"That's as good as money sir, those are IOUs. Go ahead and add it up every cent's accounted for. Look, see this that's a car, 275 thou might want to hang on to that one."
Posted on 08/29/2011 11:34:13 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is standing firm in insisting that Social Security, the federal government’s insurance programs for retirees and disabled, is a Ponzi scheme designed to deceive the young.
In a weekend campaign stop in Ottumwa, Iowa, Perry, who has surged into the lead in the Republican presidential sweepstakes in at least one major poll, repeated his characterization of the social insurance program that is generally supported by the electorate. He has made the same point before, especially in his book, “Fed Up!,” though at one point his campaign tried to explain that he had softened his language.
“It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people,” Perry insisted. “The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie.”
At a later stop in Des Moines, he also threw cold water on his own campaign’s efforts to portray his position in a more tempered light. “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. So read the book again and get it right,” he said.
Perry’s stand is the type of vintage ferocity that the governor has generated in his Texas political career and even in his limited time as a GOP presidential hopeful. For example, he has suggested that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke would be behaving in a “treasonous” fashion, if he loosened the money supply in a presidential election year.
Despite complaints from some quarters that his choice of words in condemning the Fed was too strong, Perry has stood firm in that area as well, raising questions about when a colorful and forceful position crosses the line into political gaffe.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"That's as good as money sir, those are IOUs. Go ahead and add it up every cent's accounted for. Look, see this that's a car, 275 thou might want to hang on to that one."
What Perry said is honest and courageous.
Your reply is dishonest, cowardly and arrogant.
A few years ago I read an article by a guy who said his dad had come up with a fantastic idea for National Health Insurance. It was very simple. It went something like this: The government would underwrite catastrophic health policies with an $80,000 deductible and then the individual citizen would pay for a health insurance policy up to $80,000. The theory was that all of the insurance companies would be happy to underwrite inexpensive health policies that maxed out at $80,000. I always thought it was an interesting idea. Point being that there are probably hundreds of great ideas about how to manage health care costs if we could just get our legislators off the dime to take a look.
or better yet, how about leaving me the hell alone and letting me prepare for my own old age...
once we return the age to collect to athe point of life expectancy, please tell me again why i should pay into it in the first place ??? just a place to 'hold' my extra cash till i die, makin it impossible for me to pass it on to my kids ???
ole ricardo hs prolly been a fan of the ponzi scheme in years past...give msm a minute and theyll find it...
So someone who needs a transplant or something would still be out of luck, right? What we need to do is get back to the medical care we had in the late 40s and 50s, where doctor's visits were cheap, and having an operation didn't cost more than one or two weeks' pay. Health insurance cost less than 80 a month (adjusted for 2010 dollars) and it covered major expenses, not every little thing. Car insurance doesn't cover oil changes, so there's no reason health insurance should cover every minor thing either.
Removing the cap on income subject to Social Security tax basically turns Social Security into a welfare program, even if you adjust it for benefits. Social Security recipients who are in the bottom-third in terms of contributions make out far better than the top 10% do already, in terms of return on investment. While your plan would maintain solvency for a little while longer, why don't we just call that what it is? Welfare. You can argue that it's welfare now, but the proposals to remove the income cap would definitely make it a welfare program.
You go, Rick! The emperor IS naked!
See #66, but basically this plan changes the nature of Social Security unless there are corresponding benefit adjustments. I don't want to scrap the whole thing, but this would build on the existing damage down to Social Security which began with the early 1980s compromise to tax Social Security benefits. That amounts to double taxation up to the point where benefits paid exceed contributions entered.
The Regime Media is going to go apeshit ballistic!
Perry has called history’s greatest Ponzi Scheme a.... well...PONZI SCHEME!
Oh, The humanity!
Even if the government had saved all of the Social Security receipts and invested them (but in what, T-bonds? It's still the same pool of money), it still wouldn't be enough to pay anything. These tweaks are putting lipstick on a pig. The program is still unsustainable and I'm opposed to these little tweaks that make it "sustainable" for another 20-25 years or whatever. The time to deal with it is now. Let people my age OUT of it. If there are going to be cuts, give them to current recipients as well. It's not fair to punish my generation (the under 35s) by pushing all of the cuts onto us.
Politicians who advocate entitlement reform seem to go down in the polls, including Chris Christie and Obama. Unless they have the Secret Service and a picked audience, angry protesters attack them on camera. (Obama doesn't face mobs, but leftist leaders denounce him on TV.) Maybe Perry will survive that trap and even prosper. If he does, it will be quite a trick.
No I dont like Perry’s Dream Act for illegals. Different subject.
I agree. It's supposed to be only for illegals who are "in the process" of applying for citizenship, but that seems to include those who "will apply" for citizenship at some unspecified future date. If I am wrong about that, somebody please correct me.
Suitcase full of IOUs from “Dumb and Dumber.” LOL!
I’m wondering if this isn’t some kind of rope-a-dope where he gets the left looking way over in the wrong direction before delivering a sucker-punch to the jaw on a completely different issue.
Just a thought...
I had not thought of that he is cunning enough to do just that. ;o)
To SSA it IS an investment. U.S. Treasuries are still the safest investment in the world. If SSA was an independent agency no one could say that it's not an investment.
That SSA is not an independent agency, does not change the fact, that SSA must still put the money somewhere. The choices are limited.
Unless you got a better idea, treasuries are the appropriate place for SSA funds.
These facts are true:
This is true whether or not:
The problem isn't SSA or what SSA invests in. The only two problems are
I knew it, that if I said one thing nice about something Perry said that it would freak out at least one of you. But what the heck... and maybe illegals will vote Republican too....LOL
Perry is in a corner here because he already beat up SS in his book so trying to backtrack on it now would backfire on him. What gets me is when they change or run from their positions in the general election from what they said in the primary. Sharon Angle tried to hide from the Media so they couldn't ask her about stuff she previously said and it didn't work.
It is not just the retirees he supports, there is that little social justice trick called SSI, then of course Medicaid, which I guess costs more than Medicare, since Obama decided to move half a trillion in funding from medicare to medicaid.
You are confused.
The government has two sources for revenue at any moment in time, current taxes and current borrowing.
Over the next thirty years there will be certain Social Security payments made to those Americans who are presently age 50 or over (say) and are eligible, or soon will be eligible to receive Social Security retirement benefits.
Whatever benefits those future recipients collect will be funded (just as all other government outlays are funded) by future taxes and future borrowing.
The impact on the economy and on the future taxpayers of those future Social Security benefits is entirely unaffected by the imaginary existence of an imaginary trust fund. The U.S. Treasury can have a big box of U.S. Treasury bonds or it can have a big box of make-believe unicorn turds, it doesn’t matter.
The past is the past. There is no trust fund. And there is a huge slug of Americans at or near retirement age for whom there have been no actual assets (e.g. cash, gold, securities, etc.) set aside to cover their future Social Security retirement benefits.
Those benefits, whatever they are, will be funded by future taxpayers.
This is proof of how bad a financial situation we are in in my opinion.
Q: Why would the Republican frontrunner reach down and willingly grab the 3rd rail with both hands??
A: Because SS is gonna crater....guaranteed. Medicare is worse. Unfunded mandates as far as the eye can see. He’s either gonna win by telling the truth and turn the ship of State or we are all done.
An excellent way to control the cost, is to quit lying about the cost.
I had 3 stents put in about a year ago, the hospital billed my insurance $117.000.00 for the procedure. Blue Cross paid $6,200.00 it was my responsibility to pay nothing.
Over billing insurance holders has been common practice for over 60 years that I know of, for sure.
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