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Anti Federalist
03-06-2011, 09:14 PM
Social Security Is Middle-Class Welfare

It’s not a savings plan and many seniors don’t need it. Let’s admit it so we can avert a disaster.

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/06/social-security-is-middle-class-welfare.html

In a recent column on the senior-citizen lobby, I noted that Social Security is often “middle-class welfare” that bleeds the country. This offended many readers. In an email, one snarled: “Social Security is not adding one penny to our national debt, you idiot.” Others were more dignified: “Let’s refrain from insulting individuals who have worked all their lives … by insinuating that [their] earned benefits are welfare.” Some argued that Social Security, with a $2.6 trillion trust fund, doesn’t contribute to our budgetary problem at all.

Wrong. As a rule, I don’t use one column to comment on another. But I’m making an exception because the issue is so important. Recall that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the main programs for the elderly, exceed 40 percent of federal spending. Exempting them from cuts—as polls indicate many Americans prefer—would ordain huge deficits, steep tax increases, or draconian reductions in other programs. That’s a disastrous formula for the future.

amy31416
03-06-2011, 09:49 PM
Dunno if you've noticed, but there's lots of articles out recently touting the virtues of working until you're older and how social security is a horrible thing for horrible people.

Prepping folks for losing the benefits, while nobody (but Ron & Rand) is even talking about cutting foreign expenditures and military spending. And while I don't think SS is a good thing, it shouldn't be touched until we stop the foreign welfare and warfare...not to mention the fact that the Federal Reserve has demolished the savings of so many folks.

I hope folks are preparing to help take care of their parents...it could get pretty ugly.

Koz
03-06-2011, 10:00 PM
How about it's just welfare and theft, regardless of class. Stealing from on generation to give to another.

emazur
03-06-2011, 10:04 PM
very nice and short explanation in there:
They paid their taxes, why can’t they get all their promised benefits? Because people have been misled, they’re legitimately disillusioned. But the alternative of imposing all the burdens on younger taxpayers and other government programs is much worse. Shared sacrifice is a meaningless concept if it excludes older Americans.

FSP-Rebel
03-06-2011, 10:22 PM
Damn, i was hoping for that. Just give me 40 years and it's all good.

Anti Federalist
03-06-2011, 10:37 PM
Dunno if you've noticed, but there's lots of articles out recently touting the virtues of working until you're older and how social security is a horrible thing for horrible people.

Prepping folks for losing the benefits, while nobody (but Ron & Rand) is even talking about cutting foreign expenditures and military spending. And while I don't think SS is a good thing, it shouldn't be touched until we stop the foreign welfare and warfare...not to mention the fact that the Federal Reserve has demolished the savings of so many folks.

I hope folks are preparing to help take care of their parents...it could get pretty ugly.

Excellent point.

I'm prepping myself too, I know I'll work until I'm dead.

CaliforniaMom
03-06-2011, 10:42 PM
I used to say social security was awful.... that is, until my husband suddenly passed away and social security widow's benefits and childcare benefits really helped me financially.

amy31416
03-06-2011, 10:52 PM
Excellent point.

I'm prepping myself too, I know I'll work until I'm dead.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing, if there weren't so many barriers to opening a business and doing what you love.


I used to say social security was awful.... that is, until my husband suddenly passed away and social security widow's benefits and childcare benefits really helped me financially.

That's the tough part...along with the senior citizens who can't work or can't find work. The charity structure is pretty weak because so many people depend on the gov't for help, rather than legitimate agencies/churches who can help. People get used to the gov't aid and don't learn/forget how to cope without it.

Anti Federalist
03-06-2011, 10:55 PM
That wouldn't be such a bad thing, if there weren't so many barriers to opening a business and doing what you love.

I am doing what I enjoy.

Government action is going to put me out of work again by the summer.

That will the third time in my life.

Danke
03-06-2011, 11:11 PM
I am doing what I enjoy.

Government action is going to put me out of work again by the summer.

That will the third time in my life.

Then there is Walmart. You're probably one of the few that actually looks forward to being a Walmart greeter someday

daviddee
03-06-2011, 11:24 PM
...

Anti Federalist
03-06-2011, 11:36 PM
Then there is Walmart. You're probably one of the few that actually looks forward to being a Walmart greeter someday

Funny you should mention that...

No, I better not, that one might really end up getting me run off

aGameOfThrones
03-07-2011, 02:04 AM
1960 Scotus case of Flemming v. Nestor.

It involved Bulgarian-born Ephram Nestor, who was deported in 1956, having been involved in Communist activity in the 1930s. The federal government denied him his Social Security benefits, citing 1954 amendments to the Social Security Act that denied payments to anyone deported for criminal activity after August of that year. Nestor Sued on the grounds that "throughout the history of the Social Security Act, old-age insurance benefits have been referred to as a right of the recipient which he has earned and paid for."

The federal government prepared a legal brief in defense of its position that Nestor was not entitled to his benefits. The brief explained that Social Security was in no sense a federally administered "insurance program" under which each worker pays premiums over the years and acquires at retirement an indefeasible right to receive for life a fixed monthly benefit,irrespective of the conditions which Congress has chosen to impose from time to time.... The "contribution" exacted under the social security plan from an employee...is a True Tax. It is not comparable to a premium under a policy of insurance promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age.

From Thomas Woods JR. 33 questions about American History.

"To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of "accrued property rights" would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands. It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility that Congress included in the original Act, and [363 U.S. 603, 611] has since retained, a clause expressly reserving to it "[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision" of the Act.

...

We must conclude that a person covered by the Act has not such a right in benefit payments as would make every defeasance of "accrued" interests violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. FLEMMING v. NESTOR, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)"


*******


"The catalogue of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical assistance, nursing, clothing, food, housing, and education of children, and a hundred other matters might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry. Can it fairly be said that the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce extends to the prescription of any or all of these things? It is not apparent that they are really and essentially related solely to the social welfare of the worker, and therefore remote from any regulation of commerce as such? We think the answer is plain. These matters obviously lie outside the orbit of congressional power." Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co, 295 U.S. 330, 55 S. Ct. 758 (1935)

MN Patriot
03-07-2011, 06:38 AM
I used to say social security was awful.... that is, until my husband suddenly passed away and social security widow's benefits and childcare benefits really helped me financially.

Sorry about that, kind of reluctant to reply to this, but... that is what life insurance is for. People who benefit from Social Security naturally think it is a good deal. The rest of us who have paid in our entire working life and can't collect for another 20 years aren't very enthusiastic about it.

fisharmor
03-07-2011, 07:40 AM
but... that is what life insurance is for. People who benefit from Social Security naturally think it is a good deal.

You got me really thinking here, MN.
Yeah, it sounds harsh, but the reality is, social security is still awful.
It's like the lottery that way. Sure, people who hit the lottery think it's great. But it's nothing more than a drain on society.
And that's a program that the state has gotten mostly right. It's a direct copy of its free-market counterpart. Run the numbers game, and get a bunch of armed goons to shut down the competition.

Social Security is a bad copy of a Ponzi scheme. Cali Mom, the life insurance aspects you mentioned could probably have been handled for under $10 a month, which I'm guessing was far less than the average of what you two were paying in social security. If I were able to stop paying SS and dumped just half of it into life insurance, then my wife would probably clear 5 million if I died.

I hate to do this, because you got something you sorely needed at a really bad time in your life - but you only got what you needed. You didn't get what you deserved... not by a long shot.

The state wants us to focus on the good it did for you. I'm sorry, but I can't do that. Not after it gobbled up your husband's earnings for his entire adult life and then left you struggling. If SS had the decency to be a direct rip-off of a working free-market mechanism like insurance, then that might be a different story. But it's not - it's just a wealth-eating scheme, nothing more.

JacksonianBME
03-07-2011, 08:03 AM
Social Security is a regressive tax. Implementing means testing would mean that the payroll tax is blatantly stealing from the rich, while still burdening the poor the most. It is a perfect example of Director's Law.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCdgv7n9xCY

I'm with Dr. Paul. Abolish Social Security.

erowe1
03-07-2011, 08:04 AM
The main objection I have with the OP is the phrase "middle class." It's not just middle class, it's all classes, including the very wealthy. And on average it redistributes wealth from the less wealthy to the more wealthy.

erowe1
03-07-2011, 08:12 AM
I used to say social security was awful.... that is, until my husband suddenly passed away and social security widow's benefits and childcare benefits really helped me financially.

The last thing I want to do is minimize your loss.

But with the money your husband was forced to pay in taxes he could have either invested in a fund that would be yours when he died, or bought life insurance, or done a combination of both. And he could have done it according to his own preferences of how his earnings be saved and spent, rather than the government's. Meanwhile, every other income earner in the nation would also have more take-home pay for them to use to help those who truly need the help, which they would surely do voluntarily, or else government benevolence programs wouldn't be so popular.

Elwar
03-07-2011, 08:23 AM
Let's see...we and our employers pay 12% in taxes on our income.

The money from that tax is then given to someone else.

How is that not welfare? Just because the people receiving the welfare once had to pay taxes as well?

If I quit my job today and started collecting a government check for being poor, got a free cell phone and free housing, would it not be welfare because I have paid income taxes my whole life? So essentially I'm just getting paid back what I put in?

If I had no job and went onto Food Stamps would it not be welfare because I've paid sales taxes my whole life?