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 ...
You are a very funny man.
Social Security did not make promises. The promises were made by politicians elected by the American people including you and all of these other working people you mention. Those promises were transparently fraudulent all along and yet you and the corrupt politicians mutually played along. Now the inevitable time of reckoning is at hand and you want future taxpayers to suffer to make good on your past lies. That is irrational, immoral, and simply won't work.
While ON OUR WATCH - we delivered - by working and contributing to the SS fund and paying exorbitant taxes, with few deductions (no childcare, no mortgage for renters) so check your facts before generalizing about negligent citizens. The Government seized control of our lives a long time ago.
While on your watch you elected a succession of governments that created this mess right in front of your face all along. Someone has to take the hit for this nonsense. Who? Future taxpayers? Why are taxpayers not yet born more responsible for these failures than you are? It makes no sense, slick.
There are a number of people posting irrational, self-regarding nonsense on this thread. That is bad for America. Social Security is a corrupt scam that is reaching its time of reckoning. It will require intelligence, integrity, rationality, and courage to unravel this mess. If you possess any of these qualities then I welcome your contributions to this thread reflecting same.
I asked you what Specific government benefits did I receive, (Which would have required the government to loot Social Security?)....And you stated:
"The Department of Defense"
This is the kind of jackassery cock'nbull comment I expected from you...Social Security was not looted by the corrupt federal government to pay for military spending.
You're actually trying to convince those in the private sector, it is THEY who are responsible for this titanic insider government/banking corruption.....lol
The private sector clearly a belly full of this epic government corruption and intrusion, but the big government payroll parasites *always* respond by asking, "Are you including the military", when they know damn well the military has little to do with what has happened to D.C., insider banksters and king pins running the Wall Street cartel.
So once again, what are all these government benefits which taxes have not already paid for, that private sector working Americans have received, which cased the U.S. government to loot Social Security?
There had to be a point in time when incoming contributions to Social Security exceeded outgoing benefits.
I would suspect that some time between 1935 and 1970, when baby boomers and women began entering the workforce - in huge numbers; the data was never recalculated to allow for the increased life expectancy and disability retirement.
When the Government decided to pillage and plunder - the collapse was inevitable. Without investing the ‘trust fund’ assets - SS became a Ponzi scheme rather than a vested annuity.
This has been true almost every year since Social Security began (but was not true in 2010). All of the surplus that has been thus generated has already been spent on other things. From this point in time going forward, contributions are expected to be short of outgoing payments pretty much forever. (The next two or three years might be a wash or so if employment and payrolls recover quickly, but the retirement of the Baby Boomers begins now and will put Social Security permanently into the red starting very soon.) This shortfall will need to be made up either by increasing contributions, reducing benefits, or by paying the difference from other tax revenues (or more borrowing). This is the new reality going forward. There is no avoiding it. The insolvency of Social Security has been approaching for decades and now it is here.
You are acting like a fool.
My posts have been very simple and straightforward but you just don’t want to face facts.
Social Security is insolvent and the U.S. Government is in debt. Today. Because of the actions and choices of all Americans over the last several decades (and longer), including you.
You want future taxpayers including people not yet born to be responsible for bailing this situation out rather than you.
That is crazy and stupid and immoral.
You really ought to post things that make more sense than this or else not post at all.
You've already blamed the Social Security collapse and government debt on the military.
In addition, you've indicated Social Security insolvency is also a direct result of the actions of private sector working Americans.
You have implied the causes of Social Security problems have nothing to do with corrupt inept government, or their criminal insider friends up in Wall Street.
Could you please specify how private sector working Americans looted Social Security?
But the problem has been, and will continue to be that we “take out” an s-load more than we put in. My MIL, who is a spry and healthy 88 put into it for years, and has been taking it for 15 years. She got back her inputs about ten years ago. She is now living off my kids. And us.
She gets mad when I point that out to her.
I don’t begrudge it. She is working the system as promised to her. I just wish more people understood it.
I have specified this repeatedly. You are just too crazy and stupid to understand plain English or else too immoral to acknowledge that which you understand. All Americans (including those employed in the private sector) elected successive governments that created and implemented the fraudulent and now-insolvent Social Security system we now have. It's that simple. You spew nonsense because you want free money from someone else and there's no rational way to ask for that.
All caused by the American private sector working people eh?
You're clearly too stupid to understand or see the big picture..
Or your just too stupid to understand the differences between these two entrenched corrupted beltway parties are all but inconsequential...
It's good cop bad cop, dummy.....Anyone home?
In case you haven't noticed, you have absolutely *no* control over this government...zero.
Government became so large, so intrusive, government itself no longer knows what it cost to run it, OR who is operating the endless layers of government, or even what some of these government entities do.
Why do you think millions of Americans now believe the collapse of this colossal government is a real possibility?
Ya think this was all an accident? Ya think this government did what was in Americans best interest? Is that why tens of millions of low wage illiterate illegal aliens were allowed to flood in, basically compromising and undermining our entire system, while government pandered to them at the expense of the tax payers?
Ya think this was an accident slick?
Ya think this globalism, one world order, the EU, central banking, the drive to destroy our borders and destruction of our sovereignty is some pie in the sky dream or some nut bar's conspiracy shtick.
Ya think Jim and Jane Smith in Hacksaw Arkansas wanted the U.S. to export 100,000 of it's companies, while importing tens of millions of low wage illegal aliens into the U.S?
Ya think this was all some accident or fluke?
Ya think Jim and Jane Smith down in Arkansas caused all this do ya?
lol....Thanks for the laugh yam.
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