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Posted on 12/20/2007 10:49:56 AM PST by 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.
Do not use FICA as an excuse for your alleged plight.
Your right, we work for it but do you know ANYONE who has gotten back ALL of what they put in?
And if it's so damn great then why don't they give it ALL back to you in one lump sum? I'll tell you why, because they have squandered it!
The sheeple have been lead to slaughter.
True, but that didn't add to any visible balance that I could see, instead that just went into some black hole and disappeared.
Am I supposed to feel guilty about it? I'm grateful for it and to those who have to make the sacrifice. I read the Amish were exempt, knew government workers were back when I started, thought everybody else had to pay in (teachers, don't know?), and have looked it up and see some students are exempt and possibly some of the working poor.
How safe are 401(k)'s and IPERS in the long run, does anyone have any thoughts on that?
One thing I do know. I couldn't survive on SS alone and would have to try to qualify for government housing, food stamps, some kind of medical help, help with utilities, and give up my car and a lot else, back to just another form of government dependency. Either that or live on the streets. Plus it isn't all it is cracked up to be; to sign on to Plan B and the prescription plan, they take out $158.40. I didn't know they did that, thought I'd be home free from worrying about medical bills. Still have to pay part of it, not complaining about that, had to pay all of it before.
I'm trying to sort it all out. I probably could have qualified for SSD years ago when the qualification guidelines weren't so stringent as they are now, maybe not, didn't want to go that route. At the wages I earned, I might have been able to invest just a little of it in the stock market or something else that had a good return on investment, but I needed every penny to support myself and my kids and then some.
Dude, why are you thinking backward on this? The answer is to restore to everyone the same rights that the California public employees have retained. The only reason you pay into Social Security is that everyone looks at public employee pensions as something that should be taken away, instead of something that should be emulated.
The San Diego situation is not representative of how public pensions generally work. The vast majority of public employees pay the same amount toward their pension that would have gone into SS. In return they receive a sustainable pension that provides a comfortable retirement.
The "overgenerous" benefits that everyone complains about could easily be available for every legal resident in the US, if everyone wasn't so busy being outraged at the wrong people.
Maybe so. But there is really no denying that we’re over regulated and over taxed in this country.
Sounds like a good plan, tho continuing to pay benefits will be a Big Hit on the budget. Can we afford it? Especially if it means raising taxes.
Even if the tax isn’t called a SS tax, the taxpayers will know it is going to retirees and is essentially the same as the SS tax, but they won’t be getting any benefits from it. Will that be acceptable?
We've been through the entire "Social Security routine" before. Remember when G.W. Bush tried to get Congress to reform the system? Private accounts?
Back then, I predicted that his efforts faced a rough road. What happened?
If "reform" couldn't succeed when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, how in heck does anyone - even here on Free Republic - expect that it will ever be reformed by Democrats or a divided government?
In view of G.W. Bush's failure to promulgate reforms, I would think any and all G.O.P. candidates, conservative or otherwise, are going to be treading lightly on the issue for the next few election cycles.
I daresay that Reagan never risked his popularity because he was wise enough not to muck with SS.
So long as it is "in danger" of collapse, nobody is going to do much about SS.
They will only act when the system actually BEGINS to collapse.
- John
The best line in the whole story. Unfortunately it is SOOOOOO true....
Bull! The Social Security Administration is expected to spend over $600B in 2007, second only to Health and Human Services, and more than the entire Department of Defense.
Also, unlike income taxes, which are paid almost entirely by the rich and upper middle class, the Social Security Administration is funded primarily by the much larger numbers of lower wage earners. It's negative impact is much greater for these people, and is twice what it appears to be, when looking at a paycheck stub.
If it's such a good deal, why isn't it voluntary?
Amen.
Lots of folks willing to try to browbeat anyone who doesn't follow the party line here.
You, by definition, are a socialist! From those who have to those that have not. Hillary is your gal.
they voted for the people who spent their money. screw them all. making one generation pay for the mistakes of another gerneration is not the solution.
i'm 36 and have been paying in for twenty years now and have nothing to show for it. i'll be paying in for another 20 years and then what? NOTHING
you can have my first twenty years, just shut the damn thing down or let me the hell out.
I would disagree with your belief that you are one of the few. There is a minority that have no faith in SS. I am one of the minority. By the time I retire, I believe our government will have decided that I don't "need" SS and it would be better distributed to others. It is the direction our government has been and continues to go. It is the sellable alternative. My SS check states that the benefits listed are not scheduled to be available and are not guaranteed.
You have 20 years in the military and a pension coming. I don't suspect you are worried about SS. What about your children? Have you taught them to rely on SS? Or have you instead taught them to ignore what the government has promised you and plan on providing for yourself in your final few years? Anything the government tosses your way is bonus when you hit 70 years old, provided you live that long.
I went to a funeral today for a dear family member. He was 69. He may be one of the hardest working and generous people I have ever known. He ran a family business his whole life. Guess what happened to all his SS contributions today. Bye-Bye. It's a small windfall for our government that my cousin died today. It's one less promise they have to honor.
FYI, federal employees (under FERS) now pay into social security.
I already have and stored it on a flash drive. Here is what I come up with:
Social Security Sucks.
I first paid intro the system in 1968, when I was 15 years old and have paid into it every year since then (except for two years during college). If I had taken the 6% (ignoring the fact the SS is 12%)and invested it annually with a 10% rate of return, right now I would have $350,000. If I retire at age 63 the number is about $1,000,000.
Social security tells me I am going to get $2,200 a month when I retire. That would be about a 2.5% return, just on the 6%.
Anyone who believes Social Security is a good thing does not understand basic economics, or seeks to take advantage of those who do not.
So there is a lack of leadership. No contest.
Gripe gripe gripe. We all hate our government but nobody will do a damn thing about it. The only blood we will spill is FOR our government not for ourselves.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
You erred in assuming a 5% growth rate in your investment. Because of your membership in the Social Security Trust Fund, you should anticipate a rate of return on the order of -4% excluding regular pillaging of your principal to fund such important national priorities as bridges to nowhere and indoor jungles without which the terrorists will have won. If you cannot understand that knowledge or the benefit thereof to your bottom line, then your level of intelligence differs markedly from that of Distinguished Members of Congress.
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