Social Security: The Train Wreck Is at the Station
Brought to you by the folks who created the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy.
During the third quarter, it has become dreadfully obvious to anyone looking at the numbers that Social Security has reached the point of crisis.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this soon. Year after year during this decade, Social Security’s trustees told us that while the system’s long-term solvency problems are very real, a cash crunch was roughly a decade away.
But in their most recent report in May, based on the system’s situation as it existed at the end of 2008, the trustees ominously trimmed that estimate to seven years:
Annual cost will exceed tax income starting in 2016, at which time the annual gap will be covered with cash from redemptions of special obligations of the Treasury that make up the trust fund assets until these assets are exhausted in 2037.
This decay occurred because the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy kicked into high (or, I should say, low) gear. In the middle of last year, the Democratic Party’s terrible triumvirate took the economy down; the only question that remains is whether they were horribly misguided or deliberate.
In the face of $4 gas prices, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid refused to seriously entertain the idea of additional exploration and drilling, in effect making clear their intention of starving the nation of energy, regardless of the consequences, to support what may be human history’s greatest hoax.
They also promised hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases on the most productive in the name of redistributing the money to everyone else. For the first time in my adult life, a major political party promised actions that anyone with clear eyes knew would seriously damage the economy.
At the time, the economy was modestly growing and had improved from a rough first quarter; nonetheless, it remained fragile. Then Pelosi, Obama, and Reid did their dirty work. At the time I identified the POR economy’s inception, I asked these questions:
In this business climate, are you going to hire more people? Replace employees when they leave? Expand your business? Even if demand for your products or services is strong, which is still the case in many sectors, you’re going to try to get through with the resources and facilities you have.
That’s exactly what began to happen, and then some. Entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors battened down the hatches, expecting the worst.
The worst arrived, in the form of the decades-in-the-making, Community Reinvestment Act-driven collapses of the Democratic Party gravy trains known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These were followed in short order by the bipartisan TARP debacle. Washington’s elites, especially Pelosi, Obama, and Reid, showed anyone who still doubted that they could care less what we think. Sadly, George W. Bush and John McCain were among the crunch-time betrayers. The whole sorry saga convinced just about every business leader who hadn’t figured it out already that hard times, entirely the creation of our governing class, were on the way.
Comprehensively revised numbers for the economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) show just how dramatic the POR economy’s damage has been and continues to be. Second-quarter 2008 GDP, at a revised annualized 1.5% (from 2.8%), was still positive and slightly ahead of population growth. But the third quarter was revised from -0.5% to -2.7%. The economy swung 4.2% in the wrong direction (from +1.5% to -2.7%), despite the fact that June was probably the best month in the second quarter. In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research, while still incoherently clinging to its belief that the economy has been in recession since December 2007, says that “estimated monthly real GDP reached one peak in January 2008 and another, higher peak in June 2008.”
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Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.
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46 Comments
1. Kraig:The answer will be to print more money. It will be inflated away. We are already doing it and it will only continue to get worse. Get out of the dollar as soon as you can.
It’s as though we are heading to a cliff and they are not satisfied with the cliff we are heading to so they are taking us to a higher cliff.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:50 am 2. Byron Dickens:I gave up a long time ago on ever seeing anything out of Social Security.
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:52 am 3. venividivici:Kraig,
I like you analogy of the higher cliff.
Problem is that even if they print more money, benefits are indexed to inflation.
On the Medicare side, which is an even bigger disaster, money-printing won’t work either because doctors will just keep raising their fees to match any inflation. If Medicare tries to squeeze providers with smaller or slower reimbursements, providers will simply see fewer or no Medicare patients.
Another factor that’s going to drive Social Security into the red is the reduced human capital of the young population relative to the population nearing retirement. For which you can thank insane immigration and educational policies. We could have made it so only the best and the brightest from around the world were allowed entry into the US and educated them to world-class standards, but chose not to. “Give me your poor huddled masses” is a nice sentiment, but it isn’t a rational social policy.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:49 am 4. Nobama 2012:YES WE CAN!
HMM-HMM-HMM…
Democrats gave AIG
$195,000,000,000 billion dollars even though 80% percent of the American people said NO!
Billions more to the Auto mfg.-Unions-
Almost a trillion dollar stimulus.
I personally know an AIG manager that received a $5,000,000 million dollar bonus over the weekend and did not pay it back.
More money than you, I and 20 other Social Security retires will receive in a lifetime.
If that 200 billion dollars had been paid back into Social Security it would have provided benefits for 15 years.
Now President hopenchange tells us he will tackle SS next year-
I think we should tackle him first-
Below the knees.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:15 am 5. Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg:The most selfish, arrogant generation in American history strikes again.
Baby boomers will enjoy unprecedented entitlements at the expense of their own grandchildren, who not only get to PAY for all this nonesense, but will also not live to enjoy ANY of its fruits. Sound like slavery? Hmmm…
Congratulations, you ass-hat ‘progressives’. How’z-about a nice big pat on the back for yourselves?
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:25 am 6. venividivici:Sound like slavery?
Yep. I don’t see how slavery to the government, which is run by ordinary human beings, is different from slavery to another human being, as was practiced throughout history. Exchanging one master for another is not progress.
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:58 am 7. justasimplepatriot:In the words of Leonid Kravcek in his speech to the Ukrainian parliament following independence from the USSR:
“Yesterday we stood poised at the edge of a great abyss. Today we take a great step forward!”
The damage inflicted on the wealth-creation engine of this country is tragic. In the name of Global-Warming mythology and a longing to prove that Marx was right – this administration is destroying the foundation of this Country’s power. It will take decades to repair – unless we are weakened to the point where our enemies administer a coup-de-gras.
Get involved, get loud, get in their faces and bury the political careers of every leftist in office – both at the State level and in Washington!
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:58 am 8. MarkD:OK, Snoop, so what do you propose? I have, over my working lifetime, paid over $200,000 into the system.
Do I deserve: Nothing? My money back? Some reasonable amount of interest on my contribution? Or the benefits I have been “promised?”
I don’t have enough time left to make this money up. With SS, I retire and can survive. Without it, I am basically destitute. That’s reality, kid. Or will you waive the $70,000 I still owe on my kids’ college educations?
Bush wanted to do something about SS, and got handed his rear for his trouble. Well, there is a reason Ponzi schemes are illegal, and we are both going to live it.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:01 am 9. venividivici:8
Clearly, there needs to be some sort of grandfathering for people beyond a certain age. For everyone below that age, the programs should become opt-in. If you want to continue with the current programs, fine, but if you want the ability to control your own destiny, you can. I am even fine with the government putting some limitations on what you can invest your money that otherwise would have gone to Social Security in, although I know other people who disagree with even that limitation. The current system is untenable and raising taxes is just kicking the can down the road, although the Left loves that idea because, unsurprisingly, it allows them to keep their hands in the Social Security “trust fund” cookie jar and keep their cushy SSA jobs. They’ll scream and holler that they’re “just looking out for the people”, which is, of course, a load of crap. They’re looking out for themselves, just like everyone else in the world.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:39 am 10. suzy:Social security and medicare are underfunded. The current administration is reducing the already underfunded medicare funds next year to help pay for the government-run health care. The proposed health care bills with payment for abortions and death panels will certainly reduce the number of people living legally in America. The Democrats believe (as do I) there are way too many people NOW living on this fragile planet and world population is exploding to unsustainable numbers; so the Democrats want to eliminate a lot of people (fetuses and oldsters).
The Democrats’ energy policy is also meant to reduce the world’s population by returning the nation to the 19th century ways of life where there was no gasoline and America’s population included many self-sufficient small farmers. The 19th century’s ways of life did not support huge populations of folks living on government handouts.
Huge ungovernable cities with masses of poor, ill-educated, disaffected populations will become war zones where only the fittest survive. The Democrats want to avoid this by reducing the number of babies born and letting the elderly die.
There are no easy solutions. Maybe the health bill should include involuntary sterilization for everyone on welfare.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:35 am 11. Paul -Indiana:As has been pointed out, those of us near going on SS are concerned about the program’s life. One problem is that the ‘lockbox’ of all that money taken from us, has been raided repeatedly. As long as there are bailouts, why don’t they replace the money that was taken from SS? We didn’t volunteer to put that money into SS. It was taken from us.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:39 am 12. Scott:MarkD, this is why SS should have never been implemented as it was. People make life long financial decisions based upon this “safety net” that they are forced to pay into. SS also should have never been coupled to disability either, it should have been an untouchable trust only for those that pay into it. There are people who’ve never worked a day in their life who’ve found “loop holes” that allow perfectly healthy individuals to collect a check from the SSA.
Also Congress raided he heck out of the SSA fund, and this should have never happened. We really do need more accountability for those in public office.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:02 am 13. Richard:In my neighborhood, we are within the last 20 years seeing a tremendous increase in elderly people from China. They are here collecting Social Security, having never paid in a dime to the system.
Thanks Teddy Kennedy.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:12 am 14. rachel peepers:Let me make this short and sweet.
Anybody over sixty who voted for Obama did the equivalent of taking their social security, putting some barbecue lighter fluid on it, striking a match, and watching it disappear in flames.
C’est la vie.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:21 am 15. goy:- Sadly, George W. Bush and John McCain were among the crunch-time betrayers.
Not sure what these guys did was a betrayal, per se. McCain’s never been much more than a poorly disguised socialist, and the Bush family ‘compassionate conservatism’ was a disaster for the Republic, masked by 9/11 and the various distractions of its aftermath. That these two guys ended up being the de facto standard-bearers for fiscal conservatism was the real betrayal – by a dysfunctional GOP and conservatives who’ve been supporting it, hoping against hope since 2003 that it would get its act together. To this day – even with reality staring them in the face – they still refuse to do so.
- …the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has risen to 9.7%.
In fact, the real rate here – the one that is actually controlling the amount of money flowing (or not flowing, as it were) into the SS fund – is closer to 16-18% if one includes those who’ve simply given up looking for work.
Compounding that statistic are the folks you note who’ve taken early retirement: they’ve stopped paying into the system and prematurely begun withdrawing from it, shrinking the cushion by a comparable amount. Smart seniors who can return to the workforce once SS goes belly-up will do the same if they ever want to see ANY of the $$ they’ve poured into SSI (and Medicare) all their lives.
@10. suzy: – Social security and medicare are underfunded.
This statement begs the question of whether they ever should have been funded in the first place. Medicare – another unconstitutional federal endeavor – is similarly insolvent. This is not because it’s “underfunded” but because sufficient funding would impose an unconstitutional burden on the taxpayer. We see this in practice right now: Medicare resorts to outright extortion to keep seniors in the system and steals more U.S. Taxpayers’ dollars each year from the Treasury’s general fund – which is shrinking because federal policies destroyed what was left of the free market and tanked the economy.
This outcome was obvious and inevitable when Social Security was first proposed. Same goes for Medicare. How SS survived when much of the rest of FDR’s unconstitutional “New Deal” was repealed remains a mystery. Nowhere is the federal government given the authority to run a Ponzi scam masquerading as retirement (or health) insurance.
None of this is going to change unless we perform a clean sweep of Congress, audit the Fed and start putting people like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their corrupt ilk behind bars.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:31 am 16. robotech master:To 15. goy
“start putting people like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and their corrupt ilk behind bars.”
Putting ppl in jail will only cause more debt problems… hanging or having them shot in front of a firing squad would stop them from further causing economic damage.
Oct 1, 2009 - 10:23 am 17. 6079SmithW:Ever since Kennedy’s (John) “New Frontier” and Johnson’s “Great Society” were implemented the parasitical proletariat has grown to a hugely significant percentage of our population. No wonder – for about $5 each you can buy a lot of votes in the ghettos and barrios of our nation and guarantee your election/re-election. Our liberal Democrat brethren know this and exploit it (using ACORN and other corrupt liberal organizations) to the point that the looming crisis is nearly upon us. Pelosi, Obama, Reid, et al are just the current face of the many “Great Enablers” of the past 40 years. The Republicans are no better and have their own significant share of the responsibility for the impending collapse.
All you of the “Whiner Generation” (X’s and Y’s both — all you post-Baby Boomers) need to look in a mirror and ask yourselves: What have I done for the country lately?
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:28 am 18. venividivici:All you of the “Whiner Generation” (X’s and Y’s both — all you post-Baby Boomers) need to look in a mirror and ask yourselves: What have I done for the country lately?
Well, I sure paid a boatload of taxes last year.
But, last I checked, the government exists to secure the rights of citizens under the Constitution. I don’t exist to aggrandize the government.
Oct 1, 2009 - 11:42 am 19. Scott:All you of the “Whiner Generation” (X’s and Y’s both — all you post-Baby Boomers) need to look in a mirror and ask yourselves: What have I done for the country lately?
Well aside from paying enough income taxes to buy a nice mid-sized car in cash last year and an even nicer one this year I voted against Obama. I’ve written my Congress critters, and I’ve enlightened a few of my friends and co-workers.
As for the Baby Boomers, they need to look into a mirror and ask “What have we done to this Country and to generations to come?”
Thank you Boomers so very much, its what I’ve always wanted. To be the first generation that is not better off than their parents, to watch the American Dream be snuffed out, to watch government intrude into my life and wallet as never before, to watch the public education of my children devolve into indoctrination. Thanks you soooo much.
Oct 1, 2009 - 12:21 pm 20. M. Report:The train wreck has reached the station,
Right on time, to find the station on fire;
Losing one’s SS benefits is the least of a
Boomer’s worries, behind job loss, inflation,
and living within rioting range of a Ghetto,
after the welfare money goes away.
Which state offers the best compromise
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:28 pm 21. Albert:between cost of living and job market,
for those intending to start over ?
…but Scott, you forgot one thing, they also gave you the worst health care system in the industrialized world, as noted in the following:
The United States was the worst performer, placing 16th and earning a “D” grade. Japan was once again the top-ranking country. Switzerland, Italy, and Norway also earned “A” grades.
“Canada’s middle-of-the-road ranking overall –a solid ‘B’– would surprise most Canadians who are immensely proud of their health-care system,” the report reads, noting Canadians’ universal access to health-care services, highly skilled health-care professionals, and internationally recognized health-care and research institutions.
This is not the first reported ranking, by any means, that places the US at the bottom. Now, what I don’t get is why you agree with the US boomers on maintaining this ridiculous situation.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:38 pm 22. steveg:You can blame this on baby boomers all you want, but I place blame entirely on who came up with these programs in the first place, and they were not baby boomers. Social Security and Medicare are socialist entitlement programs created by the FDR & LBJ administrations, and were passed by democrats.
Social Security is clearly a ponzi scheme where the first recipient had paid approximately $20 total in payroll taxes, and received over $22,000 in benefits.
I recently turned 55, and my statement shows I have paid over $250,000 into FICA. If I had put this amount of money into CD’s over the years, my retirement portfolio would be looking very promising by now.
Government is the problem, not the solution.
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:47 pm 23. wondering:Go ahead. The only question that remains, is deliberate!
Oct 1, 2009 - 1:58 pm 24. goy:Otherwise, we have to believe these very educated bums are dumber than the uneducated ones.
Matter of fact: Very Deliberate.
@22. steveg: – … I have paid over $250,000 into FICA. If I had put this amount of money into CD’s over the years, my retirement portfolio would be looking very promising by now.
Ah. But if you’d been “allowed” to do this, against the advice of your “betters” in D.C., they wouldn’t have had all that money to buy votes and pursue their social engineering programs. Clearly they knew what was best.
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:05 pm 25. prm:Albert:
Oct 1, 2009 - 2:20 pm 26. Now and Then:Pull you head out. Access does not translate to care. Just because you can go to the doctor for free doesn’t mean you will be seen in a timely manner. The healthcare systems in Great Britain and Canada aren’t the best in the world and the US isn’t the worst. Name all those world renowned research institutions please. How about those internationally recognized health-care institution? Now, how many of the everyday schmos with the government paying for their health care are going to these institutions? None. They can’t afford it and the government won’t pay for it.
If only we had invested it all in the stock market like Bush suggested. What a brain on that guy!
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:13 pm 27. dscott:Oh, come on guys, cheer up. At least the politicians won’t be taking SS and Medicare trust fund money anymore for their vote buying schemes. The IOUs have come due and the Dems, being the party in power since January 2007 gets the blame for the entire mess. This is one time where those responsible for the bad policies will finally get their just desserts. The 2010 elections can’t come soon enough.
The focus of our complaining at this point should be: Why are you raising taxes when you should be cutting spending? All the discretionary spending, earmarks and pork barrel spending should be zeroed out. Anything less than this is irresponsible behavior. Repeal the absurd Stimulus bill. At the same time a budget freeze on entitlements should be instituted. A legislative freeze should be implemented barring any new programs without commensurate cuts in existing programs.
Oct 1, 2009 - 4:53 pm 28. Fantom:26. Now and Then:
Well it certainly would/does and is paying off better than the sure looser of “investing’ in Gooberment… er Government that our Present-dent is foisting on us with his thugacracy.
Mmnn Mmn Mmn.. P.O.R. mmn mnn mn.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:05 pm 29. goy:- If only we had invested it all in the stock market…
And CDs. And bonds. And whatever else people wanted to do with THEIR OWN Money. Yeah, that stupid Bush was a real moron (actually, he was, but certainly not because he wanted to eliminate SSI).
When BHO goes, hat-in-hand, on T.V. for the 4-bazillionth time and admits that he’ll have to raise everyone’s taxes after all, because the SSI is going bankrupt, the adulation over his humility in The Left Wing Media will be deafening.
Meanwhile, when Bush predicted SSI was going bankrupt, that of course was “scare-mongering”.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:16 pm 30. McBride:N&T you are the most disingenuous lying sob at this site.Now you and I and everyone else knows Bush proposed allowing younger citizens to invest a small percentage of their SS taxes in the market,not all.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:29 pm 31. venividivici:If only we had invested it all in the stock market like Bush suggested. What a brain on that guy!
As usual, you are so out of your depth it’s a wonder you don’t drown on a daily basis.
Since you can’t touch any of the money you “invest” in Social Security for a minimum of 40+ years (unless you are disabled or the widow/widower of someone who contributed to the fund), the only valid comparison is not some random terrible few years or even decade of stock market returns, but the likely 40+ year returns. The lowest estimate of this going forward that I’ve seen is around 4.5%. Social Security returns are likely to be lower than that for Generation X (around 1.6% over our working lifetime) and even lower for Generation Y. Plus, privatized Social Security accounts would get rid of the issue that Social Security subsidizes old white women at the expense of black men, whose average life expectancy is quite low. That’s right, Social Security is RACIST! Setting it up so that there are private, individually-owned accounts would allow these black men to name an heir for their account.
Also, I believe Bush’s suggestion was that some of the Social Security an individual paid would be able to be invested in the market. I would still take a dollar-cost averaged index equity fund over the returns I will get on Social Security.
Finally, and the biggest proof of all that you are an idiot. It’s f-ing “buy low, sell high”, not “buy high, hope to sell higher”. Jeezus. Now would be a great time to privatize Social Security.
I know that you and your subversive pals think you’re going to get rid of the stock market, but ain’t gonna happen. As long as two people disagree on the value of something, there will be stock markets. Even though you idiots don’t have an independent brain amongst the lot of you, the rest of us do and with that independence comes disagreement about where the economy is going and which companies will prosper. That’s all you need for a stock market to arise.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:29 pm 32. Class Clown:Social Security is a neat trick in which the government gets the chance to use our past and current taxes to fund unrelated schemes, and then still need to use our future taxes to pay for what they promised to give us when they took the taxes in the first place….
But I have an idea about how to fix it. Let’s give Washington an even bigger slush fund, through the creation of a comprehensive government managed health care program. That will give them plenty of money! I’m sure that they will spend it well and wisely, because I think they have learned their lesson…
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:11 pm 33. Suzy:How is it that foreigners come to the US and get Social Security never having paid into it? A previous comment described how his neighborhood is filling with aged Chinese immigrants who receive SS. Can someone explain that?
Oct 1, 2009 - 6:50 pm 34. Sonny:#3 Benefits are not tied to inflation. The index is changed in order to bring in the lowest inflation rate possible. The S.S. has been screwing the American beneficiaries for decades. Why should they stop now?
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:43 pm 35. Class Clown:Of course, I should clarify that. Social Security contributions quit being in surplus to payouts a long time ago.
Oct 1, 2009 - 9:47 pm 36. vivo:13. Richard:
“In my neighborhood, we are within the last 20 years seeing a tremendous increase in elderly people from China. They are here collecting Social Security, having never paid in a dime to the system.”
How can they collect when SS is based on past earnings in the USA?
Oct 2, 2009 - 1:29 am 37. vivo:Social Security in trouble?
Solutions:
1. Change the way taxes are collected (legislation)
2. Raise taxes (bite the bullet)
3. Eliminate fraud
Oct 2, 2009 - 1:36 am 38. venividivici:34
You are correct. Another thing of note in that regard is that the items purchased by the over-65 demographic, including their largest purchases, like health care, have seen much greater inflation rates than the CPI, measuring economy-wide inflation. So, point taken. I was simply referring to the fact that inflation would increase the liability side of the equation and paying off Social Security with toilet paper currency isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Oct 2, 2009 - 5:27 am 39. tommyd:vivo sez:
Social Security in trouble?
Solutions:
1. Change the way taxes are collected (legislation)
2. Raise taxes (bite the bullet)
3. Eliminate fraud
Oct 2, 2009 – 1:36 am
1. The FairTax would solve most problems and create huge incentives for the Business environment in the U.S. ( all the blah blah bashing of the concept are B.S. and most are based on false and or lies in how the FairTax works. ) politicians don’t want to give up that much CONTROL of OUR money. Money = Power
2. Wouldn’t need to raise taxes if going to the FairTax , at least not before the “stimulus” pork barrel was passed. It was after all such a emergency….
3. Then what would leftist like yourself do with all your free time?
Oct 2, 2009 - 7:34 am 40. paul_unalaska:tommyd, I believe the FairTax option would have been ideal. It’s disappointing for the FairTax concept has been around for, what, 4 + years?
The ’stimulus’ deal has nailed that door shut..
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:09 am 41. Poor Citizen:Even Ronald Reagan had to bite the bullet on social security. Republicans that try cut it or eliminate it have paid dearly at voting time. The reason? Young people and older people have never been a friend of the conservative. But older folks do one thing their younger poorer counterparts dont do, they vote. I think the reason they vote is becuase, unlike their young friends, they dont have their parents to pay their way, hence, government is the game in town. So moan all you dare loonies but even in the south, red faced right wingers have learned the hard way. Thou shalt not touch social security. Over the years though I think the trend will move away from the cash based benefit to the tangible (drug, home care etc) benefit. Who knows?
Oct 2, 2009 - 10:49 am 42. venividivici:41
I love posts from folks like you who think that a program that’s 70 years old is “old”. Is no one capable of thinking across centuries any more? Because politicians have “learned the hard way” for a couple of generations, you assume that nothing will ever change? Your ancestors must have been the people saying “Ah, the barbarians will never reach Rome”.
We already throw over 12% of nearly all the income earned in the country at this monster and it is still underfunded. When is enough enough? Seriously, would you be for 100% payroll tax if it save your precious Social Security? The entire Left is like a nagging ex-wife, always wanting more.
Oct 2, 2009 - 12:58 pm 43. Richard:Social Security is a classic Ponzi scheme. But, since we are all required by law to be participants in it, and no one is allowed to elect to withdraw from it, we are all at once, both the victims and the perpetrators of this massive hoax.
I still have my card from the early days, the original card. It says right on the card “NOT TO BE USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF IDENTIFICATION”
That lie befits the entire program, which, from its inception, was doomed to fail, as do all such schemes.
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:17 pm 44. Richard:In response to 33 (Suzy) the origin of the problem is what is called “chain immigration” in which a legal immigrant gets to bring over members of their extended family. Once they are here, they become citizens. Once they are citizens they get a Social Security number and account. And since every account has a minimal amount associated with it, the payout is never zero. The law does not discriminate against the elderly. Indeed, for the last 30 years or so, newspapers in China have published monthly “how to” articles on how to come to the USA and start collecting SS benefits. I have seen such articles with my own eyes, in China, on multiple visits.
And so, we in the US gladly accept as immigrants those who will never offer any benefit to our society. This is so unusual that I dare posit that we are the only nation that does it. Such is the wisdom of Teddy Kennedy, it beggars the imagination.
And so, in my opinion, we truly deserve this fate this fiscal collapse, for we have earned it, over decades.
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:34 pm 45. Richard:SSI benefits, administered by Social Security.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pgm/links_ssi.htm
Oct 2, 2009 - 9:47 pm 46. myth buster:I would like to add that the main reason we have an economic crisis and an entitlements crisis is legalized abortion.
Oct 3, 2009 - 6:57 pm