Posted on 12/12/2008 10:18:17 PM PST by jackmercer
This was so quick that I had to go to the website to do a double take. But did Rush Limbaugh make an argument against privatizing Social Security on Friday or was he being facetitious? I am looking at it in context and it seems like he was serious:
"Have you heard about this guy in New York that was running this $50 billion Ponzi scheme? He was the former head of NASDAQ. Folks, do you know how many charlatan cheats there are in the financial asset management industry?
"It's a crapshoot. This is why I didn't stay in it very long. I never did, instinctively, understand why I should give people who had less money than I have my money to manage. If they were so smart at it, they'd have more than I do. If they ever get hold of Social Security, it could be trouble. This guy was running a Ponzi scheme." (bold emphasis is mine, not Rush's)
I posted the latter part of the first paragraph and the start of the second paragraph to show the context.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_121208/content/01125113.guest.html
I think I have a pretty good idea. But it's irrelevant to privatizing social security. We wouldn't have the option of letting hedgies manage our money; we'd have a few index funds to choose from.
Like the federal govt Thrift Savings Plan.
It's a lot less risky than this Ponzi scheme called Social Security, which has robbed me blind all my working life.
Neil Boortz use to be a big fan of privatizing SS...
... until the crash in 2001 when a lot of private retirement funds lost a bundle.
He was kind of quiet about the issue after that.
How about just getting rid of Social Security and letting people decide their own savings? Gee, there’s a novel idea.
Great idea, but what other programs will congress raid to pay for their out-of-control spending?
Oh it’s a pie in the sky idea, but I can hope can’t I?
It’s funny when I hear people saying that the taxpayers might actually make money from the bailouts and loans because it’s so naive. The government is going to immediately spend whatever additional revenue (if it actually makes money) it takes in on some “inexpensive” and “necessary” program, which you can pretty much guarantee means exactly the opposite.
“How about just getting rid of Social Security and letting people decide their own savings?”
Social Security is the only system of a guaranteed retirement, small (and in my opinion only supplemental) but guaranteed. If we get rid of Social Security, what are people supposed to use as a safety net, treasuries that can go below 0% in returns? Even pensions which by definition are supposed to be “guaranteed annuities” are no longer safe.
I happen to be firmly against privatization of Social Security. I was just surprised that when this case came to light and Rush saw his own neighbors get hit, he was spooked and let it slip that he thinks Social Security privitazation would be dangerous.
Yes, let people do as they please with 401k and individual retirement accounts, but if you think that retirement safety nets are unnecessary, then maybe you should look at the 5 recession/depression business cycles of the 19th centurty, the 1930s or what is still yet to come currently.
There you go.
Besides, how many people alive are in social security of their own free will choice? Almost all of us are in it because mom and dad signed us up as babies.
It’s the only friggin’ legal contract that you don’t voluntarily choose to be in, that they will not let you out of. F#cking socialists assh0les.
“If we get rid of Social Security, what are people supposed to use as a safety net,...?”
Can you tell me where the government is tasked with taking care of each individual citizen’s retirement needs? Do you not realize over 150 years government understood it had no business being anyone’s ‘safety net’ other than providing police, courts, military and republican forms of government.
We’d have a lot less liberals doing nothing productive, and workign for a living. Same with lard-butts living off the forced charity of others. Taxes would be lower because the government wouldn’t have all these social programs that never seem to truly help anyone and never fix the problems they are intended to. With less taxes people could be freer to donate more and private charities would expand taking over helping the truly needy, and people would get tax breaks for their donations.
That’s how it used to work. That’s how it should work.
This guy wasn’t running a hedge fund. He was “investing” on behalf of other investment firms that included municipalities, charities, wealthy individuals and university endowments. Small and large supposedly safe and reputable firms sent clients’ money to him. The tenticles of these charlatans creep into every facet and types of investment, conservative and risky both. I think that was Rush’s point.
There would be no use for the Democratic party under those rules.
***If we get rid of Social Security, what are people supposed to use as a safety net, treasuries that can go below 0% in returns?***
Savings. If people are smart they set aside some of their income to be used in emergency situations or for retirement. Without SS tax people would have an additional 7% to set aside. Dumb people would blow all their income on consumption and would be in a bad situation during hard times. But why should I have to subsidize their bad behavior if I prepared adequately?
People are trapped by this idea that someone else has to manage their finances for them otherwise people will be left to their own devices. God forbid!
Besides the Constitutionality of such a program is dubious at best.
It’s always useful to have a small number of folks on the opposite side, just to be able to point out to the young why we are right.
Ponzi scheme using fiat (ponzi) money.
Or half the Republican Party at this point.
“Can you tell me where the government is tasked with taking care of each individual citizen’s retirement needs?”
Yes, the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He proposed it, the people voted for him and the Congress, and they implemented it. That’s how the system works. Yes, he overreached his mandate and those were later corrected by subsequent Republican Congresses and administrations.
But the same happened with education. The government was never tasked by the constitution to provide guaranteed education for every American. But some of the founding fathers saw something that they thought was beneficial and necessary, proposed it to the people, the people concurred and it was implemented. Read Jefferson’s views on it here: http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1370.htm
The point is that the people, or at least a majority, task administrations and congress to do things all the time and they are implemented. That’s the whole point of having government, to meet the changing attitudes and desires of a people.
In the 1920s if a roofer fell off a house, broke his back and had no family, friends or church to care for him, then he could literally starve to death or die of exposure. Some proposed Social Security disability, the people saw it as reasonable and it was implemented.
Up until the 1930s, if a mother of five becomes a young widow and is in a part of the country with no family, friends or church, her kids become malnourished and homeless. That is how it used to work. The people saw a remedy, tasked the goverment and Social Security survivor benefits came to be.
Yes, there will always be abuses and there will be imperfections but on the whole, many (definitely not all) social programs have been deemed beneficial by a majority of the country and thus they have been retained.
“Savings. If people are smart they set aside some of their income to be used in emergency situations or for retirement.”
You do realize that savings are invested and/or leveraged by banks right? And further they are guaranteed to only 100k. Unless you are talking about savings by burying actual Federal Reserve notes in the backyard and believe that inflation and deflation of currency are fairy tales, I don’t see the logic in your answer. There is still risk in savings.
You mean back when people worked until they were just not physically able to? When family and church or charities took care of the disabled or elderly?? Yes, that’s the way it should be. I don’t believe God made us for retirement at 65. Family and having a purpose in life is what keeps people alive and happy in their later years, IMO.
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