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 ...
You have some say in going on welfare. You have no say in paying for Social Security. Forced welfare.
Welfare has its flaws, and it’s certainly gone to extremes, but you’re not forced to sign up for it. Yet.
Samuelson is one of the brightest economists in the world. When he speaks you should listen, regardless of whether you agree or disagree.
As I’ve said in the past, I’ll be amenable to negotiating this when I get close to receiving what I & my employer paid in - not even asking for interest.
Right now I’ve got about 20 yrs to go.
“So, when Rush Limbaugh and others claim that 50% of the country don’t pay taxes (referring to income taxes only), that is misleading.”
His statement is not misleading. Federal income taxes are the largest source of revenue for the federal government. Almost 50 percent pay no federal income tax with a large part of this group receiving tax welfare (refundable tax credits). This group is the SS winners, whose payroll taxes are small, yet SS benefits are relatively large. SS has a progressive benefit structure in which low paid workers receive benefits similar to higher paid workers. A major part of our debt problem is tax freeloanding. Refundable tax credits should be time and amount limited. All welfare should be time and amount limited except for truly disabled.
Are you a tax freeloader? I find individuals defending tax freeloaders are either committed leftists or receiving tax welfare themselves.
RE: The original concept of social security was that people paid into it on a regular basis and received the benefits when they retired.
Well, the point of that article is that the original concept NO LONGER APPLIED AS FAR BACK AS 60 years ago.
Those who paid more do not get what they paid into and those who paid less or nothing, get more than what they paid into.
And here’s the part that hurts, if, God forbid, you do not live long enough to get back what you paid into ( say, you died at age 65 ), what you paid into does not come back to your family, it gets given to someone else.
Easy fix for SS. Stop all SS payments to anyone who isn’t a retiree.
I have a fix for Social Security, and it has been in my mind for 35 years. Had we done “it” 35 years ago, every working American would now be putting 35% of their FICA tax, PLUS 35% of the employer’s payroll tax, into an account with his or her NAME ON IT.
But, of course, “it” wasn’t done 35 years ago, nor any time since; but it is not too late to start.
Here “it” is: the first year, 99% of FICA and payroll goes where it has always gone — into the Social Security fund — very little pain there for current benefits. Might ask for a 1% cut in present benefits (on average maybe $13 a month), just to show good faith. Also in the first year, 1% of FICA and payroll tax goes into an account with the employee’s name on it. No one but the employee or his/her survivors has any access to it.
In the second year, 98%—2%. Third year, 97%—3% and so on. How painless is that? Almost imperceptible.
Along with the one-time 1% benefit cut, enact a 1 year per decade increase in retirement age (so people have plenty of time to prepare). Then, sunset the ridiculous SSI boondoggle. It is nothing more than a Christmas tree ornament that has millions of Americans feigning bad backs or jake legs and hiring lawyers to help get them into SSI heaven, thus to help them live out their lives in Snaggletooth Estates, wearing sleeveless bare midriff T-shirts and selling dogs — while costing taxpayers a fortune.
It would take 100 years, but it would totally end Social Security as we know it, an allow our descendants to have a far better form of it. The beauty is that the process would begin immediately; and decade-by-decade, we would see a greater and greater increment of the entire society being invested in work and saving for retirement.
I have a fix for Social Security, and it has been in my mind for 35 years. Had we done “it” 35 years ago, every working American would now be putting 35% of their FICA tax, PLUS 35% of the employer’s payroll tax, into an account with his or her NAME ON IT.
But, of course, “it” wasn’t done 35 years ago, nor any time since; but it is not too late to start.
Here “it” is: the first year, 99% of FICA and payroll goes where it has always gone — into the Social Security fund — very little pain there for current benefits. Might ask for a 1% cut in present benefits (on average maybe $13 a month), just to show good faith. Also in the first year, 1% of FICA and payroll tax goes into an account with the employee’s name on it. No one but the employee or his/her survivors has any access to it.
In the second year, 98%—2%. Third year, 97%—3% and so on. How painless is that? Almost imperceptible.
Along with the one-time 1% benefit cut, enact a 1 year per decade increase in retirement age (so people have plenty of time to prepare). Then, sunset the ridiculous SSI boondoggle. It is nothing more than a Christmas tree ornament that has millions of Americans feigning bad backs or jake legs and hiring lawyers to help get them into SSI heaven, thus to help them live out their lives in Snaggletooth Estates, wearing sleeveless bare midriff T-shirts and selling dogs — while costing taxpayers a fortune.
It would take 100 years, but it would totally end Social Security as we know it, an allow our descendants to have a far better form of it. The beauty is that the process would begin immediately; and decade-by-decade, we would see a greater and greater increment of the entire society being invested in work and saving for retirement.
Would you be amenable if given this choice:
You do not get what you contributed in Social Security when you retire IN EXCHANGE for NOT BEING TAXED on your current retirement income.
For instance, let’s say you are now 65, and throughout your working career, you saved enough in your 401K, IRA and other retirement accounts to get an income of $60,000 average for life, and you should be receiving an addtional $20,000 per year in social security.
You may give up the $20,000 in social security due you, in exchange for being taxed only for $35,000 of your income (That’s $20,000 plus an addtional $5,000 ).
Social security is welfare. Okay so is Union Pensions by teachers and public sector employees. What a teacher and public sector employee pays into their pensions does not even cover the magnitude of the ‘welfare’ of the social security system. There maybe some significant problems with social security, but there is a different problem in that the pensions plans are resulting in the few sponging off the backs of the taxpayers.
Spread the wealth of the taxpayers to a bunch of yahoos whom feel entitled to what - being crappy teachers and damn poor workers whom are only concerned in their belief it is there fair share. Damn they never paid in the amount that they get as their pension.
I watch the DPW and many are useless workers. What is orange and sleeps four? A DPW truck.
Teachers in Wisconsin for example teach and yet the students are unable to read and do math. Seems welfare is more given to people whom are not doing the work they were hired for and only seeking after a higher degree Masters degree so they can have a higher income.
People pay into social security for years, yes they collect, but is it there fault the amount they paid does not meet the amount they are paid.
so saying social security is welfare, why not pensions for public employees is to be considered the same. Oddly a public sector employee gets social security too.
LOL! Yes, I could do that. But I won’t.
Welfare is where you get something somebody else paid for.
Social security is where the government takes your money and it is wasted by a bureaucracy so nobody gets it.
So sorry. I had no idea my long post was going to go up twice.
I think you are referring to Paul Samuelson the Nobel winning economist. Robert Samuelson is a liberal columnist for Newsweek. They are not related.
100% of the Left supports entitlements, simply on principle if for no other reason.
And a large percentage of "conservatives" support entitlements like Social Security on the basis of 'I paid in, I want what I deserve'.
My opinion is that nothing will change within the political process -- there is too much support for things which mathematically cannot work.
Therefore, I see collapse and war as inevitable. The entitlements will stop, not in an orderly, measured, tapering off fashion. No, the day will come when it all stops cold turkey and people begin to die.
Right on Mick!
Exactly.
“original concept NO LONGER APPLIED AS FAR BACK AS 60 years ago.”
Tell that to the people who take the money out of my check ever 2 weeks. The politicians have created giveaway programs within Social Security and they have screwed up the formulas for funding and payment but for the people who have paid in all their working lives it is NOT welfare.
They are less afraid of elderly Americans who have worked and contributed all their lives, than of welfare leaches who have never worked.
I say FIRST abolish every single welfare program, INCLUDING the leaches who infest the government offices to administer them, BEFORE any further talk about social security.
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