Posted on 11/02/2023 9:46:48 PM PDT by Enterprise
“.... That is each individual taxpayers money ....”
It’s a tax! It no more belongs to the taxpayer then any other tax paid in. It’s paid in and goes out the door to pay the benefits of the current crop of retirees. You have no ownership or asset rights in the money. The have several Federal court cases & at least one USSC case establishing that. If you had ownership, you could count it among your assets as part of your estate. You can’t!
First of all, that's nonsense. Second of all, maybe people would be willing to give a lot more if a) they weren't taxed out the wazoo , and 2) they knew it was actually needy Americans, not criminal invaders, they were subsidizing. And please don't get me started, I've seen enough food pantry and free coat drive crowds to know who's getting 95% of the donations.
“Second of all, maybe people would be willing to give a lot more if a) they weren’t taxed out the wazoo , and 2) they knew it was actually needy Americans, not criminal invaders”
I actually support that situation as best, we should not be taxed to death, and we should not be feeding the whole world in our backyards. But that is also the excuse most use to not give, even when the conditions are not like that personally or locally.
Then I suggest you don’t take social security when you become eligible. But I bet you will take this “charity”.
The. I suggest that you don’t collect social security when you become eligible. But I bet you will take this “charity”.
Yeah but WIC gives too much in allowed quantities.
I knew a single mom that would get her weekly allotment and she always asked what we wanted. She got so much milk, eggs, cheese etc. it kept us in dairy.
Social Security is an “insurance “ program.
“Then I suggest you don’t take social security when you become eligible. But I bet you will take this “charity”.
I have already been eligible and have not taken it. But you completely twisted and deflected from the true point I was making. I didn’t say folks shouldn’t receive it, I said SS is not any less a government charity than SNAP is or any other government assistance is.
All the same issues apply to SS and medicare that applies to SNAP. Some never paid in to it but still collect it, Many pay in and yet never collect any, it is rampant with fraud, Etc. Etc. Etc. Should it also be eliminated then? No? Based on the same arguments about SNAP why not?
“Social Security is an “insurance “ program.”
So is SNAP. It is insurance against hungry folks knocking on your door begging for food all day long or burglarizing your home because they are hungry. It is insurance against our nation becoming a 3rd world nation. During the depression it was eating all your backyard chickens.
Do you think these hungry people are just going to disappear into thin air??? No, they will become a worse problem than the crack heads are. Hunger is the very worst of causes that drive mass crime.
There is real world cause and effect.
It still would be some other working stiff’s money.
My SS taxes pay some retired guy\gal’s benefits, as his\her taxes paid someone’s benefits when he\she worked and so on back to the beginning of the program.
You clearly miss the point!
You don’t get it. SS is insurance in that you pay into it. The poor pay nothing.
Personally, I don’t give a hoot for people in the US that can’t feed themselves. I’ve been poor, middle class and now very well off.
Never had a problem getting fed.
“Hunger is the very worst of causes that drive mass crime.”
Bull. During the depression crime didn’t massively increase.
There's enough fraud in SNAP to justify shutting it down.
“You don’t get it. SS is insurance in that you pay into it. The poor pay nothing.”
Everyone who works pays SS, you still have to pay SS whether you made enough to owe any income taxes or not.
Yes it did. It made thieves and gangsters out of honest men.
I doubt that.
Consider somebody who worked 40 years with an average salary of $50,000 a year and retired at 62. That's $2,000,000 in total salary.
15.3 percent of that went to FICA tax which equals $306,000. (Remember that employers pay half of that for you).
The average Social Security check for a 62 year old is $1275 a month - or $15,300 a year.
In eight years, when they turn 70, they will have been paid, even with COLA adjustments, still well under half of the $306,000 that was extracted on their behalf.
All of the above is back of the envelope math, so not exact to the penny, but you get the picture.
Still though, if that same worker had an option of opting out of FICA and funding his own IRA with that $306,000 over 40 years, investing it in index funds, the portfolio would have been into 7 figures.
There are a couple of variables you didn’t account for that accounts for the balance I claim.
First, The FICA rate is 15.3 now, but what was the rate 40 years ago?
Second, that 50k job was not paying 50k back 40 years ago. And you are assuming a majority of individuals worked solid without stop for 40 years in a row at 50k a year. That is not at all average, it is a very fortunate person who has a solid employment history like that.
Second The FICA rate is 15.3 now, but what was the rate 40 years ago?
What wasn’t actually collected makes up the difference.
Know what? there is another factor also.
You are using a lower of the middle class income as an example. Median income is 65k a year. And the middle class is only around 50%. So 40% or more are lower class incomes and will use up what they paid in twice as fast.
But back to SNAP. For these folks on SS they have to depend on help from state programs that contribute to the monthly gap from $700 SS up to $1200 a month, utility discounts, and SNAP. And even at that $1200 a month the current average rent for an apartment is $1,702 a month.
So for those who do not own their home free and clear, SS is not even enough to pay the rent, let alone a car payment and insurance. Without SNAP many of the lower 1/3rd of this country who are collecting just SS would be starving. THIS is the reality.
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