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There are far too many “other” areas which can be cut....S.S. is not the Gov.s money it’s the peoples money who paid into it. Let them cut all the fraud and waste first...

Social Security is a socialist abomination foisted upon us by FDR. The sooner it’s killed off, the better.

There are far too many “other” areas which can be cut....S.S. is not the Gov.s money it’s the peoples money who paid into it. Let them cut all the fraud and waste first...

How about converting the EPA, FCC, and 95% of all fedgov agencies into 7 person advisory councils to congress. Close ALL their buildings, auction them off. Enforcement for LAWS set forth by congress (not rules set forth by agencies) are enforced by federal agents and marshals.

Here we go again.

There is no real “trust fund”;there never was a trust fund, nor was a trust fund ever intended; the “lockbox” never had a lock, nor was it meant to have a lock. Consequently, we never have, and are not, “paying into” anything, and we certainly aren’t making “contributions” (who could possibly repeat that with a straight face?).

All of this language has been used by the successors of FDR as rhetorical camouflage for programs that are intergenerational theft. They are immoral and unconstitutional, but we can no more expect to get our tax money back that has been squandered on SS, etc. than we can expect to get our money back that has been squandered in other immoral and unconstitutional programs.

I’ve probably paid withholding for as long or nearly as long as anyone here. The hard truth is that it is money down a rathole just like virtually everything else we pay in taxes. The “old age programs”, which have always been ponzi schemes, have always been heading for the cliff. People have been pointing that out since FDR’s day. The trouble is that people just didn’t want to listen.

Now the game of musical chairs is coming top an end, and we (older conservatives) are probably going to be among those left standing. The best thing to do is to stop stealing from the young. The fact that we were stolen from doesn’t justify our doing the same thing.

Most people who have been receiving SS, etc. for any length of time have received vastly more than they ever paid in withholding taxes because of demographics (that is part of the ponzi scheme element of the programs). That isn’t true for those approaching “retirement” age now.

From watching people on these threads, it is apparent that FDR succeeded in creating a raging sense of entitlement, even among some conservatives. He and his cronies knew that most people like getting government checks. This is why these programs have never been seriously challenged even though they are transparent frauds.

There is no point in endless postings about “solutions” that will keep these programs as they are. We can’t defy economic reality. Moreover, although we have been robbed by prior generations, we need to admit that these “programs” are stealing from our children and grandchildren.

The CPI per the BLS is “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services”.

Originally the CPI was designed to measure the cost of a fixed basket of goods, i.e. comparing apple to apples. The rationale behind this was to use a set standard to accurately measure return on investment in relation to inflation, and to accurately measure the standard of living one can afford on a given income in relation to inflation.

The CPI is important because it is used by the Federal Reserve to justify its money printing policies, to set the interest rate on inflation-adjusted bonds known as TIPS, and by the federal government to calculate cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for the entitlement programs (e.g., Social Security). The more inflation is understated, the higher the inflation-adjusted rate of GDP growth that gets reported. In addition, the CPI influences interest rates, the stock market, and a host of salary and pension negotiations each year.

In addition to separating out the cost of food and energy to create core inflation, there are several biases understating inflation that have been built into the CPI.

Through the introduction of hedonics, the substitution effect, quality adjustments, intervention analysis, and geometric weighting, which are soft metrics that are open to political manipulation and can be used to artificially lower inflation, the CPI has changed from measuring inflation in relation to a set standard of living to measuring inflation in relation to a declining standard of living.

There are far better ways to deal with entitlements! One example no freebies for anchor babies, illegal aliens, brand new immigrants. and their extended families. This drain alone has cost billions upon billions for many years.

An obscene amount is spent on these freebies. Per Fair, using the completely outdated number of 13 million illegals, they cost US tax payers a net total of $100 Billion per year; using the still conservative number of 30 million illegals, the net cost 1s $ 231 Billion per year. That $31 Billion is split into $ 66.99 Billion at the Federal level, and 195.5 at the state and local level. AND these figure do not include the costs of brand new immigrants on the dole!

How about we add no bailouts of TBTF financial institutions. Another is to fold all government employees into SS and have them to contribute to their health insurance and retirement. Then there is that alphabet soup of agencies tied to the executive branch. etc. etc. ... ...

A more realistic chart of inflation:

"There are far too many “other” areas which can be cut....S.S. is not the Gov.s money it’s the peoples money who paid into it. Let them cut all the fraud and waste first..."

That's what I think. It's this kind of stuff that caused the republicans to be thrown out of power last time after they tried to cut medicaid arbitrarily while going on a spending spree with everything else.

I don't think we need to cut S.S.. We need to cut the wasteful government programs. And we need to stop immigration and raise import tariffs until the unemployment rate goes down.

Full employment will solve a lot of problems.