Posted on 01/02/2011 10:24:47 AM PST by rabscuttle385
Seniors should be older before the receive Social Security and wealthy Americans should receive less benefits across the board, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
He made the argument in an interview on Sunday's Meet the Press, but it's a position Graham has advocated for on the stump in South Carolina, including a 2009 stop at The Citadel with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
"What I'm going to do is challenge this country to make some hard decisions," Graham said at the time, telling the crowd of cadets, Tea Partiers, and Graham supporters that they shouldn't give Congress a pass on the tough stuff.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlestoncitypaper.com ...
Picking and choosing WHO gets those “benefits” is the call of a marxist.
A conservative recognizes the need for cuts, and wants them applied EQUALLY between those being skewered. You seem big on class warfare....i.e. a liberal cornerstone. But then you know that.
It should reset each year, based on acuarial tables.
RE “As for those who say they deserve it because they paid in, well I’m sorry, but like all other ponzi schemes someone gets left holding the bag. Unless you want the entire economy taken down, which is what we get if we keep waiting to face this unpleasant truth, we have to get on the road to controlling the entitlements and that means Social Security and Medicare.”
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There’s a big difference between THIS Soc. Sec. Ponzi scheme and other Ponzi schemes, like Madoff’s — WE did not jump into it willingly. We were FORCED into it by this government. HUGE DIFFERENCE!
Think of another way to prop up this economy — “Means testing?” Yeah, sure, that’ll work out REAL well...... LOL
Good points. The tax base needs to be broadened and that raising income taxes for the lower and middle classes is going to be part of the solution. Everybody is going to be impacted by taxes and spending cuts in order to solve the deficit issue we have today.
RE: “Many on this thread really think they’re NEVER going to get old and sick and perhaps penniless even if they were considered “wealthy” when they retired.”
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Yes, I’m willing to bet the FR pro-means testers, et al, are still pretty young and/or have set-in-stone provisions for their own ‘old age, like yes, even military pensions.
A whole host of other folks who thought they were ‘comfortable’ in pre-retirement years are finding they are scrimping and saving now more than ever due to no fault of their own.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of proposals out there to screw the rich by cutting benefits without any real sacrifice by the middle class or anyone else. That is just a back door tax increase so if all Lindsey is proposing is reducing benefits to seniors, I’d oppose it.
The worst arguments I ever get in with my friends, who are my age and approaching retirement, are on this issue. My stepfather was as conservative as they come but on this issue, he insisted that he “paid in” and so his benefits should not be touched. I just can’t get around the fact that we have a major problem—entitlements, including entitlements to seniors, are completely out of control. They will destroy this country and that’s no hysteria. Our parents got a windfall but now they are dead. Someone is going to take a major hit. That is what is so frustrating. I, and I suspect a lot of other decent American seniors, would be willing to take a painful cut if they were sure it was part of shared sacrifice. Yet our politicians are too small minded and craven to make true proposal on spending cuts that result in shared pain.
RE: “You could address that underlined part to everyone on this thread who thinks “means testing” is hunky dory.”
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Agree — 1000 percent!!!
Then start acting and writing like you do so, rather than pretending otherwise.
However you’re assuming a lot of things.
I didn't assume a thing. I used the government's own publication of historical long-term Treasury bond rates:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data/Annual/H15_TCMNOM_Y30.txt
[That's just one of my sources for the rates back to 1962, but you get the idea]
The special US treasury bonds in the "trust fund" have effectively the same yield. So, it's not unreasonable to use them to calculate the present value of a past stream of Social Security contributions.
You’re assuing the government gives a damn about it when they have to pay out.
In the posting that you replied to, I was pointing out the errors in someone's calculations about the value of their past contributions. Anything else that you attributed to that posting was a figment of your imagination. So, f*** off.
I’m getting tired of restating why I favor means testing, and I don’t need to say again that I’m not in favor because of class warfare.
I don't care how you try to rationalize it, means testing is class warfare.
If you want to reduce benefits across the board, you have my 100% of my support. But, if you advocate targeting a subset "because they can afford it", you're nothing more than an armed robber, who has been pointing the federal government's gun at me for the past 40 years.
That is 100% true. And yet, here we are. We have a system that is broken. It pays out benefits that are not sustainable. The problem is here right now. Curse the politicians who created the problem in the 30s forward. Curse the seniors who took benefit windfalls early in teh life of the system. But they are dead and someone has to pay for it. Who?
Those of us at or near retirement age are going to be dead when the s___t hits the fan. Our kids are going to be the ones living in a country with crushing taxes to pay interest on debt held by the Chinese or in a country that defaulted on its debt. Look at Greece--that is the US after you and I are dead.
I’ll make these thieving P’s OS a deal. Give me back a lump sum of what my portion of the SSI deduction has been to date, let me move it offshore where you lying thieves can’t touch it, EVER, keep my employer’s portion of this rip off, and stop taking any more of my money that you want to give to the AARP lobby, and we’ll call it even.
Yeah, the party’s over — maybe some of those that are still sucking down the cash from an unsustainable program should help clean up the mess. Instead, your plan is for those us that are still working to get cornholed. I respectfully decline.
Any more of this s-—t, I can dissolve my corporation, go sole prop and use chack cashing shops to live as much off the grid as I can. See how they like taxing somebody with 10k of reportable income instead of what the screw me out of now...
I’ll make these thieving P’s OS a deal. Give me back a lump sum of what my portion of the SSI deduction has been to date, let me move it offshore where you lying thieves can’t touch it, EVER, keep my employer’s portion of this rip off, and stop taking any more of my money that you want to give to the AARP lobby, and we’ll call it even.
Yeah, the party’s over — maybe some of those that are still sucking down the cash from an unsustainable program should help clean up the mess. Instead, your plan is for those us that are still working to get cornholed. I respectfully decline.
Any more of this s-—t, I can dissolve my corporation, go sole prop and use chack cashing shops to live as much off the grid as I can. See how they like taxing somebody with 10k of reportable income instead of what the screw me out of now...
I’ll take that deal right now. But only if they stop taking any more of mY cash. My employer’s they can keep and keep taking.
>There’s a big difference between THIS Soc. Sec. Ponzi scheme and other Ponzi schemes, like Madoff’s — WE did not jump into it willingly. We were FORCED into it by this government. HUGE DIFFERENCE!
There is a difference between ‘we’ as in those who have always understood that Social Security was a ripoff ponzi scheme, and ‘we’ the general electorate that bought into the program and thought it was a magnificent idea.
Yes, the former ‘we’ didn’t just buy into it willingly. However given that we live in a democratic republic, the latter ‘we’ managed to take us along for the ride, and we had the option of like it or leave.
The government didn’t force the idea of social insurance on us. The program has been popular since its inception. It’s been so popular that no politician has been willing to take more than extremely modest steps to try and curb the train wreck that it entails.
There are plenty of examples of the government taking your money to no benefit whatsoever. In fact there are enough that it is clear why people are upset that Social Security is likely to be added to the pile (as it is, it gives you little benefit certainly compared to investing on your own). Though as long as most people still do get any benefits from Social Security, it will be untouchable.
RE: “Now that is just total BS. Unless and until the law is changed, we DO have a valid claim.
Tell you what you do. You lobby your congresscritter and I’ll lobby mine. We’ll see how it comes out.”
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Good post! We DO still have a ‘valid claim!’
No, they weren't.
Let me try again to explain. The Social Security "trust fund" is literally a stack of special US Treasury bonds in someone's file cabinet in a government office. I wanted to link an article that I read about it recently, but haven't been able to find it.
Those US treasury bonds are real, and yield interest at the prevailing rates at the time each one was issued. What I've done is calculate the present value of a past stream of Social Security contributions, using the government's own information. I can provide you the URLs of historical interest rates, if you like.
Yes, if everyone had the option of spending it, many would have done so. But, they didn't, and the government invested it into Treasury bonds instead. Of course, in exchange for that piece of paper in the filing cabinet, the government then spent the money on everything else. But, that's no different than any other government bond.
In effect, every Social Security contributor has a partial interest in that stack of US Treasury bonds. What Lindsey Graham (I refuse to address him as Senator) is proposing is to default on those bonds for a small set of people with insufficient political power to prevent it.
And that's not much less than armed robbery, with Congress holding the gun.
Why does anyone think our kids have the money to pay our benefits? Out of all the culprits who had a hand in creating this Ponzi scheme, kids in their 20s and 30s are the least to blame. The older you are, the more you are to blame for not putting a stop to the scam in the 60s or 70s or 80s or 90s. In fact, those were the decades when benefits got jacked up fairly substantially.
No one is going to give you back the money you put into the system. That went to pay some dead persons benefits. That is the nature of a Ponzi scheme. That is like asking Madoff to simply give you back the money he invested for you—its is gone. Wasted in an earlier generation. This is a PONZI SCHEME. The nature of a Ponzi scheme is that your money isn’t invested—it goes to pay out a prior investor who is happy as a lark that they are getting a windfall. The last one in holds the bag and that is us. So do we act like a junkie begging, borrowing or stealing for one more fix or do we stop the insanity and each take a hit to our finances?
I certainly agree with you and your post was so well said. RE: “My husband is drawing ss now tho he is still working. I will be eligible in another year. I certainly hear the difference in arguments depending on the age of those debating this subject. You are right. The younger people make it sound as though we are taking from them and are leeches. They have no idea what it feels like to have paid into the system for a lifetime then be told you get nothing back possibly.”
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Precisely!!!
Entitlement? I just don’t buy it.
The politicians have been spending our payroll taxes from all working Americans that should have been lock-boxed through the years instead for waging war and running government for everyone from the poor to the wealthy.
The SS surplus that they stole served the very rich too who paid no payroll tax because their income was all from investments. Now that there is no surplus to take and spend for their pet pork and projects ( and the Rs are as bad as Ds) they want to start cutting benefits. Before they start cutting benefits they had better start cutting special exemptions and foreign aid.
Since there is no legal tie to those US Treasury bonds, it is only a moral crime, not a legal robbery.
RE: “Those of us at or near retirement age are going to be dead when the s___t hits the fan. Our kids are going to be the ones living in a country with crushing taxes to pay interest on debt held by the Chinese or in a country that defaulted on its debt. Look at Greece—that is the US after you and I are dead.”
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It was your personal choice to have kids. YOU provide for them — my tax dollars have already been propping up others for over 35 years. Enough already.
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