OT: Social Security

John said:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent
"Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend
it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.

And which party wouldn't have?

Quoted message said:

--------------------

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for
Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

It still exists for half of it.

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking"
deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the
U.S.

Social security does not begin to be taxed until and unless you have
substantial income from other sources, and then a tax phases in based on
your income levels up to the point where 85% of the benefits received
that year may be taxable. At this point you're talking about retirees
living well above middle class having to pay tax on income received from
all sources. Cry me a river, why don't you?

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to
immigrants?

AND MY FAVORITE:

A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants
moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security
payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they
never paid a dime into it!

Care to explain how people who never paid into the program receive
either disability OR retirement benefits? Or can I just call you and
out and out liar?

Quoted message said:

Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans
want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and
maybe good changes will evolve. Maybe not, some Democrats are awfully sure
of what isn't so."

Yeah, it's those evil Democrats trying to screw the old people.

You're amazingly stupid.

Dally

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

John said:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent
"Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend
it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.

And which party wouldn't have?

Quoted message said:

--------------------

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for
Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

It still exists for half of it.

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking"
deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the
U.S.

Social security does not begin to be taxed until and unless you have
substantial income from other sources, and then a tax phases in based on
your income levels up to the point where 85% of the benefits received
that year may be taxable. At this point you're talking about retirees
living well above middle class having to pay tax on income received from
all sources. Cry me a river, why don't you?

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to
immigrants?

AND MY FAVORITE:

A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants
moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security
payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they
never paid a dime into it!

Care to explain how people who never paid into the program receive
either disability OR retirement benefits? Or can I just call you and
out and out liar?

Quoted message said:

Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans
want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and
maybe good changes will evolve. Maybe not, some Democrats are awfully sure
of what isn't so."

Yeah, it's those evil Democrats trying to screw the old people.

You're amazingly stupid.

Dally finds more stupid people. :-) Social Security is a disaster in
waiting. Any economist or serious politician on both sides of the aisle
who has run the numbers for the past 30 years knows that it is just a
matter of time before it completely collapes. Is that number 2017 or
2019? Can we extended the implosion to 2022 by tinkering?? Not the
right questions.

This is the predictable outcome of a "Ponzi Scheme" which is why Ponzi
schemes are illegal for anyone to run (except the government). When SS
started out there were 30+ workers paying in for every retiree. This
has dwindled and dwindled and soon it will be 2 workers paying in for
every retiree. Even Clinton thought it was vitally important to
overhaul SS to head off this impending collape. But now that Bush is
the one who wants to do something about it, all of a sudden, there is no
problem -- no problem at all. Let's all put our heads in the sand and
sing LA LA LA LA to drown out anyone who might say there is a problem.

Oh, but we need social security. So many seniors "depend" on it. Why
is that? Could it be because the government has confiscated 12.4% of
their salary for their whole lives? 12.4% of your salary taken each
paycheck over a lifetime adds up to almost $200,000 paid in for the
average worker! No wonder many older people have to rely on SS. If all
of these seniors got to keep and invest that $200,000, most of them
would not need SS -- they would be millionaires even investing
conservatively. They only need it because the money they could have
saved was taken from them. I.e. SS *creates* the very problem it is
supposedly setup to solve. The more cynical believe that was done
purposefully -- the more people are dependent on the government, the
more power the government has over them and their votes. I don't know
if I'd go that far, but it doesn't matter -- the result is the same.

John Black

John said:

So, Bill, does David know you're claiming to be his son?

My mommy doesn't lie.

"Davids son" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

John said:

So, Bill, does David know you're claiming to be his son?

My mommy doesn't lie.

I should have drowned you when you were little.

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:24:59 GMT, "David" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

I should have drowned you when you were little.

You had your chance pops, now I'm much bigger than you so it's too
late.

John Black said:

Oh, but we need social security. So many seniors "depend" on it. Why
is that?

Because it was always supposed to be the subsistance-level retirement
funding on which they could depend. A promise that they wouldn't starve
to death after a lifetime of being a low-wage earner.

Quoted message said:

Could it be because the government has confiscated 12.4% of
their salary for their whole lives? 12.4% of your salary taken each
paycheck over a lifetime adds up to almost $200,000 paid in for the
average worker! No wonder many older people have to rely on SS. If all
of these seniors got to keep and invest that $200,000, most of them
would not need SS -- they would be millionaires even investing
conservatively.

Have you funded your own retirement? How often? To the max suggested?

I am a tax accountant and I spend my days telling people who to plan for
retirement. The people who actually DO what they OUGHT to do are few
and far between. In fact, the reverse is actually true: the vast
majority of the people do NOT do what they ought to do, particularly if
money is tight. They don't pay their quarterlies. They don't put away
an emergency fund. They don't save for retirement (or college or their
next car...)

So Congress passed a withholding law that says, "even though you can see
it coming for an ENTIRE YEAR that you're going to owe $8000 again next
April, we're requiring you to pay it through wage withholding because 90
out of 100 people will fail to save for a known, annual, huge expense
coming up.

And that's just ANNUAL savings. A short, visible time frame. Because
people DO NOT DO WHAT THEY OUGHT TO DO.

How lovely for you that you live in a world where people will save the
spare $200K they've accumulated through their years. Not only save it,
but save it wiser than the guaranteed SS annuity.

I don't live in that world.

Quoted message said:

They only need it because the money they could have
saved was taken from them. I.e. SS *creates* the very problem it is
supposedly setup to solve. The more cynical believe that was done
purposefully -- the more people are dependent on the government, the
more power the government has over them and their votes. I don't know
if I'd go that far, but it doesn't matter -- the result is the same.

Social Security only covers a bare minimum base allowance. You may feel
free to save over and above that - in fact, you were always supposed to.
It's a three-legged stool: private savings, company pension and the
subsistance-level social security. There is absolutely NOTHING
preventing you from doing your own saving over and above the base. In
fact, you're really encouraged to do it. There's a Retirement Saver's
Credit on the 1040 that gives you cash back if you're wise enough to put
some of your money in a retirement plan. Cash back because you gave
yourself cash. It's money for nothing. Did you bother to stoop down
and pick it up?

The issue is not whether you can save better for retirment yourself -
you can, you should. The issue is how to keep the foolish people who
don't get around to saving from being excruciatingly poor in retirement.
The excruciatingly poor elderly still exist, but largely in the ranks
of the self-employed who worked under the table: the day laborer who
never earned SS quarters, the cleaning lady, the gardener. These people
are POOR. Cat food and cardboard box poor. I don't have an answer for
that one, but we can help the huge percentage of the population who live
a susbsistance level wage during their working years without ever
getting out of debt enough to save for the future.

You sound like the naive liberal intelligensii of the turn of the
century waxing poetic about how wonderful it'd be if we were all
Communists. Everyone's needs would be met by everyone pitching in and
doing their share such as they could do. La la la la la. What a
wonderful world.

The fact is, Communism doesn't work because people don't work beyond
their own self-interests. They ought to, but they don't. And
Capitalism doesn't work because not everyone is capable of advocating
aggressively for their own self-interests, either out of lack of
education or intelligence or laziness. People just don't do what they
ought.

So you build a governmental system that will work most of the time for
most of the people and build safety nets to catch the ones that fall
through the system. I personally think Capitalism with Safety Nets is
the best thing we've got available to us. Take away the Safety Nets and
it fails miserably, though.

As for fixing social security, there's no doubt that we've got a
mathematical problem. I think part of the answer has to do with cutting
benefits. Social security ought to be truly subsistance-level: enough
for cheap food, cheap apartment, bare utilities. (Not satellite
television, I'm talking heating/cooling electric without a hot tub.)
Social security was NEVER supposed to allow you to live in the style to
which you had become accustomed while working. Never.

But which party finds it palatable to [censored] the old people advocating
for higher benefits? And does it really matter? It's like a game of
Hot Potato. Someone sometime is going to get stuck with having to fix
it and it's going to be more a matter of timing - when a crisis lands -
than of which party is interested in taking it on.

Dally

John Black said:

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

John said:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent
"Trust" fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend
it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and
Senate.

And which party wouldn't have?

Quoted message said:

--------------------

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for
Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

It still exists for half of it.

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the "tie-breaking"
deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the
U.S.

Social security does not begin to be taxed until and unless you have
substantial income from other sources, and then a tax phases in based on
your income levels up to the point where 85% of the benefits received
that year may be taxable. At this point you're talking about retirees
living well above middle class having to pay tax on income received from
all sources. Cry me a river, why don't you?

Quoted message said:

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to
immigrants?

AND MY FAVORITE:

A: That's right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants
moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security
payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they
never paid a dime into it!

Care to explain how people who never paid into the program receive
either disability OR retirement benefits? Or can I just call you and
out and out liar?

Quoted message said:

Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violation of the original
contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans
want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is, uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and
maybe good changes will evolve. Maybe not, some Democrats are awfully sure
of what isn't so."

Yeah, it's those evil Democrats trying to screw the old people.

You're amazingly stupid.

Dally finds more stupid people. :-) Social Security is a disaster in
waiting. Any economist or serious politician on both sides of the aisle
who has run the numbers for the past 30 years knows that it is just a
matter of time before it completely collapes. Is that number 2017 or
2019? Can we extended the implosion to 2022 by tinkering?? Not the
right questions.

This is the predictable outcome of a "Ponzi Scheme" which is why Ponzi
schemes are illegal for anyone to run (except the government). When SS
started out there were 30+ workers paying in for every retiree. This
has dwindled and dwindled and soon it will be 2 workers paying in for
every retiree. Even Clinton thought it was vitally important to
overhaul SS to head off this impending collape. But now that Bush is
the one who wants to do something about it, all of a sudden, there is no
problem -- no problem at all. Let's all put our heads in the sand and
sing LA LA LA LA to drown out anyone who might say there is a problem.

Oh, but we need social security. So many seniors "depend" on it. Why
is that? Could it be because the government has confiscated 12.4% of
their salary for their whole lives? 12.4% of your salary taken each
paycheck over a lifetime adds up to almost $200,000 paid in for the
average worker! No wonder many older people have to rely on SS. If all
of these seniors got to keep and invest that $200,000, most of them
would not need SS -- they would be millionaires even investing
conservatively. They only need it because the money they could have
saved was taken from them. I.e. SS *creates* the very problem it is
supposedly setup to solve.

Not only that, but the average worker pays into it for about 50 years.
If he's lucky, he gets to collect it for maybe 10.

The more cynical believe that was done

Quoted message said:

purposefully -- the more people are dependent on the government, the
more power the government has over them and their votes. I don't know
if I'd go that far, but it doesn't matter -- the result is the same.

I would. People like to talk about the Bush administration using fear
as a means of taking away our liberties, but I think FDR and his
administration went even further and used the fear created by the
Depression to virtually suspend the constitution and bring us as close
to a socialist country as he could. With SS and his other "New Deal"
programs he created a perptual dependent class that will vote
democratic for eternity as long as there is the promise of the
government taking care of them.

Quoted message said:

John Black

Quoted message said:

Could it be because the government has confiscated 12.4% of
their salary for their whole lives? 12.4% of your salary taken each
paycheck over a lifetime adds up to almost $200,000 paid in for the
average worker! No wonder many older people have to rely on SS. If all
of these seniors got to keep and invest that $200,000, most of them
would not need SS -- they would be millionaires even investing
conservatively.

Have you funded your own retirement? How often? To the max suggested?

I'm working on it. I save as much as I can, to the max suggested when I
can, but even when I was working two jobs to make ends meet, going to
school, and supporting my wife and two kids, I made it a priority to
save.

And that's just ANNUAL savings. A short, visible time frame. Because
people DO NOT DO WHAT THEY OUGHT TO DO.

How lovely for you that you live in a world where people will save the
spare $200K they've accumulated through their years. Not only save it,

but save it wiser than the guaranteed SS annuity.

I don't live in that world.

I don't either. But, just because some (or most) people are too dumb,
or too short-sighted to save for their retirement, means we all should
have the government tell us how much we have to put away, then when
they decide we're old enough to retire, give us an allowance until we
die, then keep the rest?

Quoted message said:

They only need it because the money they could have
saved was taken from them. I.e. SS *creates* the very problem it is
supposedly setup to solve. The more cynical believe that was done
purposefully -- the more people are dependent on the government, the
more power the government has over them and their votes. I don't know
if I'd go that far, but it doesn't matter -- the result is the same.

Social Security only covers a bare minimum base allowance. You may
feel
free to save over and above that - in fact, you were always supposed
to.
It's a three-legged stool: private savings, company pension and the
subsistance-level social security. There is absolutely NOTHING
preventing you from doing your own saving over and above the base. In
fact, you're really encouraged to do it. There's a Retirement Saver's
Credit on the 1040 that gives you cash back if you're wise enough to
put
some of your money in a retirement plan.

Only if you make below a certain amount ($40k a year?) after that, it's
taxed.

Cash back because you gave
yourself cash. It's money for nothing. Did you bother to stoop down
and pick it up?

I did when I was eligible, I put the max in my IRA.

The issue is not whether you can save better for retirment yourself -
you can, you should. The issue is how to keep the foolish people who
don't get around to saving from being excruciatingly poor in
retirement.
The excruciatingly poor elderly still exist, but largely in the ranks

of the self-employed who worked under the table: the day laborer who
never earned SS quarters, the cleaning lady, the gardener. These
people
are POOR. Cat food and cardboard box poor. I don't have an answer for

that one, but we can help the huge percentage of the population who
live
a susbsistance level wage during their working years without ever
getting out of debt enough to save for the future.

You sound like the naive liberal intelligensii of the turn of the
century waxing poetic about how wonderful it'd be if we were all
Communists. Everyone's needs would be met by everyone pitching in and
doing their share such as they could do. La la la la la. What a
wonderful world.

The fact is, Communism doesn't work because people don't work beyond
their own self-interests. They ought to, but they don't. And
Capitalism doesn't work because not everyone is capable of advocating
aggressively for their own self-interests, either out of lack of
education or intelligence or laziness.

Capitalism does work. If you lack education or intelligence, get
educated. There are more opportunities in this country to get educated
and/or trained enough to be able to get a job that pays above minimum
wage. If you're lazy, that's your own problem.

People just don't do what they
ought.

So you build a governmental system that will work most of the time for
most of the people and build safety nets to catch the ones that fall
through the system. I personally think Capitalism with Safety Nets is
the best thing we've got available to us. Take away the Safety Nets
and
it fails miserably, though.

If there were no Safety Nets, people would be a lot less lazy, and a
lot more aggressive about advocating their self-interests.

As for fixing social security, there's no doubt that we've got a
mathematical problem. I think part of the answer has to do with
cutting
benefits. Social security ought to be truly subsistance-level: enough
for cheap food, cheap apartment, bare utilities. (Not satellite
television, I'm talking heating/cooling electric without a hot tub.)

I agree with you there.

Social security was NEVER supposed to allow you to live in the style to

which you had become accustomed while working. Never.

But which party finds it palatable to [censored] the old people
advocating
for higher benefits? And does it really matter? It's like a game of
Hot Potato. Someone sometime is going to get stuck with having to fix
it and it's going to be more a matter of timing - when a crisis lands -

than of which party is interested in taking it on.

Whichever party is in office at the time is going to blame it on the
party that was there before them. Anyway, I'm saving for my own
retirement and not counting on SS being there when I retire.

Dally

John Black said:

I don't agree entirely because I think money taken for SS and other high
taxes which fund the safety net are a big part of the reason why people
are not able to save what they should save, creating a bigger need for
the safety net than there would otherwise be. Further, the existence of
the safety net permits (even encourages) people to "not do what they
ought to do". But let me concede the point and say that SS is there to
force people to do what they otherwise would not do which is save for
their retirement. That is not how the program works. I probably would
be in favor of it if it were as you described withholding tax above. If
$8000 is taken from your paycheck for withholding tax throughout the
year, then when it comes time to pay your taxes, there is a real account
which has $8000 in it (the amount taken from you) to use. That is not
how SS operates at all. The money taken from you does not go into any
account for you. I.e. its not "forced savings". The money that is
taken from you gets spent right away. There is not even a social
security trust fund for the surplus -- that is spent as well. I would
(reluctantly) be in favor of a forced savings plan like that where money
was taken from people's paychecks (like today) but instead of being
spent, it would be put into a private account for them where they could
invest it in low risk investments, watch it grow, and pass it on to
their heirs if they have a balance when they die. Would you be in favor
of a program like that instead?

You're really arguing for the system as it is, even though you don't
know it. The government is not required to "set aside" the money to
cover future obligations because the government is not going to go out
of business. Benefits will continue to be modified as political power
moves from generation to generation.

Bush, I think, claimed that SS was no longer the third rail. But to
my eye his Presidency started falling apart the moment he touched it.

--
Is this thing on?

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

John Black said:

I don't agree entirely because I think money taken for SS and other high
taxes which fund the safety net are a big part of the reason why people
are not able to save what they should save, creating a bigger need for
the safety net than there would otherwise be. Further, the existence of
the safety net permits (even encourages) people to "not do what they
ought to do". But let me concede the point and say that SS is there to
force people to do what they otherwise would not do which is save for
their retirement. That is not how the program works. I probably would
be in favor of it if it were as you described withholding tax above. If
$8000 is taken from your paycheck for withholding tax throughout the
year, then when it comes time to pay your taxes, there is a real account
which has $8000 in it (the amount taken from you) to use. That is not
how SS operates at all. The money taken from you does not go into any
account for you. I.e. its not "forced savings". The money that is
taken from you gets spent right away. There is not even a social
security trust fund for the surplus -- that is spent as well. I would
(reluctantly) be in favor of a forced savings plan like that where money
was taken from people's paychecks (like today) but instead of being
spent, it would be put into a private account for them where they could
invest it in low risk investments, watch it grow, and pass it on to
their heirs if they have a balance when they die. Would you be in favor
of a program like that instead?

You're really arguing for the system as it is, even though you don't
know it. The government is not required to "set aside" the money to
cover future obligations because the government is not going to go out
of business.

Joe, I disagree. The private account solution is far different. The
fact that they are not "setting aside" the money is why the money does
not grow. As I brought up in a different post, right now people are
getting almost zero return on what they put in on average. Its even
worse for black people who are getting a *negative* return on average.
Its a very bad deal for most people. With a private account you would
get a better return on your money AND that would be your money (you
earned it) to pass on to your heirs.

Quoted message said:

Benefits will continue to be modified as political power
moves from generation to generation.

Which would be another benefit of private accounts. Since you have no
account right now, you are at the whim of current and future politicians
who will decide when you can get "some" of your own money, how much you
will be "given", how much it will be (again) taxed, etc. As you say
this will continue to change for the worse as long as they have this
power. The point of private accounts was to take that power out of
their hands.

John Black