One of the political facts of life which most Americans do not want to consider is this: young people are in favor of Social Security. This has always been the case.
Politics are settled at the margin. There’s no doubt that older people, at the margin, are a very large swing vote. But they have never had anything like the majority. This was especially true in 1935, when the New Deal voted to set up the Social Security system. The nation was a young nation at that point, because the birth rate had been high almost from the beginning of the nation.
The appeal of Social Security was this: the state would guarantee retirement. The state was going to substitute its power to collect taxes from workers, and it would use this power to guarantee everybody a free lunch. Only the free lunch would start at the age of 65.
Overwhelmingly, the public got on board. Overwhelmingly, the public is still on board. The Social Security system has always been a promotion directly aimed at existing workers. This is because existing workers are the overwhelming majority of the voters in this society.
A lot of people blame the old folks for having acted as a political special-interest group to make certain that it gets its money. But understand this: this special-interest group, like all special-interest groups, never had the ability on its own to get this legislation passed. Furthermore, this special-interest group does not have the votes in order to sustain this continuing drain on the Treasury without the help of the overwhelming majority of people who are paying into the program.
For some reason, because the special-interest group now acts as a special-interest group, conservative critics forget the obvious, which is that this special-interest group was created by the original legislation, and that legislation was voted for by workers who were still in the labor force. The Social Security system, like the Medicare system, is beloved of younger workers, because they think they’re going to get a free lunch from the government when they’re older, and this enables them to spend less money now for their retirement years. They love it. They figure somebody else is going to pay for their retirement, and they think they’re going to dig deep into somebody else’s wallet.
This is a Ponzi scheme. But Ponzi schemes are incredibly popular with people. This is why they grow so fast. Think of Bernie Madoff. People loved to get in. They begged to get in. Madoff realized early that it was this insatiable desire for outsiders to get in that was his sustaining factor. Without this, the thing would have blown up much earlier.
(For the rest of my article, click the link.)
Really? Free ride? Have you forgotten that the Gov has been taking money from me for ss and medicaid all of my life. Yes for the illegal aliens and a bunch of freeloaders on the system that has never worked (or wanted to work) it is a free ride
There WAS money in the till for Social Security. But our congress decided to put it into the general fund. So NOW it is a ponsi scheme. I also paid into this "program" for 45 years. And I am collecting now and not embarrassed about it at all.
But what surprises me that despite all the obvious evidence, there are people in this country that want the government to be involved in our healthcare.
Yes, a free ride. Because the government took YOUR money and spent it on other things. They never 'saved' it for your retirement. It was a scam from the very beginning. The first person (a woman) who 'retired' under SS paid in something like $123 and then drew thousands.
If you get mugged at gunpoint, do you expect the mugger to buy you dinner? Of course not.
Until you recognize that the government is a gun-toting thief, you will always be its servant.
the government is the problem
No, Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from the beginning. It was always designed to fund the retirement of today's seniors on the backs of today's workers. Always.
Now, the number of workers in relation to the number of recipients is insufficient to support the recipients, and that was always going to happen, eventually, regardless of how poorly (or effectively) the system was run.
DO NOT allow yourself to depend on Social Security in your old age. Don't do it. You WILL regret it.
I have been for over forty years and am now paying into Social Security and Medicare. When I do finally retire, I will gladly (happly, even!) take back what was paid. This is not getting back more than paid into the system for some-i.e. my husband recently died at age 61 BEFORE he could even get the paltry "early retirement" payment of a little over five hundred dollars a month-hardly a living!! For some of us, our income is too small to save for retirement, and the alternative would be to work until we drop dead. I don't think so!!!
If the gov. Would have left it alone there would be money in there congress won't leave it alone, and Clinton robbed it , sorry but my husband and I had saved for retirement but thanks to obama it's gone because I was younger than my husband it cost us 30,ooo.oo dollars for three yrs. in my medical, and drugs, that Before obama was paid for by his co. For15yrs. Then obama came along and stoled it with obcare garbage, WE should be able to sue obama congress senate, for our money now we are on s.s. alone now we just get barley by so check your facts, there would have been money in there if gov. Stayed out of it so quit sending money over seas and put the money hard working Americans made back with the interest it would have made it. So tired of blaming older one day if your lucky you will be older.
No one "collects" what he or she "put into" Social Security. The government took your money and spent it, to include giving it to others on SS. If you live long enough enough to go on the dole, the government will take money from others and give it to you. As long as they're benefiting from this thieving Ponzi scheme, most people don't have a problem with it.
If you have any doubts about how the system really works, read what Walter Williams wrote:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/06/walter-e-willi…
sorry Gay, but I m 76 yeas old and I have no use to continue Soc. (IN)Security. It is a farce designed by the PROGRESSIVES, about whom I knew nothing while growing up and serving a little over 4 years in the USAF.
You are wrong in your claim about "loved by all".
Not only did we pay into the system , our employer also contributed to it for us. That meant that we actually received less money for our labors. This is no handout or free lunch, thank you very much.
I also have paid in for dear old dad my whole life. What is free about expecting to be compensated for that? Not my problem that the government has stolen all the money instead of investing it to the citizens benefit. They still take and send my money to places that I disagree with.
In the beginning, Social Security was NOT a Ponzi scheme. Unlike Madoff's "investments" the funds paid in by taxpayers were kept in an account to fund Social Security payouts.
The modern Democratic party that gave us mob rule is the culprit that turned Social Security into a Ponzi scheme. They did it the same way that Madoff did. They did it by misappropriating the money for uses other than for which is was intened.
LBJ put the Social Security fund into arming the NORTH Vietnamese army. After Vietnam fell, the Vietnamese communists had one of the best equipped militaries in the world — thanks to all the abandoned ordinance paid for by the Social Security funds of the American taxpayer.
One thing that is overlooked here is that the Baby-Boomer generation is an aberration. At the moment a large segment of the population is old but that will clear in a few decades and after that the population demographic will be back to normal. The notion that there will always be way too many old people and too many young people is a one-off thing.
When SS was conjured-up, government thought that people would die before being able to "collect." Government considered SS as another "slush fund" for them to spend. To their chagrin, people started living much longer and actually collecting their money back. Now government is whining because this great big scam on taxpayers has backfired…
SS, if left alone, even with the declining work force, could be self-sustaining. The solution is to keep people from collecting SS that never paid into the program (namely, millions of illegals.)
Lyndon Johnson looted the Social Security Trust Fund and placed it in the general revenue fund so it could be used to finance his "Great Society". The trust fund now contains I.O.U.s from the U.S. government.
Actually, I would characterize Robert's comment as akin to justifying a victim of a mugging turning around and mugging the next guy.
Pineapple you are so true. The gov. has been stealing our money since Johnson transferred it to the general fund and it is not the gov. money. We have paid for it for a lot of years.
Well, I and others paid in more than 123.00 dollars! If the government had left it alone to draw intrest, we would not be having this conversation. So it wasnt a free lunch for me and some others. However it is a free lunch to the people collecting it on a trumped up disability. If you think we are living high on the hog just with Social Security, you are sadly mistaken. It's way below the poverty level!
It was not a scam in the beginning. The government was required to keep the Social Security tax revenue is a separate fund specificallly for payment of Social Security benefits. It was only in the mid 1960's, when LBJ wanted to fight a ruinous foreign war, (without raising taxes and get the Democrats' butts kicked at the polls< he got the Democrat majority Congress to arbitrarily and unilaterally change the law to let him spend the money on whatever he thought was good — (except, of cousre, social security.)
It was rather like the presdient of a bank telling the laan committee that he wanted to be able to put his hand in the till whenever he wanted and take out as much as he wanted, with no repayment plan whatsoever.
Why is it that every American in the country except its politicans get heavy prison time for this sort of thing?
Ah, in a Batman comic, the villain forbbed the bank of several hundred million dollars. He got away because he strewed about 300 thousand dollars out in the middle of the street, and the cops could not follow him because of the crowd picking up the money out fo the street.
That's how "heroes" like Robbing Hood and the U.S. government work.