Posted on 10/12/2015 12:40:06 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he and his rich pals should “voluntarily” forgo their Social Security benefits to bolster the health of the retiree entitlement system, declaring “I don’t need mine, by the way.”
At a multi-candidate presidential forum in New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Trump said that for the good of the country, rich taxpayers should sacrifice the benefits from the entitlement system into which they had paid throughout their professional lives.
“I have friends that are worth hundreds of millions and billions of dollars and get Social Security. They don’t even know the check comes in,” said Mr. Trump at the nonpartisan No Labels forum.
The real-estate developer and reality television star, who says he is worth $10 billion, said he would forgo the $400,000 presidential salary if elected.
Earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said retired senior citizens who earn more than $80,000 should should get reduced Social Security benefits, and said they should be eliminated entirely for individuals making more than $200,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
If you are not going to receive it then you should not have to pay into it.
The group of people he is talking about aren’t paying 15.3% in, (which other than self employed only 7.65 is coming directly from the employees pay the other half the employer pays) The group of folks Trump is talking about hit the CAP on contributions, long before the end of the year...
He’s right, folks with those kinds of incomes aren’t even noticing another couple grand check every month.
The reality is, when it comes to social security as written, NO ONE was really expected to ever collect, let alone collect for 20+ years. Basically it was an insurance policy for widows and orphans if their husband/dad died when they were young because hardly anyone was living past 65 when SS went into effect in 1935. The average life expectancy was 59.9 years.
Now the argument can be made “its my money”.... and while legitimate the law was never designed to really pay you any of it back, it was intended to help widows and orphans, and the rare retiree who beat the odds for a few years.
For the first time in many years I received one of those letters estimating benefits; as someone who will be working a couple of more decades (and has paid A LOT into SS) I’m not impressed with the figures they are projecting. I believe it will certainly be means-adjusted for people down the road (as one way of keeping it solvent), on top of the step they already took by raising my retirement age to 67.
This means-adjustment nonsense has already impacted the income tax system (Earned Income Credit) and college tuitions; why wouldn’t it be used for Social Security? Once those first steps were taken (and weren’t knocked down in legal challenges, the game was over. The same thing happened with affirmative action; now it is here to stay.
I read that that had happened only 3 times and each time it happened was under Obamas watch. This time they are blaming it on low gas prices but what were the gas prices in 2010 and 2011? Bunch of Effing LIARS
I can’t believe there will be no increase in SSAN this year.
Those folks I mentioned will never even notice it kiltie. Trust me.
Exactly this is a completely different class of people... the few thousand a month in SS is not something that even registers on their radar.
When you earn millions of dollars per year working, lets just make the math easy, say you earn 1.2 million a year, or 100k a month, you have paid in your entire annual amount to SS by February each year. You do that your entire lifetime and you may get a check for $2500-$3000 a month... meanwhile you have savings and investments making you millions of dollars every year... that money is not even on your radar...
The I paid into argument is valid, but as Trump and many others in that income class have publicly stated its not something that for them even registers.
The reality is SS was never designed or intended to pay out to retirees... it was meant for widows and orphans. It was passed in 1935, with a retirement requirement of 65 years... and a life expectancy average of 59.9 years.
The bill was created to provide for widows and orphans of folks killed in the industrial age factories etc... not to pay retirees... Sure a rare odd beater might actually get some money for a few years if they were lucky but most would be pushing up daisy’s before they would see a dime.
Only thing that changed was life expectancy shot up massively and retirement age didn’t change... finally did move up a few years recently but that’s it.
This is about the rich,not the police.
Big difference so why even bring it up?
.
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That's when America was up and coming, climbing to the highest standard in the world. The last few decades that's ALL changed.
This is 2015, where government has looted middle America, where tens of thousands of jobs where off shored to cheap labor land, where jobs if you have one are not secure, the wages have been stagnant and substandard for decades, and private sector America had their retirement, investments, pensions, and medical benefits reduced, chopped up, slashed or all together eliminated.
And all this was aided and abetted by a corrupt govenrment who decided to loot the American treasure for foreign adventures and supporting tens of millions of illegal aliens.
You better believe millions of American's lives depend on their SS pittance. Trust me here.
I know people do today, that’s not what I said, I said, it was never INTENDED to pay out at all..... The law was designed to help widows and orphans, it was never intended to ever pay out to workers/retirees at its core. That was a promise to get it passed, but not what it was intended for.
What it has become is something completely different from what it was intended/written as.
Yep, I understand.
And instead of cutting massive obese waste, fat and fraud in government there are folks in government who like to finish looting SS like a liquor store in Baltimore.
Trump supporters need to get him and his likewise low-information rich friends up to speed on the following arguments concerning the constitutionality, actually the lack thereof, of Social Security and most federal taxes.
To begin with, the 16th Amendment did not change the case precedent established by state sovereignty-respecting justices that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue which Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
But as a consequence of the rich being low-information citizens like most citizens evidently are, they do not understand that the most of the federal taxes that they pay are unconstitutional imo, compliments of the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate. Low-Information senators are unsurprisingly not doing their job to kill non-Section 8 compliant House appropriations bills as the Founding States had intended for the Senate to do.
Next, let’s have a look at Social Security which was wrongly established outside the framework of the Constitution imo.
Although it’s not surprising that low-information, FDR-era justices accepted the 74th’s Congress’s likewise low-information interpretation of the Constitution’s General Welfare Clause (GWC; 1.8.1) when Congress used that clause to justify establishing Social Security, Congress made the same mistake in interpreting the GWC that the 14th Congress did when it drafted the public works act of 1817.
More specifically, President Madison, Madison generally regarded as the father of the Constitution, had indicated in the constitutionally required veto explanation that the GWC which low-information Congress used to justify that bill was not an express delegation of power to Congress, but basically an introductory clause for the clauses which followed it in Section 8 which were express delegations of power.
”To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.” —Veto of federal public works bill, 1817
Also note that both the FDR era 74th Congress that passed the bill that established Social Security without the required constitutional justification, and the 111th Congress which likewise passed Obamacare without the necessary constitutional justification, had also wrongly ignored the Constitution’s Article V requirement to successfully propose appropriate amendments to Constitution to the states before establishing such spending programs. If the states had chosen to ratify such amendments then Congress would have the constitutional authority that it needs to establish these programs.
With all due respect to mom & pop, the bottom line is that Trump, his rich friends and us 99%ers would probably be richer if everybody's low-information parents (what’s wrong with this picture?) had made sure that Trump, his friends and the rest of us were taught about the fed’s limited power to appropriate taxes.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators who help to pass Section 8-unjustifiable House appropriations bills along with it.
Social Security is already means tested because it is 85% taxable income for me.
When did you figure out were being controlled, taxed, regulated, fined and fee'd to death? Are you part of that high information adult GOP voter crowd?
Very slick!
I know what you mean but I don’t think The Donald will be availing himself as the equivalent of the “I gots me a phone anna pen” ghetto trash.
Congress will need to go along and then SCOTUS.
Make no mistake...SCOTUS will directly review every change a ^POTUS of The Donald^ makes.
We are in for...
...INTERESTING times!
Listening to his entire speech, it was clear to me Trump was talking about VOLUNTARY refusal by very rich people to cash the checks.
I don’t like this. It is Federal theft and the liberals will have it down to anyone making $30,000 does not qualify for the benefits they paid for. To liberals anyone with any money is “rich” except for them and their pals.
That's how it starts.
I don’t see Trump saying super wealthy don’t need SS as an attempt to cut it, but yes given that these sorts of payments are 70% of the overall federal spending, they will always be what folks look at when they talk about cutting. For fearmongering purposes and because cutting 70% by a small percentage is a bigger return than 30% at a larger percentage.
But I don’t think Trump’s comments fall into cutting payments for folks who need it.
Your statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of life expectancies. Take a look at a table of life expectancies by age. You'll see that, for a white, 65-year-old male in 1935, he could expect to live another 12 years or so on average. For the same male in 2011, he could expect to live another 17 years or so on average. Five extra years of retirement is nothing to sneeze at, but quoting a life expectancy at birth is misleading. (Please note that I interpolated the given tabular data, but 12 years and 17 years are probably pretty close.)
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