A Certain Kind of Poor Folk

[PoliticalChic]

I once heard a guy at work bitching about his taxes going to poor people, blah blah, the usual stuff,

and I said to him,

you know, the amount of your paycheck that goes to help the poor is less than the amount of your paycheck that you get for standing around talking and fucking off when you're supposed to be working.

It went over his head. lolol

Did you want to admit that post #120 proved that you, not I, was....to use your terminology....a liar.

 

[PoliticalChic]

You mean you be living off YOUR money, money that YOU set aside via your social security?

Not so.

"According to the institute’s data, a two-earner couple receiving an average wage — $44,600 per spouse in 2012 dollars — and turning 65 in 2010 would have paid $722,000 into Social Security and Medicare and can be expected to take out $966,000 in benefits. So, this couple will be paid about one-third more in benefits than they paid in taxes.

If a similar couple had retired in 1980, they would have gotten back almost three times what they put in. And if they had retired in 1960, they would have gotten back more than eight times what they paid in. The bigger discrepancies common decades ago can be traced in part to the fact that some of these individuals’ working lives came before Social Security taxes were collected beginning in 1937.

Some types of families did much better than average. A couple with only one spouse working (and receiving the same average wage) would have paid in $361,000 if they turned 65 in 2010, but can expect to get back $854,000 — more than double what they paid in. In 1980, this same 65-year-old couple would have received five times more than what they paid in, while in 1960, such a couple would have ended up with 14 times what they put in.

Such findings suggest that, even allowing for inflation and investment gains, many seniors will receive much more in benefits than what they paid in.
According to this calculation, past and current generations will pay $71.3 trillion in payroll taxes but will receive $93.4 trillion in benefits. Adjusting for past and future transfers from the federal Treasury, the difference between "paid-in" and "paid-out" works out to $21.6 trillion.

the exhortation that today’s generations are just getting what they are due based on their forced past tax payments is incorrect. ‘We’ are to get much more under current Social Security laws — to the tune of $21.6 trillion — than we’ll pay into the system. The excess benefits are a ‘return’ on past and current generations’ taxes of $71.3 trillion — and quite a handsome return it is!"
PolitiFact | Medicare and Social Security: What you paid compared with what you get



It is the rich, the ones cursed up and down by the Liberal folk, who will not get back as much.


You really should stop believing government propaganda.


I have a suggestion: ask me when you need the truth.

Do these numbers include employer contributions made on behalf of the employee?

The data says 'paid in by,' so employer tax would only apply to self-employed.

 

[NYcarbineer]

"the best laid plans of mice and men"
Ms. Truthie!!!!

Wow....so very glad....and impressed...to see a 'poetry' reference!

Bravo.



But, I don't believe you should have chosen that one, if your intended to support Social Security....
...you see the next line is 'Gang aft agley,'

It means, 'often go astray.'
Mess up.


As with Social Security, messed up:




The Social Security plan was that workers would pay for retirees, and, based on actuarial tables, those who died earlier than expected would add to the fund.

a. No one considered that life expectancy would increase?

b. No one considered that the balance of workers and retirees might change?

c. No one calculated the long-term costs?
"Broke," Beck

d. Ida May Fuller, the first person to begin receiving benefits, in January, 1940, when she was 65- she lived to be 100. “…worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.” Social Security History

e. “Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program's actuary.” Social Security in the red this year - Washington Times

f. “…redeeming trust fund assets until reserves are exhausted in 2037, at which point tax income would be sufficient to pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits through 2084.”
Trustees Report Summary



The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

-- "To A Mouse" by Robert Burns

Social Security was not 'in the red' last year. That is idiocy. Social Security payouts were covered by payroll tax receipts plus some of the year's interest earned on Trust Fund securities.

The principal in the Trust Fund actually increased.

Stop posting lies, please.

It's the same old story.

Instead of suggesting that others are incorrect, liars regularly scream that others are liars.

"The federal government for the first time in its history had to borrow money in 2010 to cover Social Security benefits to retired and disabled workers — a trend that worsened in 2011 and will not change at any point in the future unless changes are made.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in a January 2012 report estimated that the 2012 shortfall will be $59 billion — rising to $76 billion in 2013, $86 billion in 2014 and $86 billion again in 2015. The CBO does not project beyond 2015 because “CBO projects the DI trust fund will be exhausted during fiscal year 2016.”
FactCheck.org : Durbin (Again) Denies Social Security?s Red Ink



But, in the case of the above poster....it is tinged with his regular and characteristic stupidity.

In fact, if the government ever declared war on stupidity, he'd be subject to a drone strike.

The federal government had to borrow to cover SS payments because the Trust Fund is LOANED to the federal government's general fund.

The Trust Fund balance increased last year.

This is directly from the SS trust fund 2012 report:

Redemption of trust fund assets from the General Fund of the Treasury will provide the resources needed to offset the annual cash-flow deficits. Since these redemptions will be less than interest earnings through 2020, nominal trust fund balances will continue to grow.

Do you understand that? Can you stop listening to the propagandists on the Right long enough to absorb one small fact?

Trustees Report Summary

 

[Foxfyre]

Sure do.......because I have two nephews, one on my side of family and the other on my wife's side who are just like this. They are both "artists" who move from one menial job to the next while mooching off of their parents so they can "suffer" for their craft. One of them is 28 and doesn't have a pot to piss in. His brother on the other hand is a college graduate working in a Chicago advertising firm. Choices matter. When people have a run of misfortune, I don't have a problem giving them limited assitance. When people choose to live that way.......well, they need to make better choices and not ask me for a place to crash or help paying their cell phone bill.

It really goes to the heart of the thesis of the OP.

In order to keep themselves in positions they use to increase their power, prestige, influence, and personal fortunes, our elected leaders, bureaucrats, and appointees have powerful incentive to keep as many people dependent on big government as possible.

So you have whole generations of kids growing up not watching Mom and Dad get up, get cleaned up and dressed, and work for their money. Instead they are watching Mom or Dad get that government check, food stamps, etc. without apparently lifting a finger and then enjoying watching soaps, eating potato chips, drinking beer, cigs (or pot). So, when school or a job is boring or a drag or too hard and it is unpopular, even dangerous, to be different from everybody else, it is all too easy to shrug, not try very hard, and figure the government will send you a check too. For sure if you have a kid out of wedlock, the government money will come pouring in.

And the government sure isn't going to do anything to reduce that big, beautiful voting bloc they can count on.

And folks, that isn't compassion.

So if we take away all the government help that goes to those poor people, and make our poor people look like Africa's poor people, or India's poor people,

how exactly does that make America a better place? ...other than obviously making you feel good that you could see real people suffering real poverty...

Don't look now but you just built another straw man. Nobody on the Right is talking about making our poor people look like Africa's poor people. Those on the right are looking at how we can eliminate poverty as much as possible. And we see paying people to remain poor and/or to engage in choices that will likely make them poor as not a really practical way to accomplish that. It is for damn sure that the mega trillions we have now poured into the war on poverty has not accomplished much other than creating a huge voting bloc useful to opportunistic elected leaders, bureaucrats, and appointees.

Those of us who believe compassion is to make things better and not just sustain an unpalatable status quo, think we should be looking at better and more productive ways to do things.

Some on your side of the fence seem interested in only accusing us of being heartless, hating the poor, and wanting to end all social programs because we suggest that.

 

[ClosedCaption]

I can prove that those known as the 'poor' have Jacuzzis...

Can you show that they have Jet Planes.

Put your dinero where you put your dinner.

I'm sure you can but not enough to say its common..Show me where its widespread and you wont look like a cherry picking ass hat.

Annnnd go!

6% according to government figures.


The real question is what it says about your posts and mine...

Mine are correct, factual.

Yours are Liberal.

So it's not common although you present it as such....Gotcha

 

[KnobbyWalsh]

I'm sure you can but not enough to say its common..Show me where its widespread and you wont look like a cherry picking ass hat.

Annnnd go!

6% according to government figures.


The real question is what it says about your posts and mine...

Mine are correct, factual.

Yours are Liberal.

So it's not common although you present it as such....Gotcha

Yea, don't argue with someone who is ALWAYS factual! What's wrong with you? Anyway, here's an interesting link for you.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/investopedia/2012/12/06/the-finances-of-the-global-middle-class/

 

[NYcarbineer]

Until you can point to a single quotation anywhere on the Heritage Foundation website that events hints that all social programs should be eliminated, I will have to say that you don't have a clue what you are talking about. The Heritage Foundation promote Founders' style conservatism, yes, but you can't back up so silly a characterization of them as you just put out there.

As for Social Security, it is true that it is not yet insolvent. But the hour is upon us that it will be:



But anyway it is pretty moot since the government spends every penny of any surplus that comes in the minute it hits the treasury and all that is in the trust funds are IOUs and moths.

And it remains right up there at the top of the most inefficient and ineffective programs to relieve poverty among senior citizens that the government could possibly devise. But don't hold your breath that the existing government will do anything other than kick the can on down the road.

What should be in the Trust Funds?

Every penny that has been paid into them with nothing borrowed against them. They would still be insolvent on schedule, but at least the government would not have used them as an excuse to spend hundreds of billions or probably trillions by now.

It again comes down to the question nobody on the Left seems to wish to address. Is it compasssion to encourage, even create, poverty by making people more comfortable in it? Or is compassion to encourage an economy in which nobody has to be poor?

So the Trust Fund should never have been invested? What idiot recommends you do that with your retirement savings?

As for helping the poor encourages them to stay poor,

you tell us, where in the world has poverty ever disappeared because the government gave the poor no help?

Show us where your plan has ever worked.

btw, did you notice that the OP claims poverty has been eradicated. Why don't you bitch at her for awhile?

 

[Foxfyre]

What should be in the Trust Funds?

Every penny that has been paid into them with nothing borrowed against them. They would still be insolvent on schedule, but at least the government would not have used them as an excuse to spend hundreds of billions or probably trillions by now.

It again comes down to the question nobody on the Left seems to wish to address. Is it compasssion to encourage, even create, poverty by making people more comfortable in it? Or is compassion to encourage an economy in which nobody has to be poor?

So the Trust Fund should never have been invested? What idiot recommends you do that with your retirement savings?

As for helping the poor encourages them to stay poor,

you tell us, where in the world has poverty ever disappeared because the government gave the poor no help?

Show us where your plan has ever worked.

btw, did you notice that the OP claims poverty has been eradicated. Why don't you bitch at her for awhile?

Because she didn't say that and she hasn't bitched at me re my point of view. You have. She was very specific in the OP re the definition of poverty, however. You however, do seem determined to put words in my mouth that I haven't said and keep building straw men that do not apply to the OP and assuming a plan that I have not suggested.

Please answer this specific question:

What is more compassionate? To build a society and economy in which people do not have to be poor and are encouraged not to be?

Or to continue policies that appear to encourage a substantial percentage of people to remain poor?

 

[ClosedCaption]

6% PC? You've really sunk to new lows

 

[PoliticalChic]

I'm sure you can but not enough to say its common..Show me where its widespread and you wont look like a cherry picking ass hat.

Annnnd go!

6% according to government figures.


The real question is what it says about your posts and mine...

Mine are correct, factual.

Yours are Liberal.

So it's not common although you present it as such....Gotcha

I belong to the National Sarcasm Society….like we need your support.

 

[kwc57]

If you don't know what an analogy is blame your teacher

I also know the difference between answering a question and building a straw man to avoid one. Do you?

Sure do. For example: Your contention that welfare keeps ppl poor is known as a strawman

Only a moron would take foxfyre on over her knowledge and understanding of issues. I hope you realize what a moron you're making of yourself. If her point is a strawman......which it isn't, you should have no problem knocking it down. Go ahead, we all need a good laugh.

 

[Dragonlady]

What you fail to understand is that it is the veracity of the statement, data, in question rather than the source.

That is why folks like you gripe about Heritage, or Cato.....but avoid dealing with the facts that they provide.
For the Left, obfuscation is farm more efficacious than debate.



You have some gripe with the folks who provide the material?

Well then....I always wonder why folks like you didn't stop using Arabic numerals after 9/11.

The Heritage Foundation, and the Fraser Institute in Canada, are both extreme right wing think tanks which start with a point of view and then fit the facts to go along with it. Yes, some of what they say is true, but their solutions are always tilted to a "business first" solution.

De-regulation of businesses is not the panacea The Heritage and the Fraser present it to be. At least the Fraser is honest about its agenda, which includes the elimination of the public school system, and the dismantling of the Canadian Health Care Act so that Canada can embrace the American style freemarket health system.

American workers enjoy few protections under American "at will" labour laws, which is why American workers have been so easily displaced by workers in Third World Countries and are forced to work whatever hours their employers deem reasonable. Yes they can go elsewhere, but low skill workers have a higher rate of unemployment that most so those people have few, if any, protections.

 

[ClosedCaption]

I also know the difference between answering a question and building a straw man to avoid one. Do you?

Sure do. For example: Your contention that welfare keeps ppl poor is known as a strawman

Only a moron would take foxfyre on over her knowledge and understanding of issues. I hope you realize what a moron you're making of yourself. If her point is a strawman......which it isn't, you should have no problem knocking it down. Go ahead, we all need a good laugh.

The burden of proof lies on the person who presented as such. You can see that once asked for proof...they disappear...then someone like you steps in demanding proof from the person asking for proof lol

bad cop bad cop...the lame edition

 

[kwc57]

Sure do.......because I have two nephews, one on my side of family and the other on my wife's side who are just like this. They are both "artists" who move from one menial job to the next while mooching off of their parents so they can "suffer" for their craft. One of them is 28 and doesn't have a pot to piss in. His brother on the other hand is a college graduate working in a Chicago advertising firm. Choices matter. When people have a run of misfortune, I don't have a problem giving them limited assitance. When people choose to live that way.......well, they need to make better choices and not ask me for a place to crash or help paying their cell phone bill.

It really goes to the heart of the thesis of the OP.

In order to keep themselves in positions they use to increase their power, prestige, influence, and personal fortunes, our elected leaders, bureaucrats, and appointees have powerful incentive to keep as many people dependent on big government as possible.

So you have whole generations of kids growing up not watching Mom and Dad get up, get cleaned up and dressed, and work for their money. Instead they are watching Mom or Dad get that government check, food stamps, etc. without apparently lifting a finger and then enjoying watching soaps, eating potato chips, drinking beer, cigs (or pot). So, when school or a job is boring or a drag or too hard and it is unpopular, even dangerous, to be different from everybody else, it is all too easy to shrug, not try very hard, and figure the government will send you a check too. For sure if you have a kid out of wedlock, the government money will come pouring in.

And the government sure isn't going to do anything to reduce that big, beautiful voting bloc they can count on.

And folks, that isn't compassion.

So if we take away all the government help that goes to those poor people, and make our poor people look like Africa's poor people, or India's poor people,

how exactly does that make America a better place? ...other than obviously making you feel good that you could see real people suffering real poverty...

I would quote the whole feed a man a fish as opposed to teaching a man to fish mantra, but I'm sure you know it. There are far too many people content to be fed rather than do their own fishing. Tell me how continuing to feed able bodied people who have no desire to support themselves is compassion. Feeding dependency helps no one. It does more harm than good. The government provides free education and there are scores of federal job training programs not to mention all of the state programs. Hell, the government will even provide free daycare. I know because I have a friend of at least 45 years who runs a daycare that provides government paid care. So you can get a free education up thru 12th grade. You can get free food, housing assitance, free daycare, free job training, etc., yet few success stories of people taking advantage of all the compassion. We instead have many failure stories of 3rd and 4th generation government dependents. Insanity is doing thesame thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

[Truthmatters]

OP why to you quote from a site that its founder openly said he wanted to keep Americans from voting?

 

[kwc57]

OP why to you quote from a site that its founder openly said he wanted to keep Americans from voting?

Haven't the voices in your head told you it's time to check your depends and run to 7/11 for another bag of cheetos?

 

[Truthmatters]

Paul Weyrich - "I don't want everybody to vote" (Goo Goo) - YouTube



this is the founder of the heritage foundation

I guess the right finds this attractive

 

[Foxfyre]

Sure do. For example: Your contention that welfare keeps ppl poor is known as a strawman

Only a moron would take foxfyre on over her knowledge and understanding of issues. I hope you realize what a moron you're making of yourself. If her point is a strawman......which it isn't, you should have no problem knocking it down. Go ahead, we all need a good laugh.

The burden of proof lies on the person who presented as such. You can see that once asked for proof...they disappear...then someone like you steps in demanding proof from the person asking for proof lol

bad cop bad cop...the lame edition

But again you build a straw man even though you obviously can't define one. I did not say that welfare keeps people poor. I said that welfare provides the incentive to elected leaders, appointees, and bureaucrats to keep people poor so they'll keep voting for the people who promise to keep feeding their poverty. There is simply no other conclusion a reasonable person can come to as to why the same failed policies are repeated and funded, in ever increasing scope and amounts, year after year after year, decade after decade.

It is my opinion that reasonable people are interested in getting the maximum bang for our buck and seeing improvement and achievement in what we accomplish. But outside of a very few anecdotal stories that are always trotted out as 'evidence', the welfare system we have has not encouraged people to get out of poverty but continue to provide incentive for more and more people to become more dependent on government.

And again I say that is not compassion.

 

[Erand7899]

I would like to point out that the original article which PC quoted railing against social programs, was posted on the Heritiage Foundation website. The Heritigage Foundation is an extreme right wing think tank which believes that ALL social programs, including public education, should be abolished. All of their research, studies and position papers start with the assumption that all social programs are bad and wasteful, and all private businesses are good.

I agree that social programs are expensive. Especially since virtually every program in the US is "means tested", which adds layers of administration and costs to every program. Studies have shown that "means testing" adds more costs to a program than it saves, but Americans are so obsessed that someone who doesn't deserve it might get a dollar or two, that they'll spend thousands to make sure that doesn't happen.

Any efforts to increase minimum wages, is met with howls of derision from the right, and yet increasing the minimum wage would substanially reduce or eliminate the need for many of the income assistance programs which you rail against. There are lots of ways of reducing dependence on social programs, and all of them start with increasing the wage of workers which have been stagnant for 35 years.

Raising the minimum wage does not reduce dependence upon social programs, it merely shifts the burden of that dependence onto private business.

And yes, Americans are obsessed with fraud, waste and abuse of tax dollars. Those dollars could be improving their own welfare instead of lining the pockets of chislers.

 

[ClosedCaption]

Only a moron would take foxfyre on over her knowledge and understanding of issues. I hope you realize what a moron you're making of yourself. If her point is a strawman......which it isn't, you should have no problem knocking it down. Go ahead, we all need a good laugh.

The burden of proof lies on the person who presented as such. You can see that once asked for proof...they disappear...then someone like you steps in demanding proof from the person asking for proof lol

bad cop bad cop...the lame edition

But again you build a straw man even though you obviously can't define one. I did not say that welfare keeps people poor. I said that welfare provides the incentive to elected leaders, appointees, and bureaucrats to keep people poor so they'll keep voting for the people who promise to keep feeding their poverty. There is simply no other conclusion a reasonable person can come to as to why the same failed policies are repeated and funded, in ever increasing scope and amounts, year after year after year, decade after decade.

It is my opinion that reasonable people are interested in getting the maximum bang for our buck and seeing improvement and achievement in what we accomplish. But outside of a very few anecdotal stories that are always trotted out as 'evidence', the welfare system we have has not encouraged people to get out of poverty but continue to provide incentive for more and more people to become more dependent on government.

And again I say that is not compassion.

Oh you went the "suggestion" route. Gotcha...

you're not saying that welfare keeps people poor what you're saying is that welfare keeps people poor...now I see the difference.

Read the bolded...