[NTHockey]

Social Security and Medicare are NOT entitlements! We pay and our employers match for both in thefts from our paychecks. When you retire, you still pay for both. SS is considered taxable income and retirees pay into Medicare fund.

Both SS and Medicare are liabilties owed to the retirees. I say go ahead and stop paying and their won’t any place in this universe for you to hide. Osama bin Laden would turn them in!

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

Wrong, Socialist INsecurity is a transgenerational ponzi scheme...there is no trust fund...the government confiscates money from you to redistribute it to another group of people....with only the promise that it will rob future generations to pay you...that’s if you live long enough while alternatively you could just as easily take care of your retirement.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

I say...go ahead...let's keep robbing current workers...and tell your children and grandchildren that the government needs to rob them....soon there won't be a place for them to hide!

"The Social Security system, passed in 1935, is not a legitimate, savings-investment, insurance program. Taxes are not invested into real, income-earning assets. There is no trust fund but in name only. Americans have no property right in their supposed "contributions." The Social Security system today is a compulsory, redistributive, unconstitutional, pyramid scheme that contains the seeds of its own destuction given the demographics of the next 30 years. Reforming or "tweeking" a corrupt system is not a meaningful option. There is only one true privatization reform of Social Security. There is only one Constitutional solution. There is only one economically and morally sound system. Our nation must begin the difficult but manageable process of dismantling the Social Security system - yes, in total. The sooner the debate begins on how best to do it, on how to transition to free-market retirement options with their vast array of investment and retirement program choices, the sooner all Americans will remove the social insecurity in their futures." --Dr. Judd W. Patton Ph.D. (Bellevue University's Economics Departmnet)

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

Here you go...check out this thread

"Well, it is true that workers today pay 6.2% of their earnings (up to an earnings limit of $72,600) and the employer pays the 6.2% as well. Yes, that adds up to 12.4% in payroll taxes. (Self employed pay 15%.) But as economists often say, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." That 6.2% "mandated benefit" is not free; it forces employers to reduce workers' market- determined salaries or fringe benefits. Otherwise, the mandated cost would inflict losses on employers, causing unemployment. In other words, mandated benefits simply replace market- determined benefits and/or monetary compensation. Economically this means that workers, in fact, pay the full 12.4%. The bottom line is don't be fooled: It's your money the employer is sending to Washington, D.C.

More importantly, Americans do not have a legal right to these taxes. In 1960 in Flemming vs. Nestor, Mr. Nestor sued the Federal government claiming he had a right to collect Social Security benefits since he had paid his Social Security "contributions." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he, and all workers, have no such property right. "I paid in, I contributed, and therefore I deserve my benefits," is, therefore, a common mis-belief among Americans. Congress can change, as the current debate reveals, any and all criteria as to benefit amounts, tax rates, retirement age, etc. They can cut or eliminate benefits regardless of workers' so-called "contributions."

Superficially, Social Security appears to be just a government pension plan for the elderly. Rather, it is a pyramid or Ponsi scheme. It is not based on sound principles of insurance. Private insurance companies invest the premiums of their customers in stocks and bonds and other income-producing assets. Real wealth is created. Later, the earnings from that wealth is used to pay annuities or pensions. But Social Security is not a savings-and-investment program. Social Security taxes (premiums?) create no wealth. The payroll taxes are not invested, but are used to pay current retirees and survivors under the program. It's called a pay-as-you-go system. Some call it an intergenerational income-transfer program. It is indeed! Now understand this, please. A pyramid or Ponsi scheme (illegal in all 50 states) works under the unsound and unethical principle that early investors are paid handsome returns with cash taken from later investors. As long as more and more investors (suckers) are attracted, the scheme works and appears to be successful. Eventually, however, the system collapses with the inevitable decrease in the number of new investors. In like manner, Social Security seemed to work well in the early years when there where few eligible retirees and lots of workers. A person retiring in 1940 could get an inflation-adjusted return of 135%!! But as the ratio of workers to retirees has declined over the decades, so has the average expected return, now 4% in 1999. A minus return is a distinct possibility in the near future. One wonders what Mr. Ponsi would have thought about Social Security "stealing" his idea.