So why is there no call to reduce and eliminate welfare?
Could it be our politicians are afraid of riots?
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.
“...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Privatize it or lift the ladder up so few can get on it.. Make it optional hoping and praying many on it DIE?... SSA was a Chinese Fire Drill from the very beginning.. as is literally everything invented by democrats..
A good plan could be constructed based in the private sector.. but it would be a total re-write.. a completely different system.. But the federal government itself would have to be reduced to its core and re-invented as well..
NOT LIKELY... America is way too brain washed..
America does not even know democracy is Mob Rule by mobsters YET..