Sisyphus Stumbled

[oldfart]

Payroll taxes should go into a locked box and not be used by the Congress for any purpose other than to pay the earned benefits to those who contributed.

Here's the problem: what goes into the lock box? Fundamentally, there is no way a generation can transfer the goods and services it will need from the present to the future. The trust funds are by law required to invest in only U S government securities. This inflow of cash from payroll taxes allowed the government to run deficits in on-budget areas without disrupting the economy. You get the same result if they had simply stored U S currency (you can think of currency as a zero yield short term government bond!). I guess the closest alternative would have been to insist that the trust funds be paid in gold or other long-lived commodities, but when it came time to pay retirees, the gold would just go back to the government, which would then pay out the annuities.

All this begs the question of what that money could actually buy. Be it a Social Security check, government bonds, or gold distributed; everyone would still have to go into the marketplace and exchange that for food, clothing, medical care, housing, and so forth. If there is not sufficient supply of these, the result would be inflation and a plummeting standard of living. Assuring an adequate supply of goods and services depends not on what kind of financial funding is used (which is basically irrelevant), but on the economic policies in place from the time the payroll taxes were withheld to the time people begin to collect benefits. If the money was used to pay for wars and tax cuts, we will be poorer. If the money was used to finance investment in physical and human capital, to maintain infrastructure and fund research, especially in fields such as medicine, transportation, and housing suitable for the retirees; then we would be OK.

How do you think we've done?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

SocSec is broke, bankrupt, it has no real assets and trillions in liabilities. S&P should give the USA junk rating

The fair thing is to give people ownership of the money the government is otherwise stealing from us.

Governed control has a 100% fail rate

 

[CrusaderFrank]

We should demand that the Social Security Trust Fund be backed by the oil and gas on government owned lands

 

[Provocateur]

The need for SS and Medicare (or similar such services) has existed in modern society since the Industrial Revolution. SS is not the be all end all of retirement plans, individuals know they must have some other plans or will be destined to rely on their kids or live in poverty. Of course to set money aside and invest for the future requires a living wage.

Anyone who has traveled around the globe has seen the poor, the infirmed and the aged begging on the streets of urban cities; hordes of children living alone or in bands of disorganized crime, all amid pockets of wealth incarcerated in office towers and gated communities.

The attack on SS and Medicare is and has been an effort by the bankers, brokers, snake oil sales personnel and the power elite to secure the dollars working men and women pay in payroll taxes, and of course allow the business community greater profits by eliminating their contributions to SS and Medicare. Once these programs (earned by the working men and women) have been eliminated they will be replaced with new markets, offering more insurance and investment products without the full force and credit guarantee of SS and Medicare, loaded with fine print to the advantage of the few and the disadvantage of the many.

The first Social Security recipient, Ida May Fuller, paid in $24.75, and collected $22,888.92.

It's gone downhill ever since.

 

[Provocateur]

What about the attack obama did on Medicare? Around 800 billion? Let me guess, that does not count?

I thought you liked cutting out fraud?

The 800 Billion he stole from Medicare was merely cuts in fraud?

 

[Skull Pilot]

I didn't assume people would invest in only one thing, people do and did (as in my example).

I'm fine, I retired in 2005. I managed to pay off one son's student loans and give an equal amount to son #2 to buy his home and currently earn more in retirement than I did when I worked.

I have less trust in bankers & brokers than I do in government, for good reason.

People are responsible for themselves. Tell me why should I have my financial security sapped because some other people are idiots?

And I do not use brokers or bankers. I buy my funds myself and pay no commissions other than a very small transaction fee.

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand. I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need, even some whose hard luck was self imposed. Therein is the difference between you and me.

Yawn. The same old hackneyed arguments.

Everyone should give up 15% of their income so the fucking government can help others.

I know what's best for me and why do you assume I do not give money to charities I believe in?

I'll tell you that the money I do give goes to an organization that does better than the fucking government.

The fact that you believe the morons in DC can do better with your money than you tells you are a fully indoctrinated sheep.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Payroll taxes should go into a locked box and not be used by the Congress for any purpose other than to pay the earned benefits to those who contributed.

Here's the problem: what goes into the lock box? Fundamentally, there is no way a generation can transfer the goods and services it will need from the present to the future. The trust funds are by law required to invest in only U S government securities. This inflow of cash from payroll taxes allowed the government to run deficits in on-budget areas without disrupting the economy. You get the same result if they had simply stored U S currency (you can think of currency as a zero yield short term government bond!). I guess the closest alternative would have been to insist that the trust funds be paid in gold or other long-lived commodities, but when it came time to pay retirees, the gold would just go back to the government, which would then pay out the annuities.

All this begs the question of what that money could actually buy. Be it a Social Security check, government bonds, or gold distributed; everyone would still have to go into the marketplace and exchange that for food, clothing, medical care, housing, and so forth. If there is not sufficient supply of these, the result would be inflation and a plummeting standard of living. Assuring an adequate supply of goods and services depends not on what kind of financial funding is used (which is basically irrelevant), but on the economic policies in place from the time the payroll taxes were withheld to the time people begin to collect benefits. If the money was used to pay for wars and tax cuts, we will be poorer. If the money was used to finance investment in physical and human capital, to maintain infrastructure and fund research, especially in fields such as medicine, transportation, and housing suitable for the retirees; then we would be OK.

How do you think we've done?

Excellent post, much food for thought. What a contrast between the thoughtless bullshit posted by CrusaderFrank and you.

We've done poorly thus far; wars enrich the war profiters and leave little for the fields noted in the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph.

 

[Wry Catcher]

People are responsible for themselves. Tell me why should I have my financial security sapped because some other people are idiots?

And I do not use brokers or bankers. I buy my funds myself and pay no commissions other than a very small transaction fee.

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand. I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need, even some whose hard luck was self imposed. Therein is the difference between you and me.

Yawn. The same old hackneyed arguments.

Everyone should give up 15% of their income so the fucking government can help others.

I know what's best for me and why do you assume I do not give money to charities I believe in?

I'll tell you that the money I do give goes to an organization that does better than the fucking government.

The fact that you believe the morons in DC can do better with your money than you tells you are a fully indoctrinated sheep.

Don't tell me what I believe, doing so is arrogant and foolish. I don't know what "charities" you support, nor do I care. You've made it clear you are what I call a Callous Conservative. That's all I need to know.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand.

ah so that makes you a typical liberal morality bigot!! You are morally superior because your heart bleeds more- right!!

I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need,

there is no helping hand you uttlerly blind liberal fool. There is only pure moral hazard with those who get the so called "helping hand" and their families and neighbors growing in number by leaps and bounds precisely because the liberal helping hand destroys!! It sent the black man to jail and destroyed the black family!! THe liberal helping had is near genocidal!!

The so called helping hand is really just a cruel means to create a dependent voting class of Marxist liberal leeches.



"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

 

[Skull Pilot]

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand. I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need, even some whose hard luck was self imposed. Therein is the difference between you and me.

Yawn. The same old hackneyed arguments.

Everyone should give up 15% of their income so the fucking government can help others.

I know what's best for me and why do you assume I do not give money to charities I believe in?

I'll tell you that the money I do give goes to an organization that does better than the fucking government.

The fact that you believe the morons in DC can do better with your money than you tells you are a fully indoctrinated sheep.

Don't tell me what I believe, doing so is arrogant and foolish. I don't know what "charities" you support, nor do I care. You've made it clear you are what I call a Callous Conservative. That's all I need to know.

And yet you have the audacity to say that you somehow care more than I because you too fucking stupid to handle your own money and you want the fucking government to do it for you.

Throwing your money down a government toilet does not mean you care it means you're a fucking moron.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand.

ah so that makes you a typical liberal morality bigot!! You are morally superior because your heart bleeds more- right!!

I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need,

there is no helping hand you uttlerly blind liberal fool. There is only pure moral hazard with those who get the "helping hand" and their families and neighbors growing in number by leaps and bounds because the so called helping hand is really just a means to create a dependent voting class of Marxist liberal leeches.[/QUOTE]

Call back when you're 30, when you have a home and a family, when you face the prospect of aging parents who need you and kids who need braces. Your posts suggest you're an arrogant dweeb, without an ounce of real world experience.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Yawn. The same old hackneyed arguments.

Everyone should give up 15% of their income so the fucking government can help others.

I know what's best for me and why do you assume I do not give money to charities I believe in?

I'll tell you that the money I do give goes to an organization that does better than the fucking government.

The fact that you believe the morons in DC can do better with your money than you tells you are a fully indoctrinated sheep.

Don't tell me what I believe, doing so is arrogant and foolish. I don't know what "charities" you support, nor do I care. You've made it clear you are what I call a Callous Conservative. That's all I need to know.

And yet you have the audacity to say that you somehow care more than I because you too fucking stupid to handle your own money and you want the fucking government to do it for you.

Throwing your money down a government toilet does not mean you care it means you're a fucking moron.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Call back when you're 30, when you have a home and a family, when you face the prospect of aging parents who need you and kids who need braces. Your posts suggest you're an arrogant dweeb, without an ounce of real world experience.

would the liberal bigot say the same to Franklin and Jefferson?????????????????


"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."-Ben Franklin

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Good for you. You are the exception to "No man is an Island". Real life is different; hard working people sometimes need a helping hand. I've never been opposed to offering a hand to those in need, even some whose hard luck was self imposed. Therein is the difference between you and me.

Yawn. The same old hackneyed arguments.

Everyone should give up 15% of their income so the fucking government can help others.

I know what's best for me and why do you assume I do not give money to charities I believe in?

I'll tell you that the money I do give goes to an organization that does better than the fucking government.

The fact that you believe the morons in DC can do better with your money than you tells you are a fully indoctrinated sheep.

Don't tell me what I believe, doing so is arrogant and foolish. I don't know what "charities" you support, nor do I care. You've made it clear you are what I call a Callous Conservative. That's all I need to know.

of course we all know by now that conservatives give more to charity than liberals. At Christmas times Nick Kristoff always chides them about it on the NY Times Op Ed pages!!

Liberals are pathetic bigots. What other explanation is possible.

 

[AVG-JOE]

The need for SS and Medicare (or similar such services) has existed in modern society since the Industrial Revolution. SS is not the be all end all of retirement plans, individuals know they must have some other plans or will be destined to rely on their kids or live in poverty. Of course to set money aside and invest for the future requires a living wage.

Anyone who has traveled around the globe has seen the poor, the infirmed and the aged begging on the streets of urban cities; hordes of children living alone or in bands of disorganized crime, all amid pockets of wealth incarcerated in office towers and gated communities.

The attack on SS and Medicare is and has been an effort by the bankers, brokers, snake oil sales personnel and the power elite to secure the dollars working men and women pay in payroll taxes, and of course allow the business community greater profits by eliminating their contributions to SS and Medicare. Once these programs (earned by the working men and women) have been eliminated they will be replaced with new markets, offering more insurance and investment products without the full force and credit guarantee of SS and Medicare, loaded with fine print to the advantage of the few and the disadvantage of the many.

Medicare won't go away as long as we have injured, sick and old people.

The scam of Medicare is long term. The average American Joe dumps around $400 per month in to the "health care system" between his payroll insurance contributions and what his employer contributes on his behalf. $400 per month from age 22 to age 65. Sure, plenty of people get sick and injured along the way, but the vast majority file few if any claims of any significance.

About the time the average American Joe finds himself in need of a physician on a more regular basis and he starts feeling the ailments of aging that drives the need for those services, your friendly, neighborhood private insurance company dumps him on to the tax-payers via Medicare and springs for an executive junket to Aruba.

The best way to save the system is to make Medicare a true public option and let everyone buy in when they're young at a rate based on their age.

I'd much rather have been dumping MY $400 per month in to Medicare all these years of my gainful employment. Then I wouldn't feel so bad when I hit 65 and start actually seeing doctors on the tax-payers dime.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Payroll taxes should go into a locked box and not be used by the Congress for any purpose other than to pay the earned benefits to those who contributed.

Payroll taxes should be invested in quality, dividend paying American company stock.

The account should be managed by three of the nastiest banksters that didn't spend the last 5 years in jail, using a transparent system that bonuses each one for out performing the other two.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Call back when you're 30, when you have a home and a family, when you face the prospect of aging parents who need you and kids who need braces. Your posts suggest you're an arrogant dweeb, without an ounce of real world experience.

would the liberal bigot say the same to Franklin and Jefferson?????????????????


"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."-Ben Franklin

Nope, but you're neither; this is a different world than the one Messieurs Franklin and Jefferson occupied.

In one respect you're correct, I am intolerant of callous conservatives, much as I am of petty thieves and liars. All three are minor crimes in the way of the world, yet like a foul odor they permeate all that they come in touch with. It's why I feel the need to shower when I read posts by those who justify their greed with ideology. No matter how framed, avarice is a deadly sin.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Nope, but you're neither;

so what would you say to Jefferson and Franklin???

this is a different world than the one Messieurs Franklin and Jefferson occupied.

yes we're much much richer and it takes far far less effort to survive today!!! Can you really be this slow?? See why we are positive a liberal will be 100% slow.

In one respect you're correct, I am intolerant of callous conservatives,

yes because you're a sensitive liberal morality bigot who doesn't mind crippling generations of Americans

yet like a foul odor they permeate all that they come in touch with.

yes like the liberal near genocide against American blacks??????

It's why I feel the need to shower when I read posts by those who justify their greed with ideology. No matter how framed, avarice is a deadly sin.

would the liberal bigot tell Jefferson and Franklin that you needed to shower after listening to their Republican conservatism?? Would you have spied for Stalin because he was going to share the wealth too???

Would you redo the Great Society War on Poverty even though it imprisoned more black men than slavery did???

 

[Wry Catcher]

Nope, but you're neither;

so what would you say to Jefferson and Franklin???

this is a different world than the one Messieurs Franklin and Jefferson occupied.

yes we're much much richer and it takes far far less effort to survive today!!! Can you really be this slow?? See why we are positive a liberal will be 100% slow.




yes because you're a sensitive liberal morality bigot who doesn't mind crippling generations of Americans

yet like a foul odor they permeate all that they come in touch with.

yes like the liberal near genocide against American blacks??????

It's why I feel the need to shower when I read posts by those who justify their greed with ideology. No matter how framed, avarice is a deadly sin.

would the liberal bigot tell Jefferson and Franklin that you needed to shower after listening to their Republican conservatism?? Would you have spied for Stalin because he was going to share the wealth too???

Would you redo the Great Society War on Poverty even though it imprisoned more black men than slavery did???

I'll send you a PM.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Nope, but you're neither;

so what would you say to Jefferson and Franklin???





yes we're much much richer and it takes far far less effort to survive today!!! Can you really be this slow?? See why we are positive a liberal will be 100% slow.




yes because you're a sensitive liberal morality bigot who doesn't mind crippling generations of Americans




yes like the liberal near genocide against American blacks??????

It's why I feel the need to shower when I read posts by those who justify their greed with ideology. No matter how framed, avarice is a deadly sin.

would the liberal bigot tell Jefferson and Franklin that you needed to shower after listening to their Republican conservatism?? Would you have spied for Stalin because he was going to share the wealth too???

Would you redo the Great Society War on Poverty even though it imprisoned more black men than slavery did???

I'll send you a PM.

Translation: I've been defeated and need to change the subject!!