DAMN SOCIAL SECURITY

boblonsberry.com ^ | 12/20/07 | Bob Lonsberry

[shortstop]

Damn Social Security and the thieves who thought it up.

That's my attitude.

As I make a list of reasons why I hate the government, Social Security has to be near the top. It is, for me, the most recognizable and intrusive tyranny in my life.

And that's saying a lot.

We sadly live in a day when the strangling grip of government chokes the life and liberty out of working Americans all across this country. We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.

So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.

But today we're going to talk about Social Security.

And how Social Security has deprived me of my life's dream.

First, the dream. One evening, when I was 19, in a trailer in the Arizona desert near Winslow, I decided I wanted land. Country land. As I stood there talking with my host, he told me about the five acres upon which his trailer sat, and his plans for it.

And it fired my imagination. I thought of all the things you could do with a few acres. And for years I've thought about it. I've read and planned and daydreamed.

I want some country land. Where it rains and the trees grow and you can pasture cows and plant crops and stock your pond with fish. I want chickens and sheep and a woodlot.

I want it for the peace of it, for the hard calloused-hands work of it, for the fruitfulness of it and for the self-reliance of it. It's my heritage, and I'd like it to be my future.

But I am not a man of means. I'm a wage earner. I'm a middle-income guy with a lot of kids and all the money I make goes to supporting my family.

And the government. My family budget has always been pressed toward insolvency by the voracious, thieving hand of government. Year after year I have cut corners and shorted my children while money I've earned has been siphoned away by a government that takes it before I see it. I have less and less and the government takes more and more. All of society is entitled to my paycheck – except me.

And so at 48 I am no nearer my country land than I was at 19.

Which gets me back to Social Security.

I was going through some papers the other day and found that little mailing the Social Security Administration sends out periodically, the one that shows how much of your money they've taken from you, year by year. I looked at the numbers and added them up and the total struck me odd. It occurred to me, looking at the numbers, that I had essentially paid a mortgage over the near 35 years of my working life. A mortgage that, applied to land, would have long since given me my dream.

And my freedom. And a great deal more security and prosperity than Social Security will ever provide.

See, the idea of land is not just some country idyll. It's also a practical objective, a means to an independent end. While the government wants me to be dependent in my old age on a miserly monthly check, I would rather provide myself with the means of self-support.

With just a few acres of land, tillable and forested, I would with simple labor be able to provide myself with food and heat. I could raise and grow what I ate and cut and chop what I burned. I could become at least in part self-sufficient.

And that is a far-preferable retirement plan to a Social Security check. In the name of providing for my old age, the government has taken away my ability to provide for myself in my old age. Instead of investing my income as I see fit – in land or in anything else – it is stolen by the government and put into a Ponzi scheme that has no realistic likelihood of being solvent when it comes my turn to retire. To promise me security, the government must deprive me of liberty.

I have lost the ability to use my own money as I see fit. I have lost the ability to provide for my own retirement. I have lost the simplest right of a free man – the right to live by the sweat of my own brow, and not have it stolen away by a covetous and avaricious government in whose eyes I am little more than a beast of burden.

Country land would provide many of my needs until I grew too enfeebled to work it. Then I could sell it to get myself the care I need. In time I would die, but I would go to my grave having paid my own way and having lived as I chose.

But those are things the government now deprives me of.

I have clung to a dream, and one simple tax has destroyed it. My dream is going into some drunk's SSI check, or into the rat hole of the welfare/bureaucracy complex, the vast industry that lives off the life's blood of Americans who work.

I love my country. I would die for the Constitution. But I hate my government. I hate what generations of snakes in elective office have done to the greatest nation and the freest people ever to grace the earth.

We should be free to plan for our old age they way we want. To invest our money in land or a business or in stocks and bonds. We should be free from ridiculous taxes that don't deliver what they promise. We should be free from the socialist dreams of long-dead New Dealers.

But we are not free – we are Americans.

And damn the men who have made us this way.

[ontap]

Believe it or not there are people in this country that believe SS is great. Don’t ask me to explain it.

[Cementjungle]

I had a similar come to Jesus meeting when I was in my mid-twenties I decided SS would not be around when I was eligible and planned accordingly. Well I’m two years away from retirement now and although SS is still around it is considerably less than my other plan. It also is about half of what my father drew in adjusted dollars. Any youngsters out there should take heed.

Even 15 years ago everyone was saying don't count on SS for more than 1/3 of your retirement. Use 401K's or IRA's for the 2'nd third and savings for the third.

[safetysign]

This must be an issue in “2008” Please!

SOCIAL SECURITY:

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years.

Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it.

You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society . They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan.

In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan.

For all practical purposes their plan works like this:

When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die...

Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments.

For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7,800,000.00 (that’s Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275, 000.00 during the last years of their lives.

This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries.

Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives.

Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00 . NADA...! ZILCH...

This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan ... The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds.

” OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK “!

From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer). We can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement.

Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley’s benefits!

Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made.

That change would be to:

Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us. Then sit back and see how fast they would fix it.

[subterfuge]

401Ks aren’t much better than SS in my opinion. STill subject to the profit takers.

[Bigun]

"What the income tax does is lead the people of this country down a path to where actual control of their resources, which in the end is the control over their will, is handed off to the government."

"The government then manipulates that will in order to destroy the freedom of our electoral system through the income tax structure, and we call the resulting slavery a free system."

"In point of fact, it is not as the founders understood, and the only way to restore real freedom is to give people back control over the income that they earn so that they won‘t, at the voting booth and in other phony issues, be subject to that manipulation."

The Intent of the individual income tax is for political and social control not revenue collection. The Individual Income tax is maintained to establish and hold every person in the country perpetual legal jeopardy. That is a situation that must end with the repeal of the income tax from the statutes, and the prohibition of its use by Constitutional amendment that future generations will not face the same manner of manipulation and interference in their lives.

“Maybe we ought to see that every person who gets a tax return receives a copy of the Communist Manifesto with it so he can see what's happening to him.”

- T. Coleman Andrews, Commissioner of IRS, May 25, 1956 in U.S. News & World Report.

[scan59]

Social Security is a promise to tax your children to take care of you in your old age. Nothing more.

[Cementjungle]

401Ks aren’t much better than SS in my opinion. STill subject to the profit takers.

Yea, I know, but at least many employers matched contributions making it somewhat attractive.

[ontap]

What really peeves me is that any Insurance company could take the same money and give you life insurance and a retirement at the age of 65 with a lot more benefits.

[USS Alaska]

Lets do a couple of quick calculations: If Lonsberry was making 50K a year for 35 years, his ss contribution would be $3,000 a year (6% if I remember correctly). Now multiply that by 35 years, that is $105,000. You have got to admit that he didn’t make $50,000 a year, but for this purpose it is a way high estimate.

You are too financially IGNORANT to be posting anything about financial returns.

Step one--- you have to double the percent because the "matching funds" from your employer is paid by you.

Step two--- the $6,000 from year one at 7% would be worth $69,037 , the $6,000 from year two would be worth $64,383 and so on for 35 years.

That's why it's called PRESENT VALUE.

Value from the first two years alone would be worth over $133,000, so forget about multiplying $3,000 by 35 years and learn what Present Value is.

[bert]

Bob is mostly mouth. All he has to do is come to East Tennessee and there is scads of available country land. Most folks who live in the country have jobs in the cities. But there are dedicated Mother Earthers who live off their land.

Bob has a mental problem, not government problem.

[Publius Valerius]

So what do you do for the people, say 55 and above who are expecting it and those already retired already on it?

This is why it has to be a phase-out. I think the only way to do it is to announce that from now on, no one will contribute to Social Security, and everyone who has contributed will get benefits based on the level they contributed; thus, a 25 year old will get obviously fewer benefits than a 60 year old.

Because you're not collecting social security tax any longer, it would need to be paid out of general revenues once the "trust fund" is exhausted, but although that's a bitter pill, it will get easier over time and is a choice that should be made.

[dragnet2]

In my opinion amputation, cutting off SS immediately is the answer

No problem there, as long as they pay me back what they've confiscated from me for decades, with interest.

[wbill]

I hope an awakening will happen to save my kids and grandkids from this crapola.

So do I, but I'm a bit more selfish...hope that I'm included too.

The gov't has dug itself a pretty good hole, not sure how they'll get out. I'd personally like to see some sort of a buyout (like pensions) but doubt that will happen.

[subterfuge]

BOB: You can get anything in life you want, if you really want it and be willing to work for it. Perhaps if you had fewer kids, fewer wives, or a simpler lifestyle you would have what you desired.

Ah yes, the socialist's lament of too extravagant a lifestyle. The author clearly states it's his DESIRE to work hard and he isn't seeking to be extravagant or get handouts. If you can comprehend what he wrote you'll see he doesn't believe that "all of his financial woes are caused by social security." It's right here for you.

We are little more than sharecroppers and slaves in a system of taxation and regulation which dictates everything in our lives – from what we can build on our property to how much water there is in our toilet. The lion's share of our labor and wealth is confiscated for bloated bureaucracies and covetous welfare parasites. We are burdened by a government that has long since stopped being what the Founders envisioned.

So when you're making a list of reasons to hate the government, you better have lots of time and lots of paper.

But today we're going to talk about Social Security.

But you go ahead with your socialist view of restricting the lifestyles of Americans. It's cool. We understand.

[jrp]

Agree 100%. I haven’t run the numbers, but I could likely retire 5-10 years earlier if I could invest the money I’m currently paying into SS. While I enjoy working and probably wouldn’t retire early anyway, it would be nice to have that option and peace of mind.

Its also infuriating that California state and local employees do not pay SS (at least the ones I know, including my brother). They have iron-clad guaranteed pension AND retirement health insurance benefits, which courts have repeatedly ruled cannot be taken away from existing employees. Some San Diego city retirement benefits were granted via shenanigans and out right fraud, and we STILL cannot get the courts to nullify them.

[wordsofearnest]

My mother passed away at age 61 paid in her whole life and never collected a dime.

[wordsofearnest]

Your employer matched your social security also.

[Lokibob]

You got to be kidding me. Lonsberry says in his screed that he would like to have a simple life (sheep, chickens etc), but big bad social security has taken it all away.

Many years ago, I set some goals for myself, worked hard to attain those goals, and not once did I blame anybody but my self when the goals had to be put off a few years.

Could I have done better without social security, probably, but SS did not keep me from buying my little plot of land in the country, while still raising kids, attending college, and working a full time job, and always having a part time job.

BTW, a part time job is a great thing. You make money at it, and since you are working, you do not have time to spend the money you earned.

I say again, Lonsberry could have anything he wants, if he is willing to work for it.

.....Bob

[nedlbndr]

Bob, I think you may need to be introduced to the world of property taxes. In Indiana, no property is owned by an individual. Rather it is leased to you by the state in ever increasing annual payments. Heaven help you if you need a new school, or God forbid, a sports dome. The power to tax is a power to confiscate. Talk about a system in need of overhaul. Best, N