We are in our election cycle Social Security crisis once again, and the sky is closer to falling. If Congress had only privatized Social Security and invested it in the Stock Market when Bush was president http://slatest.slate.com/id/2272164 , there wouldn’t be any Social Security to worry about. Then we could have invested the Social Security trust funds in the stable housing market back in 2001, and it would have boomed. It’s not like other investment in the Stock Market, 401k’s and what not, haven’t been doing well. http://www.worthpoint.com/blog-entry/401k-tanking-antiques-collections-sound Just look at how the largest brokerage houses and housing CEOs made out.
“As a result, the performance of the companies run by the risk-takers was far more volatile, and not for the good of the companies: the risky strategies were more likely to end in a big failure than a big gain.”
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/11/12/071112ta_talk_surowiecki http://www.cfozone.com/index.php/Careers-Management/Builder-exec-pay-didn-t-collapse-along-with-housing-market.html
The Basic “Problem”
The Government Accounting Office estimates that in 2017 the Social Security trust fund will pay out more than it takes in by 2017, and that the fund could be bankrupt as soon as 2041. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05193sp.pdf Our population is aging, and soon baby boomers will start taking money from the fund, money that they initially put into Social Security. That is why I support Democrat “death panels” to kill those useless seniors. No, seriously, the hippie baby boomers are behind the need to raise the retirement age. Let’s not consider the fact that the program is currently still taking in more than it pays out. http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=6492&type=0
Moreover, the program will not go bankrupt, no matter how much we increase the debt. It is more likely to face reductions in payments, leaving millions of low income and no income seniors in poverty. http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10328
Social security isn’t just one program; it’s a serious of socialist spending that should be stopped now because deficits are more important than people. The programs include, retirement payments, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, death benefits, and aid to families with dependent children among other unneeded benefits for the unworthy.
Retirement payments are for people that waste their money on food, rent, heat, and other things instead of wisely investing it in the Stock Market for us billionaires to use. People that are unemployed have no one to blame but themselves that we made it economically beneficial to send jobs overseas and economically painful to hire people, even with all the recent profits corporations have garnered.
And you know the worst thing about these Social Security programs? Most of these programs were created during comrade Roosevelt’s term, and he’s a Democrat. No matter how much programs might help people, if they are passed under a Democratic administration, I am against them.
Possible fixes for the eminent collapse of Social Security include:
Raise the Retirement Age
The first thing we need to do to shore up Social Security is to get the lazy old folks to work longer and harder. Retirement age should go from 65 years old to 70 years old (or higher if they are still able to walk) in order to get those folks to work hard for their money. Besides, the longer they work, the more they delay they time they have to face the death panels.
Who cares about all the youth that won’t find jobs because granddad now has to work to the age of 70 before getting his Social Security payments? The second part of getting the old folks to work longer is telling the young folks that they won’t get any Social Security.
Full employment
Now, communists who hate free markets say they best way to create solvency in SS is to have full employment, or as close to full employment as possible. Five percent unemployment is a goal for these communists. However, having all those people in productive jobs would lead to inflation, and it’s better to have millions of people unemployed than to ask people to pay and extra 25 cents for a gallon of milk.
Full unemployment will reduce unemployment payouts and increase SS payments to help balance future budgets. But with inflation and the reduction of competition for jobs that full employed brings, we just can’t afford it.
Pass the DREAM Act and Allow more Immigration
At a time when we need more White babies, people want to reward illegal behavior by allowing criminals to become citizens. The DREAM Act would allow people who were brought to the U.S. illegally before the age of sixteen and have lived in the U.S. more than five years a path to citizenship if they go to college or serve in the military for at least 2 years. This is troublesome for several reasons.
- More brown citizens means Whites will soon me a minority and the Brownies will enact revenge against Whitey even though we have never done anything to harm brown people, ever.
- This act rewards education in a university where these spawn of criminals will be educated and become indoctrinated to be liberals.
- Educated people vote more and thus the DREAM act will create more voters that are brown and more reliably Democratic voters, i.e. socialist.
- The DREAM act would increase the number of brown people in the military and thus leaves us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. There are more than enough poor White trash to send off to war for our freedom to have low oil prices.
While it is true that illegal immigrants pay social security taxes that many won’t see as they age, we shouldn’t allow them to become citizens so they can utilize the money they have put into the program as they get older. As long as we use these illegals for backbreaking work and prevent them from becoming citizens, I am all for illegal labor.
$12 billion of Social Security revenue in 2007 came from hardworking immigrants without legal status in the U.S. That is a decent chunk of change… All in all, Goss reports that about two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have provided a $120 billion to $240 billion Social Security net benefit — this after subtracting any benefits that some undocumented immigrants might have fraudulently obtained…
http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/undocumented_immigrants_keep_social_security_solvent
Raise the Prime Interest Rate to Increase the Trust Funds Earnings
This is just a communist idea. How dare anybody control interest rates like commies do. Low interest means I can speculate in overseas currencies with borrowed money and buy more mansions with low rates. Low interest rates help the investment class, the only class that should matter in this debate. Why are the poor selfishly holding the SS trust away from us? We know how to invest money; leave it to us.
Stop Raiding the Trust
Communist Libertarians want us to stop raiding the Social Security trust to pay for wars. Well, we can do what we want. Where’s the Libertarian Party opposition in Congress? I didn’t think so.
Raise the Cap on Earnings for Social Security Tax
Again the people who want to engage in class warfare are asking us to raise the cap on taxable income over the already outrageous $106,800 amount. That would be another socialist tax against the hard working wealthy. Who cares if there are more poor widows out there, we will not pay for their cat food!
Reduce Benefits on Hard Working People with Pensions
They want to reduce benefits for those earning over $250,000. Hey, you can’t live on $250,000 without help from SS. Not if you want to keep full time kitchen staff and a yacht in Coronado. Some even say they want to get rid of it complete if you earn over 1,000,000 a year. The fiends! They want us to live like commoners?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/2010-07-28-letters28_ST1_N.htm
Other comrades in the class war against the wealthy want to take the rich off welfare and make the rich pay for all the benefits they receive from the government. I say good luck to that.
Actions
Support the DREAM Act
Petition http://www.dreamact.com/
Write Congress: http://immigration.change.org/petitions/view/ask_your_congressperson_to_support_the_dream_act
Info: http://dreamact.info/
Protect Social Security
http://www.petitiononline.com/savess1/petition-sign.html (Only for Ohio Residents)
http://civic.moveon.org/socialsecurity// (From MoveOn.org)
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/stand_up_for_our_seniors_and_protect_social_security
Write and Call Congress and the White House to protect Social Security and Pass the DREAM Act
President Obama
CO/ The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20500-0004
or phone: (202) 456-1414
Or send note online: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Congressional switchboard 800-828-0498
Just ask for the office of your Senator or Representative
House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/house/house_comments.shtml
Senate: http://www.senate.gov/
Find your Congressperson here:
http://www.votesmart.org/official_congress.php
Private Account stupidity—Ezra Klein
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/private_accounts_do_not_make_s.html
Why it won’t work
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245052/personal-accounts-are-no-cure-all-andrew-g-biggs
Entitlements Destroy us!!–paranoid rantings from the priveledged
http://thecynicaleconomist.com/?p=15520
SS a target?
http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/11/10/1805419/deficit-panel-leaders-plan-curbs.html
Who defines the Crisis
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/03/who-gets-to-define-what-social-security.html
More on solvency
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10841510/2/7-ways-to-make-social-security-solvent.html
Peace,
Tex Shelters
Tex Shelters Online 
I’ve called and written and I’ll call and write some more. But, Tex, I’m growing more and more pessimistic by the day. What on earth will it take to wake People up?
Will they get around to waking up when grandpa and grandma are ground into soylent green to feed the young un’s? Hmm… It occurs to me that would be you and me before long… Don’t know about you but I’m betting I wouldn’t taste very good in pellet form 😉
Little Sun,
I too worry that I will become Soylent Green. Perhaps I shouldn’t eat all that garlic for seasoning.
What concerns me the most is all the people willing to defend the rights of the wealthy not to pay taxes and not to be accountable (tort reform) but they are ready to hang anyone who takes welfare or needs SSI or wants help with health care. Why do we identify with the few against our own class?
Peace,
Tex Shelters
I have a friend whose indigent eighty-five-year-old neighbor is having trouble finding a job. I say that she isn’t looking hard enough.
Leeza,
And thus you sum up the idiot thinking of too many of our citizens and politicians.
Thanks.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
SS is was and always has been a ponzi scheme.
Its broke now. The money has already been spent.
All they have is drawers full of IOUs from the gov and trickster
govt accounting practices that make it appear solvent.
People will wake up when they realize that all the promises the
gov made them are worthless.
But hey you voted things will change, so I wouldnt worry about it.
Chris,
I guess you didn’t read the reports saying it is solvent, for now. And how is it a Ponzi sceme when up until now those that have put money into have received money back.
Please explain.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
The government spent the money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs 2.9 TRILLION!! — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offic
the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the the 2.9 trillion in IOUs
So there already broke but their not broke yet because they have IOU’s. And those IOU s wont run out for ten years?
HA HA HA HA HA. WOW man seriously wow!
The world has gone insane. Im glad I am here to laugh at it
Chris,
Yes, the government has borrowed from it. Can you provide books or links you your stats?
Also, you make one of my points for me. Stop the raiding of the SS trust, and it will remain solvent for years to come.
Or should we just give up and not care what happens to our money?
Peace,
Tex Shelters
Tex.
You dont understand what your talking about. Their is no money
Social security is a ponzi scheme! It does not and has never held
assets. They have assets in IOUs only!!
All the gov can do is monetize more debt and devalue your currency
to pay social security.
These [trust fund] balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures–but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds are not set up to be pension funds, like the funds of private pension plans. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury, that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures. [Emphasis added.]
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/09/misleading-the-public-how-the-social-security-trust-fund-really-works
Chris,
It doesn’t have to be a “Ponzi Scheme” and unlike a Ponzi Scheme, and accourding to the links I posted, SS is still solvent. Thus, it is NOT a Ponzi Scheme in the traditional sense.
Did you even read the links I provided? They show that SS is still solvent. I will read yours and check it out.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
Your money was spent the day it was received on wars and corporate welfare. Their is no money. just accounting.
Chris,
And, we shouldn’t help senoir citizens when they get old, or the disabled, or the widows, or the unemployed. They just suck, so let’s get rid of Social Security.
I will believe the facts I have read on various sites listed above and others.
You are correct about the waste on wars and corporate welfare and the bs accounting.
Thanks for the debate.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
Okay Chris, I read the article.
Let’s say it’s correct even though they cite no sources, no people are quoted, and no documents presented. But let’s assume that although they present no evidence about there being “no money put into the trust” they immediately state “they buy bonds that are loans to the government”. So, a bond is not money in a trust? There are private trust that buy bonds and those are still considered as good as money.
There is really nothing in there that contradicts my information and what I suggested already, “stop raiding the trust”. Now, if they actually provided tangible evidence, I might agree more completely.
The point is, their is a balance in the trust, however you want to look at it, whether it is just accounting or not. And there are ways to make it more solvent.
Are you saying just because we give the Chinese IOUs for debt, it’s not worth anything?
It’s a matter of whom you have faith in. They are still making payments, so it looks like there is some money, accounting trick or not.
If I owe a bank money on my mortage, and they haven’t recieved all of it yet, it is still considered an asset. I think of the SS Trust Fund like that.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
A ponzi scheme is when you take in money and then spend all of it instead of investing it.
The gov took all the money and spent all of it but promises it will pay it back.
The only way they can pay the IOUs back is to go further in debt with interest of course.
This is not sustainable.
If old people get burned well??? They voted too. SO whos fault is it.
Chris,
Yes, but in a Ponzi Scheme, you never get any money back. As of now, people are still getting payments.
So, it’s more like dangerous accounting and loan sharking. That guy’s a paranoid fear monger, but hey, he’s enthusiastic.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
Haven’t checked all your links yet Tex. I will. Seems like had the money not been stolen for war, been left in the trust fund and invested… But they “borrowed” it instead. Now “Patriots” need to take another hit. The French would riot. Social Security has not added a dime to the national debt. It is on the chopping block because they don’t want to pay the money back.
LyndenOso,
You are sooo right. The people who raided the trust don’t want to pay it back.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
A piece both informative, and clever. If I have to work past 65, I may just as well sign up at the Death Panel camp.
Thanks for what you do.
Thanks Randy,
I have already applied for the job of guard at the Death Panel Camp when I turn 65.
Thanks.
Peace,
Tex Shelters