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Looting Social Security
The Nation ^ | 3/2/09 | William Greider

Posted on 01/01/2011 8:02:36 AM PST by EBH

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. ...

...To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's great legislative victory in 1981--enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and upper-income ranks--launched the era of swollen federal budget deficits. But their economic impact was offset by the huge tax increase that Congress imposed on working people in 1983: the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age. A blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both parties signed on. Since there was no partisan fight, the press portrayed the massive tax increase as a noncontroversial "good government" reform.

Ever since, working Americans have paid higher taxes on their labor wages--12.4 percent, split between employees and employers. As a result, the Social Security system has accumulated a vast surplus--now around $2.5 trillion and growing. This is the money pot the establishment wants to grab, claiming the government can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to workers twenty-five years ago.

Actually, the government has already spent their money.

...Treasury has borrowed the surplus revenue collected by Social Security and spent the money on other purposes--

(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: commiemag; fraud; greider; reagan; ronaldreagan; ronaldusmagnus; ronalusmagnus; scam; thenation; williamgreider
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To: dljordan

Yep, we agreed to high SS taxes to solve this problem, NOW WE are the ones STEALING the futures of the “Jugend”


21 posted on 01/01/2011 9:14:31 AM PST by Marty62 (Marty 60)
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To: dljordan
They are demonizing people who have worked and paid into SS but when it comes time to reap the rewards of their labor they are suddenly scumbag freeloaders. Many immature people here on FR are getting on the band wagon.

These hard working people of whom you speak already spent the money they were supposedly saving for their retirement plus a lot more that they borrowed. There is no trust fund, just a huge debt. The question now is how much Americans of the future should suffer to support people who behaved so profligately in the past.

22 posted on 01/01/2011 9:14:53 AM PST by rogue yam
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To: Marty62
Yep, we agreed to high SS taxes to solve this problem, NOW WE are the ones STEALING the futures of the “Jugend”

That's exactly right. You agreed to taxes. You also agreed to a certain formula for calculating benefits. Finally you agreed to spend all of the money in the "trust fund" and a whole lot more borrowed money besides. The money you earned is gone and your benefits will be paid from new taxes on newer workers who have their own lives and futures to try to secure in addition to paying for your retirement.

23 posted on 01/01/2011 9:22:01 AM PST by rogue yam
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To: rogue yam

YOU agreed to it, NOT ME. Speak for yourself.


24 posted on 01/01/2011 9:23:47 AM PST by Marty62 (Marty 60)
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To: Libloather
>>How do you loot something that’s bankrupt?
Ex 32:4
4 He [Aaron the Levite priest] took what they handed him and made it into an [GOLD] idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
NIV
 
John 2:15
 15 So he [Jesus] made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
NIV
Sheep and Cattle -  with four legs, or two?
 
[Sachs of] Golden Cattle growing fat from the fleecing of sheep is not a terminal process -- at least for the carnivorous parasites who predictably feast upon the systemically corrupted and rotting social carcass.
Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Ba'al
--The Who?
Ba'al being a Hebrew word for Lord, Owner, Master, Possessor - typically manifested throughout history in the  Royally facetious theocratic merger of Commerce, Religion, and Government - by Pharaos, and Emperors, and Caesars, and Kings, and the other fraudulent men who would be gods - where...
 

"COMMERCE BETWEEN MASTER AND SLAVE IS DEPOTISM"
 
and from which:
 
"TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, [American] goverments are instituted among men"
 

25 posted on 01/01/2011 9:27:48 AM PST by LomanBill (Animals! The DemocRats blew up the windmill with an Acorn!)
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To: raybbr

Good quote, Greenspan. A lot of unemployed people HAVE all of those skills. Any other ideas for them? Do you need someone to cut your grass?


26 posted on 01/01/2011 9:38:59 AM PST by Right Wing Assault (The Obama magic is <strike>fading</strike>gone.)
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To: Libloather
How do you loot something that’s bankrupt?

Myabe it's less bankrupt than the things they usually loot.

27 posted on 01/01/2011 9:40:50 AM PST by Right Wing Assault (The Obama magic is <strike>fading</strike>gone.)
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To: dljordan
The media (on orders from whom?) are trying to divide us further. They are demonizing people who have worked and paid into SS but when it comes time to reap the rewards of their labor they are suddenly scumbag freeloaders. Many immature people here on FR are getting on the band wagon.

Ever wonder what the shape of Social Security would be in if SSI, Disability, etc. were not freely handed out to anchor babies, illegal aliens, brand new immigrants, and their extended families?
28 posted on 01/01/2011 9:42:24 AM PST by algernonpj (He who pays the piper . . .)
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To: Marty62
YOU agreed to it, NOT ME. Speak for yourself.

Don't get cranky, old man, and learn to take responsibility for your actions.

The "trust fund" is gone and there is a huge debt besides. Those are facts.

You want to claim that it is not your fault but the spending and borrowing were done by those you elected.

Why should others just coming into the workforce suffer to provide for your retirement when you've already burdened them with a huge debt for past spending? Why isn't it reasonable to expect you to pay your own way? If you are 65 now then you have enjoyed having your highest-earning years occur during the best economy the world has ever known. That economy has now crashed due to the profligacy of the past generation. Didn't you save anything during this thirty-year orgy of spending and speculation? If not then why not?

29 posted on 01/01/2011 9:53:15 AM PST by rogue yam
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To: Libloather
How do you loot something that’s bankrupt?

A 2% Social Security payroll tax cut was a thought, though it's not looting, it's poor financial planning for an about to go underwater government program, how anyone signed onto that is...
30 posted on 01/01/2011 10:14:57 AM PST by Son House (The TEA Party is Going to Be Like a GI Party...Clean House!)
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To: dljordan

Some of the posts have just been stunning.


31 posted on 01/01/2011 10:23:57 AM PST by EBH ( Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.)
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To: rogue yam; Marty62

***Didn’t you save anything during this thirty-year orgy of spending and speculation? If not then why not?***

I don’t know about Marty, but I was taxed to the limit and FICA’d into financial basics - while raising 4 children as a single parent. (NO, married and missed). My 401k’s dropped like droopy drawers and I am now taking out of SS what I and my employers were forced to “contribute to” for 50 years....so don’t get snippy with those of us who behave ethically and expected others to do the same.

As for the Boomers - they will soon become TEA party voters.


32 posted on 01/01/2011 10:26:29 AM PST by sodpoodle (Despair; man's surrender. Laughter; God 's redemption.)
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To: raybbr

He’s married to Andrea Mitchell! “Genius”?? Really? Unless you mean that in a sarcastic way?


33 posted on 01/01/2011 10:39:07 AM PST by pillut48 (Israel doesn't have a friend in President Obama...and neither does the USA! (h/t pgkdan))
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To: pillut48
Really? Unless you mean that in a sarcastic way?

Ya think???????????

Happy New Year

Or

Gluckliches Neu Jahr!

34 posted on 01/01/2011 10:42:16 AM PST by raybbr (Someone who invades another country is NOT an immigrant - illegal or otherwise.)
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To: dljordan

The oldies have the ‘socialism for me but not for thee’ thing down pat, that’s for sure. If you’re between jobs on fr, you’re a scumsucking parasite. If you’re over 65, you ‘paid into it and deserve the entitlements’.

That class warfare type thinking is *VERY* much evident on here by the older types.


35 posted on 01/01/2011 10:42:38 AM PST by Tolsti2
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To: sodpoodle

Any tea party type that also supports ‘paid into it entitlements’ which means, all entitlements, isn’t really a conservative.

It’s ‘I paid into a government program so dammit I’m going to collect’ thinking that is the heart of socialism. Social security and medicare and obamacare are all the same beast.

You’ll see people saying ‘I paid into obamacare and I deserve all the free treatment I can get’ talk by ‘convservatives’ within 10 years guaranteed.


36 posted on 01/01/2011 10:44:53 AM PST by Tolsti2
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To: EBH

Actually Social Security, while having definite future financial problems, is in great shape compared to Medicare.

The shortfall for Medicare is roughly 3 times that of SS and the $hit will hit the fan far sooner.

I know I’ll get screwed on both, because they’re guaranteed to go to “means testing” and I have a decent pension and a very robust 401k account.


37 posted on 01/01/2011 10:49:56 AM PST by nascarnation
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To: EBH
I rarely read material from left wing outlets.

It's humorous to see how they point to municipal and union operated pension programs as role models for their "visionary" federal takeover of pensions and savings.

What a joke!

38 posted on 01/01/2011 10:55:58 AM PST by nascarnation
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To: dljordan
quote from article

If you cut Grandma's Social Security benefits, you are directly making life worse for the poor kids who live with her.

wasn't the "Great Society" a fine thing?

now 75% of black kids born are bastards

39 posted on 01/01/2011 11:03:36 AM PST by nascarnation
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

You point out the scam that is/was with social security. It was sold as a savings account bearing interest required by a caring government. However, what this caring government did not tell was that it intended to use your savings with interest to give to so many people including children who would not be required to put anything into the pot.It should have been obvious as proven later that the pot cannot grow if the take(ers) is more than the give(ers). The politicians,democrats and republicans, saw the takers as more important to their voter count than the givers. As such there was a race to provide for the takers and the system is where it is. Remedy for SS: go back to original promise as to every man,women and child i.e. you take what you give, no give no take.


40 posted on 01/01/2011 11:04:38 AM PST by noinfringers2
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