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To: Brilliant

This changes very little. Social Security is, and always has been, a wealth transfer program. Money is taken from one group and given to another. You have no vested rights in Social Security (Fleming v. Nestor) and Social Security taxes (and they are taxes not "contributions" or savings) do not have to be spent on Social Security benefits (Helvering v. Davis).

This change just makes it more obvious that Social Security is a welfare program. Perhaps that will help people realize that the solution is not to save it, but to end it ("end it don't mend it" maybe?). The real problem, like all other Social Security reform ideas, is that the current retirees get a free ride. This is an intergenerational transfer of wealth and an intergenerational problem. It seems unfair that only one generation bears the burden of solving it. The current retirees made Social Security the "third rail" and delayed reform; they should not leave the rest of us holding the bag.


131 posted on 04/29/2005 6:10:38 AM PDT by evilC ([573]Tag Server Error, Tag not found)
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To: evilC

What it does is it highlights the difference between the REAL social security and the fraudulent social security that has been sold to the American people. If they want to finally come clean and tell us that it's just another poverty program then they've got to atone for all the lies they've been telling us for the last 60 years. And why should we trust them now?


134 posted on 04/29/2005 6:15:25 AM PDT by Brilliant
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To: evilC
"The current retirees made Social Security the "third rail" and delayed reform;

This is very true. People keep blaming the "Baby Boomers," but none of us have even hit retirement age yet, and the group that is most opposed to SS reform are people of our parents' generation, who are currently receiving benefits. (This is the case even though they have repeatedly been assured that they would not be affected.)

Be that as it may, over the years they themselves received or developed a completely unrealistic view of SS and passed that on to us. One of the reason Boomers save very little and invest very little is that they were not taught to do so; unrealistic expectations about SS had become part and parcel of people's thinking in post-war years, and certainly by the 1960's, with the advent of the major welfare-state policies of LBJ, these attitudes were well-entrenched. Personally, I doubt that most Boomers will actually get to retire - perhaps we may drop back to part-time, but we won't retire the way our parents did. (Frankly, I'm not sure I'd want to, anyway.)

141 posted on 04/29/2005 7:41:25 AM PDT by livius
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