I guess that might be a subject for debate... I notice you completely ignored my correction of yet another of your errors, i.e. I was not the one who introduced that term here.
Caught in another falsehood. These are your exact words:
"Oh my Rush, you are so right ! Let's put a nice, clean, motherland program in its place: we'll round up all of those poor, lazy, good- for-nothing untemensche and stick `em in camps somewhere, out of sight, out of mind (and hey, if their keepers come up with some sort of clever fake shower gimmick, why, that would make it nice & cheap for the Rest of Us, wouldn 't it ? Just make sure to destroy the pictures...) "
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Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
Whomever you're quoting here has done some major revision of law and rhetoric. First, the law from the inception of SS requires every excess dollar collected for SS to purchase government securites, not pay down the national debt. That law hasn't been changed. This is the only guarantee of a "lockbox" of any sort that requires the government to repay the SS trust fund at some future date. Also, "raping the trust fund" would in fact have some merit if the trust funds were to pay down the debt rather than purchasing government securities.
I certainly wish the law *had* been changed to allow this "paying down" of the debt rather than guaranteeing the increased taxation of future generations, but it wasn't.
I'm not sure what he's saying. The facts are that there's no pile of cash, and no trust fund. The whole thing's a con game. It's a Ponzi scheme, that's all it is.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
No, I'm saying the purpose of increasing SS taxes was never to pay down the national debt as stated in your quote. The purpose then, and the purpose of lifting the cap now is to increase the national debt by way of those IOUs in the trust fund. All this wringing of hands about adding trillions to the debt if privatization is brouoght to SS ignores the fact that trillions have already been added because of the SS surplus, trillions more will be added if nothing is done, and even more trillions will be added if the caps are raised or eliminated.
So, once more, if you were going to design a forced retirement program from scratch, which of the followiing two would you pick?
1)This plan will collect no real assets for the future and will be subject to the whim of demographics as the ratio of taxpayer to recipients declines and recipients can collect longer as their life spans increase. a)Tax every employee and employer a total of 12.4%. b)Spend all the excess. c)Give the plan an IOU in place of the excess, increasing the national debt. d) give the plan more IOUs in place of interest earned. e)When current taxes don't meet current outlays, increase income taxes to current taxpayers to make up the difference. These income taxes are the second time people have been taxed for the same purpose. f)When all these obligations have been paid off, either reduce benefits or raise SS taxes even further.
2)This plan will invest in real assets in the name of each individual SS taxpayer and will not be affected by demographics and will not have any affect on the national debt. a) Tax every employee and employer a total of
10%. b)Let every SS tax payer pick from a qualified list of investments just as todays IRAs allow. c)When a SS tax payer retires at 55 or later, he/she will be able to collect on the order of 4 times as much per month as a participant of plan 1 does without ever reducing the amount of his SS annuity. d)If the SS taxpayer dies at any time, his/her SS annuity can be willed to the beneficiaries of his/her choice, only to be used for that beneficiaries own retirement.
I know which plan I'd choose, now the only challenge is to transition from plan 1 to plan 2.
BTW, I know plan 2 works as I am living on it's proceeds now after investing in it for just under 25 years - and even after paying a 10% income tax penalty for early withdrawal, the value of my IRAs continues to rise. Also, my accounts went through the dreaded bubble and burst of the late '90s and 2000, so one needn't refer to the "riskiness" of the markets.
What does any of this bullshit have to do with woodworking..?? This is clearly OFF TOPIC and should be stopped at once. take this sort of discussion to private e-mail or to some other newsgroup ...perhaps alt.tards.with.nothing.to.say
nothing personal dude but that is about the funniest thing I have heard here....I was really just wondering what makes one totally inappropriate thread acceptable and another not...? Is it a matter of "who" posts or takes part in the off topic thread that determines if it is acceptable or not.?
So its you that makes the decision and everybody follows in lockstep...??? now I understand
What you are telling me is that off topic and inappropriate threads/discussions ARE acceptable as long as the meet certain criteria...and that you decide what those criteria are... its sure is a good thing that you are here to make all those decisions.
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As I said, *do* try to pay attention a little better.
In a nutshell, here's what happened: I said 'A'. You said that I said 'B'. I said, "no, I said 'A'." You said "prove it". So I posted a link to the Google archive showing that I said 'A', not 'B'. And you claimed that wasn't proof.
So tell me... what issue did I not address?
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
OK, I'm not sure about the purpose being to pay down debt. But, I do recall reading that the tax hike in 1983 was purportedly to save SS. My main point from the article is that the excess funds being collected from SS have been used to make our budget deficits looks smaller than they actually are. Thing is, these (SS excess) started out fairly small - merely ~$35B. Now, that excess is ~$300B and our current prez is taking FULL advantage of this and then some.
SS wasn't meant to be a retirement program. I believe it was to be a sort of safety net to preclude seniors living in poverty when they can't work any more. And gee, it kinda works rather well.
Listening to the radio last evening, I heard that the average payout is soemthing on the order of a million dollars per citizen, including medicare. This is absurd, but could there be folks actually collecting that million? I tried to find the transcript but wasn't successful - yet (CSPAN radio, ~5PM Wed in Wash DC area; conference w/CBO director (I think) and others).
An example of a person I know, who falls into that "safety net" criteria is a guy who worked all his life, provided for his family but all their $ went to living ( _basic_, not luxury, or even close) expenses. No extras to save in a 401K even had such things existed back then. His SS check was ~$1000/mon (at the end) minus a deduction for medicare. $12 grand a year. He retired, I think, at 65 (his place of employment went under, and other factors (age, hearing problems) made it difficult to find work elsewhere). He lived to ~80.
15 years time 12 grand a year comes to $180,000 (did I do the math right ;-). I cannot believe that medicare costs would add an extra $800,000.
So, whoever's collecting their million - maybe we outta be examining exactly who we're paying out this money to and how much we're paying out. 'Cause that million is sure way beyond a safety net.
Folks today, barely getting by, shouldn't be paying into SS so that rich old folks can live the high life, supplementing their pensions with that extra from SS. Ultra rich ought not be getting tax cuts heaped upon tax cuts, so that more of the excess from the current SS intake is utilized to fund war & government (but those same politicans cry about SS being in crisis). Etc.! But, all this this gets complicated...
And, BTW, no one is stopping anyone from setting up a 401k or other savings for their retirement. Perhaps we oughta consider SS, not a Ponzi, but just another tax that serves some purpose (see safety net above) - and examine exactly what that purpose is and whether it's accurately serving it. But, that would require logic and not pandering to special interests, etc. and I don't think the current goverment critters are capable of that.
[I will now, slowly, step down off the soap box! Thank you for your, I'm sure, undivided attention ;-) ]
Well, I'm certainly not going to collect a million ($1200+ monthly) but I can guess how they might get close to that figure.
My wife will collect on my account rather than her own when she gets old enough, because she'll get more that way ($600+). When I die, she'll get what I get.
On top of that, my ex-wife, whom I divorced over 35 years ago gets to collect on my account because she had my children - the fact that those children are now in their 40s doesn't seem to make a difference.
So we're up to $2400 or so a month on SS alone, without Medicare. If I live to be 95, that's over $850,000. Of course it's more likely to be about half of that. But then there's Medicare.
And I doubt we're in the "rich collecting SS" class, because even with adding IRA savings to SS, we'll still be living on about $2500 monthly - not counting the ex-wife :-).
So I can see the million as an upper limit for SS, and maybe Medicare makes it the average. But I suspect it was hyperbole by someone wanting to make a point.
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