Posted on 02/03/2014 5:55:59 AM PST by Kaslin
What problem was Social Security supposed to solve when it was started?
It's turned into Federal Welfare and a second tax revenue stream for the general fund (all current tax income minus current expenses.)
The answer isn't starting a third taxpayer supported system.
SS was supposed to be “supplemental”, IIRC...
Yes, that was supposed to “solve” the problem that I proposed, but it wouldn’t even if the thieves hadn’t been robbing it, because of the “supplemental” nature of it.
The receivers still needed to not spend every dime that passed through their fingers and lay some up for retirement.
The article makes some good points, but leaves out what I see as a crucial fault in such government schemes.
The savings which an employee puts into these new accounts is simply like buying government bonds. There is no market involvement, and none of the money is in the investment market: it is only being used to cover government debt, and to help defer the debt until time of withdrawal.
What I see as a huge problem is that the Fed is doing the same thing with its negative-interest-rate policy. There is essentially no normal supply and demand situation to create a real capital market. The interest rates are manipulated, when they should be determined by supply and demand for capital, which leads to disciplined, prioritized investment. Instead, we have a hodgepodge of government programs, and a debt bubble not only in government debt, but in misallocated private investment.
The MyRA is a stupid bit of diddling with “programs” by a person or persons who basically do not know what they are doing.
Why should one sort of savings instrument like this have special tax advantages, when a truly productive investment in the free market for capital gets taxed repeatedly? No wonder we are not producing very much anymore. And then we have pitiful ads like to one during the Super-duper Bowl in which a superannuated “folk” singer (Bob Dylan) urges his audience to buy American cars just because. We are supposed to make possibly stupid purchases because it is patriotic. Huh? This is told us by a guy who never showed much sign of love-of-country in the 70’s.
Here is the basic economics: an interest rate in a market is a price — the price of borrowing money. It is a function of the supply and demand for money available for use for (among other things) investment. The Keynesian fallacy is than if we adjust interest rates by sleight-of-hand, we will improve the economy. It is the same idea as fixing prices in an attempt to accomplish some politically favored goal. It doesn’t work, and it causes really big problems on its own.
We know this from theory, and we should know it from the lessons of history. Unfortunately, mobs don’t learn from history. Usually, they not only do not foresee any problems, but when the problems actually occur, they usually don’t even know what is happening.
In the meantime Obama mandates ‘workers’ buy ethanol tainted gas which raises the price of both gasolinecand food. BS expensive “green” energy is mandated raising the cost of energy. Oil exploration is stalled raising the cost of gasoline and diesel. Taxes are raised. Obamacare is mandated... BUT go and put your money is a pathetic government scheme that won’t even keep upnwith inflation because you will have so much left over.
The working taxpayers will alone foot the bill for this because we are the “rich” they always refer to. The truly rich are mostly democrats and will therefore not pay anything to support this or will be exempted. The real rich don’t pay much in income taxes because they are allowed to list their profits, royalties, etc as other than taxable income. They have long been given the tools to shelter what would otherwise be taxable income so that is a non-starter.
We pay for it when we have very little to put toward our own savings and retirement accounts thanks to this Nazi Socialist dictatorship and the economic ruin they are pushing on us.
It also has a lot to do with nationalizing (seizing) our retirement accounts and rolling them into this unconstitutional theft scheme.
How much longer is this going to be debated? Are we going to still be debating this as they march us off to the concentration camps and ovens?
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