (statistically) for much longer than he ever worked here; those that can are abandoning the area rather than fund that.
Regardless of your sentiments about it, the fact is that the costs of both current and retired government workers have ensured that whole sections of this country can never compete with newer, younger areas (never mind those overseas) in attracting business and taxpayers. Any business or person looking to re-locate to the northeast is basically handed a bill for their share of a massive IOU created for decades, and current services suffer due to the rising shares of current revenues that have to be diverted to pay those retirees off.
I agree that SS is absurd; my own retirement age has been moved to 67 (20+ years away), and I’ve already been contributing for more than 30 years (nearly 30 of them as a full-time worker). While plenty on this forum will argue that this was earned by current recipients (and I understand that position), it is impossible to morally justify passing that cost on to someone who wasn’t even born when those currently collecting retired years ago. In the end (and this has already started), retirees who simply represent massive costs to young taxpayers will face death panels to remove them from the “payroll”.
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