help from someone in the know...editorial in my paper on Social Security

[w8liftinglady]

Please help me respond factually.

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2010/10/03/opinion/doc4ca81ea17f1fd052453104.txt

The brokers in pillage
Published: Sunday, October 3, 2010 1:35 AM CDT
Paul Perry
Guest columnist

“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

—H. L Mencken

H. L. Mencken was a 20th century writer who is sometimes referred to as the sage of Baltimore and who occasionally hit upon some major truths. No one is perfect, and Mencken would have been the first to admit that he wasn’t, though some of his comments still have a bite today. I believe both of the major political parties are full of the type of men and women of whom Mencken spoke in his quip.

A question: Why do we elect so many who are primarily self-serving? What does that say about us, the voters? I watch some C-SPAN, a little CNN, some FOX, and, when I am willing to go out there for a fringe opinion, I turn on MSNBC in order to catch that vacuous leftist Keith Olbermann. After taking in all that media, I am left with one conclusion: A majority (I’m not sure how large it is) of our incumbents don’t give a whit about thee and me.

They also do not want us to understand what is going on in Washington or Austin – where Mencken’s A gets looted to satisfy B. Where “government is a broker in pillage.”

Good honest arguments could be had about Social Security, for instance. When it was started, most people, due to the medical technology of the time, were not expected to live to be old enough to collect it. The self-financing stipend was never supposed to finance retirement. It was for groceries. It was by design supposed to keep people from going hungry and little else.

That is how it started out. FDR saw it as a means to prevent starvation. It has evolved into the primary retirement program for many, perhaps most, Americans. Politicians, who in Mencken’s words, have “no special talent” have encouraged that type of thinking. It is a tax on your income, half of which is deducted from your gross income by your employer before you ever see it. Unless you are self-employed, you never see exactly what you are paying.

Now, SS is no longer self-financing. It is no longer a forced savings program. It has become a transfer payment between generations. Social Security is so mismanaged by our government that your SS taxes no longer fund your own benefit. Retirees’ income is now partly dependent upon the payments of those still working.

Yes I know, many of us receive those nice little highlighted statements in the mail featuring how many quarters we have worked and what our benefits will be. While our benefits may vary based upon those variables, without the subsidy paid to Washington by younger workers, those benefits would be paired.

In order to finance the public’s expectation, Social Security tax has steadily increased. It is taking an ever-increasing bite out of Americans’ incomes. This leaves the average worker less and less to finance his own savings and investment. Should the program be scuttled? That would not be fair for those who are in the program. That would be devastating.

What about those who are paying into the program but currently receive no benefits? It is fair to debate that question. Should you be able to opt out? Maybe. That is worth discussion. Those who are close to retirement age should have their expectations honored, but what about those who are younger and are paying into a program in order to fund the retirement of those who are older?

Is that even fair?

For a start, each worker should finance their own retirement payments with a truly segregated account, through their own wages, and not gain a subsidy through younger workers’ taxes. That might be enough for everyone to take notice of the benefits or lack thereof and encourage an honest debate as a nation.

Paul D. Perry is a contributing columnist for the Daily Light. He is a local businessman and mediator and a former Ellis County justice of the peace.

[Demit]

1. See Bernie Sanders on this—

"First, let’s be clear: Despite all the right-wing rhetoric, Social Security is not going bankrupt. That’s a lie!

The truth is that the Social Security Trust Fund has run surpluses for the last quarter century. Today’s $2.5 trillion cushion is projected to grow to $4 trillion in 2023. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, experts in this area, say Social Security will be able to pay every nickel owed to every eligible beneficiary until 2039.

Got that? In case you don’t, let me repeat it. The people who have studied this issue most thoroughly and have no political bias report that Social Security will be able to pay out all benefits to every eligible beneficiary for the next 29 years.

It is true that by 2039, if nothing is changed, Social Security will be able to pay out only about 80 percent of benefits. That is why it is important that Congress act soon to make sure Social Security is as strong in the future as it is today. ..."


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41628.html#ixzz11InCjtUd

[w8liftinglady]

2. wow...thank you SO much!

[dkf]

7. Its full of IOUs from the biggest debtor that ever existed.

The question is where do you take from to fund those obligations. Or do you burden the next generation to pay for our excesses. If so we have stolen our kids future creating laws to compel them to pay for our retirement when they may be struggling as our country's inability to keep up with the educated haves leads our country to second rate status.

China has strategized a way to prosperity while we wallow in political games that are motivated by self interest, not in the futute health of our people. They are able to plot a course while our system is mostly motivated by a desire to control or to protect the status quo.

In a world of global competition a country's ability to plot a strategic course will be paramount. If putting all our funds into providing retirement income even to millionaires is our priority goal, we may be unable to move this country to do things necessary to continued prosperity, which in the end is what provides future earnings.

[Demit]

8. The whole point of Reagan's increasing SS taxes in 1983 was to plan for the baby boomers.

Then the Fed govt started borrowing from the resulting SS surplus whenever it needed it, TO AVOID RAISING TAXES ON EVERYONE. Essentially, everyone got a break on taxes, because of the extra money coming in from the working class, so politicians got to look like good guys. They knew they could kick the can down the road until such time as the baby boomers started to retire. They knew that at that time the money they had borrowed would have to be paid back.

And now they don't want to have to pay it back. They want to be able to stiff the workers once again. Having taken extra money out of our paychecks for almost 30 years and promising it would be there when we needed it, now they want to use some kind of cheap guilt trip to make us feel that we're making 'kids' pay for the mean old people's retirement. I'll tell you what. I was a kid when I first started paying the hiked-up SS taxes. And I've been paying them for 27 years, on my full paycheck. Never made a salary that went above the cutoff point.

I don't care where you take from to fund these obligations. They are obligations. That you, dkf, seem to breezily now want to renege on.

[w8liftinglady]

3. one of my favorite things is to shove their own comments back

some from 2007
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3200

-snip

A few weeks ago, former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan--whose word the media usually takes as a kind of gospel--told Tim Russert on Meet the Press (9/23/07) that there was no urgent Social Security crisis at all. "Social Security is not a big crisis," Greenspan explained. "We're approximately 2 percentage points of payroll short over the very long run. It's a significant closing of the gap, but it's doable, and doable in any number of ways."

Renowned Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (New York Times, 12/7/04) has similarly debunked the notion that Social Security is heading into a crisis. The long-term financing of Social Security is "a problem of modest size....It's not at all hard to come up with fiscal packages that would secure the retirement program, with no major changes, for generations to come."

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Social Security was NEVER intended up to be a savings program...

it was originally set up as an insurance program, as anyone can see reading the "premium" and "actuarial" references in Title II of the Act:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html

It has been amended since, but still never changed into a savings program-- very basically your SS taxes aren't put in trust for you, but pay for your parents' benefits. Any surpluses are to be applied to the program as a whole, not to individual accounts, and any losses are to be made up from general revenues.

[LiberalFighter]

5. A former justice of the peace?

Is he against pension plans provided by some companies to their employees? Does he even provide a pension plan to his employees? If he offers a pension plan, how many of his employees stay long enough to become vested and eligible to collect? If employees stay long enough to become vested 100% how many of them don't live long enough to retire and collect the pension?

Does he provide an insurance plan for his employees or does his employees choose their spouse's plan because it is a better plan. I call that leaching. (All the more reason for a single payer health plan.)

If there was the ability to opt out how many of his employees would he pay them the difference that wasn't paid to the government?

If employees were given the option to opt out what would be the consequences when that individual retires or is no longer able to work? And some work past retirement age because they can't afford to retire. Would they be left on their own and forced into poverty. Not able to receive necessary medical treatment and end up dying at a much earlier age? I'm sure many of them would had consider the need to build a nest egg they could rely on considering events in life that can drain one's savings if they are lucky enough to have one.

The writer obviously doesn't care enough about his neighbors and friends while the government that he despises is going to be there to provide better care because when they were employed the government collected a portion of those wages for those events. If employees didn't pay into Social Security the government would still be on the hook to help those that become destitute. And that would require raising taxes even higher on those working.

I don't know about other taxpayers but I would rather pay the little I pay now because everyone else is paying too rather than paying a lot more in taxes because some jerk decided not to pay into it.

[COLGATE4]

6. Mencken himself explained it best. "No one ever went broke

overestimating the stupidity of the American public".

[w8liftinglady]

9. kicking for sympathy more than anything else-you guys helped a lot!