So on another thread, I had a guy post the following about social security.
Best government plan ever conceived. People don't save, therefore need a 'forced' retirement income plan that ensures at least some security. Tweaking the numbers will solve the problem. Politicians just need to allow the administrators of SS to do their job and stop using SS as a political football.
This shows just how little people know about social security, and why social security is such a massive danger to this country.
Now there will be people who will refuse to believe anything I am about to say, but it is the truth. Christians are supposed to be about the truth. We're not supposed to act like the pagans, and believe lies, simply because we don't like the truth. So you want to argue with me, you had better be able to prove it. Because I can prove what I'm about to tell you.
Social Security is not a retirement plan, or insurance.
This is not up for debate. It's a fact. Social Security is simply a tax.... and a welfare benefit.
It's nothing different than your income tax... and food stamps... an income tax... and welfare.... an income tax... and public housing, or Obama Phones, or anything else.
I can prove this. It was never an investment program for retirement, from the first day that it was signed into law. In 1937, the Supreme Court ruled that Social Security was a welfare program, like any other. That's why it was constitutional.
A retirement system was unconstitutional. There is no clause in the constitution for a retirement program.
FDRs legal team itself, argued it isn't a retirement program... and it isn't. It's an income tax, and a welfare program. Not any more connected together, than income tax and food stamps. Exactly the same thing.
There is no account with your money, nor any investments.
Your social security money, is tax. That's all. It's just a tax. It goes to pay the same things all taxes pay for. When the IRS collects your social security tax, it is sent to the same place as all other taxes go. It is given to the US government, and spent.
Some of your money goes to the military. Some to food stamps. Some to the EPA. Some to health care. And some of your money goes to pay existing Social Security recipients.
But all of that money that was collected, is spent, and gone.
It is all gone. There is no account with your name on it. There is no investment. There is no mutual fund, or assets, or anything. It is all spent, and gone.
The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs
There is no legal assets, no legal retirement savings, and you have no legal rights.
With any real retirement, you would have legal assets. When i purchase stock, I have a legal right to the asset that I purchased. It is something that I legally own.
When I purchase an investment property, I have legal ownership of that property.
When I purchase shares in a mutual fund, I have legal rights to the assets in those funds.
If someone tries to deny my access, I can take them to court, and get some, or all, the money from those assets I have legal rights to.
Not with Social Security.
Flemming v. Nestor - Wikipedia
The Supreme Court has already ruled that you have no legal right to Social Security, no matter how much you paid into it.
Which of course makes sense. Remember, Social Security was justified as just being an income tax, and welfare program, back in 1937.
So would you demand a right to have a tank? Because your tax money paid for tanks? No. No one would think that.
Well you have no more of a right to social security, than a military tank, just because you paid for both out of your income taxes. Just because we label one income tax "Income tax" and label the other income tax "Social Security Contributions" does not change the fact tha both are legally just.... income taxes.
You have no legal right to social security. It can be removed at any time. It can be cut at any time. It can be eliminate at any time. You have no legal assets, no legal claims, no legal anything. It is a welfare program, and can be cut whenever the government decides.
Social Security is broke.
Social Security is literally, 100%, broke. There are no assets in Social Security. All money that is taxed away, is spent.
There is no account with Social Security money in it. The idea that social security has treasury bonds in it, is a joke.
It would be the same as you, holding a $50 dollar bill in your left hand. Then using your right hand, to write out on a note "I owe You $50". Then replacing the $50 in your left hand, with the IOU note you yourself wrote out with your right hand.... and then saying to yourself.... ok now I have an investment.
You.... owing.... you.... money, is not an investment.
In fact, even those IOUs that Social Security "buys" are fake. They are not even real.
A real Treasury bond, has value on the open market. We call them "marketable bonds".
What that means is, if you buy a bond, and the bond matures in 10 years, but you find that you really need the money in 5 years... you can sell that bond on the open market, and get money for it. It has value. Thus, it is a "marketable bond".
The 'treasury bonds' that Social Security has, are not even real bonds. They are in fact nothing more than paper saying the government, owes the government, money.
If we all rounded up a gang, and raided the Social Security administration, stealing all the 'treasury bonds' they have... we would walk away with a few dollars worth of paper. They have zero value. They can't be sold.
Which is why if the government stops borrowing, Social Security will be cut.
A ton of people claimed that Obama was lying, back when Obama said Social Security would be cut if the government debt limit wasn't raised.
They said this, because they all still believed the complete myth, that Social Security has investments. Social Security has no investments. Obama was actually telling the truth.
If the Social Security administration seized all the assets of Social Security, and tried to sell them, they would have no money.
If people demanded a test of the "social security trust fund", and said for one month, and only one month, Social Security will collect zero tax, and get zero money from the government. We want them to simply pay out social security checks from the "trust fund". There would be ZERO.... listen.... ZERO payouts. Not one person, would get one penny.
There is no trust fund. There are no assets. All the money you paid in, is spent, and gone.
Lastly, Social Security is the absolute worst retirement possible.
If you put your money into literally ANYTHING, you will be better off than in Social Security.
In the 80s, the government allowed certain groups in Texas to opt-out of Social Security, and were allowed to put their money into private retirement funds.
The absolute worst retirement fund, ended up having a retirement more than double that of Social Security.
This is still true today. A person who works for $50,000 a year, will end up with a social security check of just barely $1,300 a month.
That's almost poverty.
But that same person who is paying $600 a month into social security, if they instead put that money into a private retirement in good growth stock mutual funds, would end up with $5 Million by retirement.
Can anyone say poverty at $1,300 a month, is better than retiring with $5 Million?
Which leads me to the last point, about incentives.
The other poster, said "
People don't save, therefore need a 'forced' retirement income plan that ensures at least some security".
The sad pathetic part of this is, before there was Social Security, people saved. Public savings has dramatically fallen since the introduction of Social Security.
He's right the people do not save, but is actually looking directly at the very cause of that, as the solution. The whole reason people don't save, is because they expect government to bail them out.
Even during the decades after Social Security was created, people still had a general idea that it was their own job to pay for their retirement. But as the benefits of Social Security increased, starting in the 60s and 70s, the view changed to that of Government is going to take care of me, so I don't have to.
I have actually heard this directly to my face. I knew a lady that spent every single penny she earned. Literally paid on Friday, broke by Thursday. I confronted her on her irresponsibility and she said directly, just a few more years and she'll collect social security.
When you bailout bad behavior, you end up with more bad behavior. The whole reason we have an entire generation of irresponsible people, is because we bail out their bad choices.
And not only do we encourage bad choices, but we make it harder on everyone else to make good choices. It's harder to save up money, when almost 15% of your check is confiscated from you, to pay for other people's bad choices.
Social Security does not prevent people from ending up poor. It helps guarantee more people will be poor.
Conclusion: Truth.
Social Security is a horrible program, that dooms people to poverty, and is going to eventually have to be replaced.... or.... it will destroy this country.
At some point, now or later, we will have to replace this program, or face devastation.
We have already seen the results of denying the Truth, and living in a fantasy world. Greece is the defining example of our age.
People warned Greece over and over throughout the 1990s, that their pension system was not supportable. That their taxes were too high, that payouts from were to high, that the debts were too high.
And everyone simply refused to believe it. They said the same things we see today being said about our pension system. They said it was the best system in Europe. They said it was the best plan every conceived. They said had worked for decades. They said it was well funded.
Then the bills came due. Then truth hit the fiction. Then reality defeated the myth.
Now Greece is a devastated country, only now, a decade later, stablized.
After a decade of economic crisis, people in Greece 'don't dream anymore'
Nearly half a million Greeks have left, Bank of Greece report finds, Stratos Karakasidis | Kathimerini
And that's with half a million having fled the country.
That could be... and I suggest will be, the US unless we change our course. Only a fool thinks doing the exact same things, will have a completely different outcome.
