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2011-07-21 09:50 PM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

I've written several posts on this website about Social Security, the SS Trust Fund, where the money comes from, where the money goes, and what the future looks like. I expect that our elected offiicials and the media (both right and left) would educate themselves on the facts before they engage in fear mongering. That's wishful thinking. It's a favorite political whipping post for politicians and the media.

For anyone that would like to educate themselves without resorting to reading 100 plus page pdf file reports and graphs (as I have) I highly recommend this website, Just Facts. It is comprehensive and it is up to date. And it is accurate.
After listening to so much misinformation and spin from both conservative and liberal media pundits and politicians about Social Security, it is refreshing to find a website that just has the facts. Ultimately, as the debt ceiling deal is worked out and if it has some long term provisions about Social Security, all I ask is that you check the facts before pushing back. Right now we have pundits like Ed Schultz (who I highly respect) making noise about Social Security cuts when he has absoutely no access to the details. I'll try provide an unbiased perspective of "the deal" in this website once it is worked out.

As I will be 65 in a few months, I have a vested intersted in understanding all the nuances of both Social Security and Medicare. I'll happily share my perspective.

2011-07-22 11:05 AM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

Mahalo,

You know....I line up in a weird place on Social Security.

.....I'm for spending SS Trust Fund reciepts on the General Budget.

.....I believe intergovernmental debt (such as that held by the Social Security Administration) is government debt in every sense of the word.

The purpose of spending Trust Fund reciepts should be to expand the economy, so as to increase revenues w/o raising tax rates to "pay" for future spending on retirees.

Unfortunately, our goverment has used Trust Fund reciepts to offset tax cuts for the wealthy (marginal income + capital gains + corporate loopholes) as opposed to spending for the sake of the future & common good strategies for economic expansion (education, infrastructure, healthcare, technological research, environmental safety, sound regulatory law, etc.).

Ultimately, the problem that the Social Security program faces is not one of funding.
It's the Dependency Ratio (number of workers per retiree). Ultimately, at some point, several decades from now in the "out" years, there's not going to be enough workers to produce the goods and services demanded by retirees w/o dramatic increases in productivity. Thus, the future of the program depends upon Science and Technology, not Trust Funds.

We've got to lower the costs associated w/ our lifestyles, and further augment the productive capacity of the workforce.
And we got a long term systemic negative externality to worry about---pollution.

Means-testing Social Security benefits (or "subsidies" as Milton Friedman called them) is a proper way to make the program more reflective of our national values. Millionaires shouldn't get Social Security checks, and low income people should not be penalized for continuing to work while recieving Social Security "payments." Anyone over the age of 65, who doesn't reach a certain income level, should be eligible for meaningful Social Security benefits with the purchasing power to provide for a modest lifestyle.

Yet, this is entirely contigent on our ability to produce the goods and services demanded with those Social Security dollars.

This is a multifaceted dillemma that must be tackled together to maintain our national values. But the way to go about it....is spending Trust Fund reciepts on deficits acquired in the pursuit of national expansion, not inequality.
Look, I don't care what is set aside in Trust Fund accounts, if the private economy can produce goods and services for retirees, we can always afford to spend money to maintain our national values. But if there's a real scarcity of goods and services due to a labor shortage, it's not even a question of being able to afford Social Security--we won't be able to produce enough to meet demand....prices will necessarily rise...and some will have to go without the means to bid up prices and consume goods & services in order to lower demand and prices to stabilize inflation. Yet, given the social costs associated with such austerity, stabilizing inflation may be impossible with the amount of social disorder our society would likely experience.

We have a narrow window for success. And the entire future of our species, let alone the USA, or the private dollar economy depends upon technological innovation & invention. And if we don't succeed, a Dark Age will descend upon mankind the likes of which our species hasn't seen in thousands of years---the state of nature, what Thomas Hobbes called, "a war of all against all" --latin: bellum omnium contra omnes.

Pantera-"Planet Caravan" (Black Sabbath Remix)

2011-07-23 03:47 AM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

Fundamentally, Social Security is hated by the right because it doesn't fit in with their ideas on the proper role of "just" government.

Most classic liberals believed that the only truly "just" form of coercion is that which is used to protect the liberty and rights of individuals.
Even majority governments shouldn't make decisions for individuals, just because they think it would be "better" for them if a particular coercive policy instrument was enacted. People should be free to make their own decisions, so long as they don't infringe on other people's rights. Consent was needed absent any form of coercion to justify collectivist ordinance outside the bounds of the protection of individual rights and liberties.

Yet, all of this can be stretched and twisted to condone or condemn whatever government action one might suggest. In the final analysis, government policy can only be justified by its reasonability to objective observers.

I say poverty is a threat to liberty. I say the world is now far too interconnected to ignore the dangers that lie from allowing communities to digress into squalor. And from that, I see a fundamental role for government in maintaining balance and stability in the marketplace, and supporting economic expansion.

Conservatives might agree that poverty is a threat to liberty, but disagree over cost/benefits of government action, due to a concerted belief in the inefficiency of government as an organized human entity. If it comes to a peasant revolution, or infectious disease outbreak, or economic meltdown....well's that's what Guns, Gold, and God is for.

Populist conservatism teaches that government can't due anything right, and individuals are fundamentally on their own, but prey to state-tyranny if they don't stay organized and keep watch over government.

Funny thing is, we both cling to the Constitution. I say that the document is a form of proto-socialism, and I'm sure to get a few strange looks with that one, but that's what I call it, and why I respect it so much. Against any such claims, conservatives argue bizarre doctrines of "original intent" and "plain reading"; while invoking the 10th Amendment as it matters to the rights of US states.

But Congress and the President have substantial enumerated powers, that's from "original intent" and "plain reading," and irrespective of the 10th Amendment--look 10th Amendment people...the United States of America is a federal state-system onto itself, get over it.

The constitutional questions regarding Social Security are pretty cut and dry. #1 Congress can regulate interstate economic activity (which is indecipherable in this day in age from intra-state or global trade). #2 Congress can regulate the value of money. As such, it can pass legislation establishing social insurance programs for those ends.

2011-07-25 06:51 PM

Unlike Mind
Snellville, GA
Posts: 1

I do not have objections to "safety nets" if they make sense. Social Security in it's original form might have been acceptable, i.e. to provide retirement income to the elderly and disabled that were in need of assistance. However,even though it was noted by the governerment early on that an individual needed to do some preparation outside of SS for their own retirement, i.e. take some of the personal responsibility for themselves, that message does not seem to have been recieved by the majority of the country.

As of 2010 54 million people were receiving social security benefits. In a nation with approximately 300 million, that is a healthy percentage of folks getting benefits.

And this "enitlement" is so sacred that just talk of reforming it sends people into a tizzy. I am not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. But at 57, I have spent that last 30 years saving and investing as much as possible in the hopes of retiring and living fairly comfortably. This has not been without sacrifice.

What I see as a problem is that many Americans just don't see the need to do this for themselves as they think the government will provide for them at retirement. The current system is a ponzi scheme and will all come crashing down when the private sector dies, as it is in the process of doing now... Then when there is no wealth creation, and wealth to redistribute, we all will be in trouble. But of course, this is the plan.

2011-07-26 12:44 AM

CARLITOS BAM-BAM
Dallas, TX
Posts: 897

Well not to burst your bubble, but Social Security is not in ponzi. It's coffers have been "borrowed" and put to terrible use.

What's killing the private sector is lack of demand.

Households can't save when they're in debt.

2011-09-06 03:52 PM

gerimay
Sayville, NY
Posts: 2

Thank you Schmidt for the link to the Just Facts website. I have started to read it and it is very detailed and really understandble. You are right that there is so much misinformation floating around. And I have heard that 'Ponzi' term used before also. Makes Social Security sound unscrupulous or criminal. I am a beneficiary of both, which I earned working full-time for 38 years.
And good luck as your enter into Social Security and Medicare years.

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