Posted on 03/07/2011 7:13:15 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In a recent column on the senior citizen lobby, I noted that Social Security is often "middle-class welfare" that bleeds the country. This offended many readers. In an e-mail, one snarled: "Social Security is not adding one penny to our national debt, you idiot." Others were more dignified: "Let's refrain from insulting individuals who have worked all their lives and contributed to the system for 50-plus years by insinuating that [their] earned benefits are welfare." Some argued that Social Security, with a $2.6 trillion trust fund, doesn't affect our budgetary predicament.
Wrong. As a rule, I don't use one column to comment on another. But I'm making an exception here because the issue is so important. Recall that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the main programs for the elderly, exceed 40 percent of federal spending. Exempting them from cuts - as polls indicate many Americans prefer - would ordain massive deficits, huge tax increases or draconian reductions in other programs. That's a disastrous formula for the future.
We don't call Social Security "welfare" because it's a pejorative term, and politicians don't want to offend. So their rhetoric classifies Social Security as something else when it isn't. Here is how I define a welfare program: First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it's pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people's own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.
Let's start with its $2.6 trillion trust fund. Doesn't this prove that people's payroll taxes were saved to pay for future benefits, disconnecting them from our larger budget problems? Well, no. Since the 1940s, Social Security has been a pay-as-you-go program.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
So why is there no call to reduce and eliminate welfare?
Could it be our politicians are afraid of riots?
Well, riots at the ballet box for them.
SSI, is welfare/charity.
The design is to make you poor( er ) during your working productive life, and a state dependent, mewing slave in your old age.
Very successful.
Most of the SS "fixes" I've heard make the program even more of a welfare program by removing the taxable income cap or means testing payments.
I paid the max in for at least 25 years.
“...draconian reductions in other programs.”
What’s wrong with that?
I’m okay with that label. At the same time, if SS payouts are welfare, FICA/Medicare is a tax. So, when Rush Limbaugh and others claim that 50% of the country don’t pay taxes (referring to income taxes only), that is misleading. Between the employer and employee (or self-employed) 15% or so is taken off the top as a tax. Because this tax ends somewhere around $100,000, it is truly a regressive tax.
There is no way SS is a “savings program,” as some claim.
Someone could pay into it all of his/her working life, totalling potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if he or she dies before the eligibility age, or shortly afterwards, and doesn’t have a surviving spouse or minor children, all that money is gone, absorbed into the system to pay others.
On the other hand a private retirement account can be passed down as an inheritance.
Social Security is an earned benefit.
The prescription drug benefit for seniors is welfare.
Well, this is why the budget problem is so difficult. Nearly all of our seniors are on welfare and they are content with the notion of redistributing income and wealth from the young to themselves.
Social Security is reverse welfare—people giving up their hard-earned money to support a monolithic State. I understand the rhetoric, but I’m damned offended to be classified as a welfare recipient of a program that takes money that I could have used to become a millionaire in retirement and doles it out to me in amounts barely enough to allow me to dine on Alpo.
Well, well, well. I wish I could remember the screen names of the people yelling at me for making the same point a week or so back.
“Social Security is an earned benefit.”
Can we at least compromise on: “Social Security is an earned WELFARE benefit”?
Not only have most small business owners paid the max but their contributions to match their employees is well above that. During my business life I have had an average of $800,000 in payroll each year. Someone calculated that that is over 100,000 (@14%) in additional money I paid the government for the so called “trust fund” matching contribution. And let me tell you as a small business owner that comes right off the top of the income my little business earns. And let me tell you another thing...I am going to take whatever those bastards pay me back in my own SS with both fists !!!
Most of us paid into SS expecting that it was a portion of our eventual retirement income and a tax supporting others less fortunate, but to change the rules of the game on many seniors who were the backbone maximum contributors to SS is absolutely wrong. If SS was means tested..how do you decide who needs it?
We need to change the system for those that are younger so that Congress cannot steal their money like they have done to the rest of us.
The original concept of social security was that people paid into it on a regular basis and received the benefits when they retired. It was forced savings by the government for the common good. The concept was that social security would be separate from the regular budget and would be self funding. Social security ran large surpluses throughout most of its history.
The politicians have since screwed things up but the people who pay into Social Security still expect to see something at the end.
If the politicians say Social Security is welfare then give me back all the money I paid in over the years.
“We don’t call Social Security “welfare” because it’s a pejorative term, and politicians don’t want to offend. So their rhetoric classifies Social Security as something else when it isn’t. Here is how I define a welfare program: First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.”
He forgot the requirement that there be no voluntary consent in the matter. This is what I keep pointing out when people claim SS and medicare/medicaid are supposed to help us and that it is our own money going into them. Why it’s so hard for them to figure that out is beyond me.
BINGO! End of Thread.
RE: I wish I could remember the screen names of the people yelling at me for making the same point a week or so back.
You can always do a search ( Your own posts ) and then determine who yelled at you then.
Then on this thread, you can post to them en masse and say — NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, I told you so...
:)
This is warped logic from the get-go. My employers and I contributed approximately $160,000 over the past 47 years into the SS fund. Had I been able to invest that money at an average return of 5% for all those years, compounding yields over $840,000 in the account. At my current payout rate, I need to live to 132 to get my money back. How’s is that welfare?
Also, Bush tried to privatize SS, but people said “No! It’s too complicated and I don’t want the responsibility.” Idiots! My Mom contributed all her working life up to age 66 and then retired, only to die of a brain aneurism 7 months later. If we had private accounts, that money would have passed onto her heirs. As it is, the gov’t gets her contributions. How’s that welfare?
This guy’s definition of welfare is simply wrong.
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