Get rid of social security?

"We would could be lowering our tax burden, by solving official poverty in our republic in a market friendly manner which better ensures the general prosperity and general welfare by increasing the circulation of money in our institutional system of money and market based systems and political economy." (danielpalos)

"Random words bung together to come out with a nonsensical comment" (Reiver)

Why not just say, lowering our tax burden does not mean anything necessarily gets spent for our general prosperity and general welfare?

Increased cash flow is what a business does with it's $300 phone selling it for $30 bucks; it is what the store does after paying $200,000 for inventory only to discover that the garden hoses have sat on the shelf so long they are now soaker hoses. Cash flow is what an honest business man does with rotten meat, you get it cheap, but when a dishonest business man is shown moldy bread he puts it back on the shelf for another sucker; the dishonest bread merchant was the one who bought the $200,000 inventory from the other dishonest man, who sent his kids to college taking home his losses and eating it while writing it off on his taxes. "Increasing the circulation of money," or cash flow, does not say where it goes, here or overseas, or just to make a few rich and the others can go to hell, or make it mean anything to poverty; except maybe the "cash flow" is better than nothing and the poor get a $30 phone and really cheap soaker hoses.

We could be raising our Unionized tax burden for a few, and burden of those that do not plan well, through attrition from less expense forms of means tested welfare and social security. In the end game of ending Social Security you just wind up with the small business having to provide a pension, and when they cannot, only a fool would work for them and not vote for the return of the Obamanator.

Increasing minimum wage to end official poverty does not make people save, make them have common sense, or prevent them from voting for an Obamanation whose congregation is working toward ECONOMIC PARITY when they inevitably fail.

Basically small business is constantly being subsidised by the existance of Social Security Insurance. Ending it just has the potential of sending us into a cycle of government that returns back to where it started with a vengence.

 

Why do you believe that a form of minimum wage that would simply compensate a person for being unemployed would not solve for official poverty if it also clears our poverty guidelines?

 

Its called common sense! We know that underpayment exists and that, given monopsony effects caused by job search frictions, a minimum wage does not necessarily create disemployment. However, we also know that a minimum wage is very poor at reducing poverty. This reflects the nature of minimum wage workers and their frequent membership of non-poor households. A minimum wage which would hypothetically eliminate poverty would be so high that it would necessarily create unemployment. You would therefore merely redistribute from one worker to another (i.e. from those that lose their jobs). Calling that 'market friendly' was cretinous!

 

If FICA is 12.4% (ignoring the current FICA giveaway) for Social Security, and if we assume a median wage of $50,000, the average FICA contribution per US worker should be $6200. If we assume there are 140 million workers paying FICA, the annual FICA income should be about $868 billion. If we assume the average SS payout is $1200 or $14,400 per year, and divide this into 868 billion, this math says SS is paying benefits to approximately 60,277,777 Americans. You are correct that there are about 40 million Americans over the age of 65...Soooo...20,277,777 Americans are collecting SS benefits who are not in the 65 and older retired pool.

Now...if we reverse this math to consider only those over 65, this is 40 million multiplied by $14,400 or $576 billion per year. If we divide this by 140 million FICA contributors, this comes to $4114 per year in FICA versus the current $6200!! Soooo...FICA contributors are paying about $292 billion per year to support those under the age of 65.

Lastly for the math crap...if we kept the FICA contribution at $6200, and SS only paid benefits to those over 65, instead of the average SS payout being $14,400, it would increase to $21,700 or $1808 per month average.

BTW, using the assumptive math above, with the FICA giveaway we have today at 4.2% for the worker's share of FICA, this is reducing the SS income by about $140 billion for 2011 and 2012. This $280 billion came from the general fund of the federal government which is all debt.

 

Increasing the circulation of money in money based markets is also conducive to engendering a multiplier effect.

 

You are missing the point about this hypothetical, minimum wage that could be applied for, simply for being unemployed since it would also conform to our already existing concept and legal doctrine of employment at will. As a form of minimum wage, it would have the effect of ensuring full employment of monetary resources that would otherwise exist with full employment in the market for labor; but at the rock bottom cost of a form of minimum wage that also provides that market based metric and why it would be market friendly and market recognizable in that manner.

 

No I'm not. You're making ridiculous remark that ignores the economic literature into minimum wages (with your 'market friendly' bobbins ignoring the possible disemployment effects and your pathetic stance hiding from the fact that the minimum wage isn't a good poverty alleviation device). It is as vacuous as "I want world peace" Miss America. I doubt you have the other skills though.

 

Which literature are you referring to? I only advocate for public policy choices that conform to the theory of supply and demand and the assumption of a benchmark Standard of full employment of resources in any given market in our economy.

How does your point of view account for the effect of farm subsidies in the US, where some gains in efficiency were achieved such that a new equilibrium in the market for labor was achieved even if through public sector intervention in private sector markets?

Similar gains can be achieved in the market for labor in that same market friendly manner that could also simplify public sector intervention in private sector markets and lower our tax burden in that manner.

The end of such a public policy choice would be to eliminate poverty by correcting for the natural inefficiency of a natural rate of unemployment greater than one percent; the means already exist in every State of the Union and the federal districts.

 

The minimum wage literature, of course!

No you don't. You've suggested a minimum wage that would certainly stop supply and demand from operating, with a wage so high (because of the inefficiency of the minimum wage in controlling poverty) that substantial disemployment would be created. Your argument is nonsensical, with you again just randomly stringing together economic concepts in the hope that people don't notice.

 

I believe social security should be optional. Then you will have a large number of people who will simply not bother with it, which will cause it to fail.

 

And what of the older persons that contributed to it all of their working career?

 

Why would you support an irrational outcome?

 

The minimum wage literature you have recourse too is inadequate to the exigencies of our republic. What you mean by "minimum wage" with the literature you are referring to under our current regime is not what I mean by a "minimum wage" under a hypothetical scenario that merely utilizes that market friendly reference point as a metric; and, which could be said to be a truer form of "minimum wage" simply because it would subsidize the least efficient to not provide labor input to the economy and instead pursue some other opportunity cost in our political-economy.

In other words, such a public policy choice could be improving the efficiency of our economy and lowering our tax burden at the same time through that promotion of and investment in, the general welfare; and would render disemployment a more market friendly phenomena since it would be accomplished on an at-will basis by the market participants involved while providing recourse to a form of "minimum wage" that also clears our poverty guidelines.

There would be less need for public sector intervention in private sector markets through, what you mean by minimum wage (laws).

 

I am not so sure such a multiplier effect would be greater than the outcome of a loss of Social Security's effect on elections.

Any multiplier effect would be sqandered instead of reinvested for retirement or insurance without a viable forced substitute. If it was so easy, and the private enterprise opposition wanted to prevent Socialist Security in the first place, they should have done it.

The simple fact of the matter is that the opposition to Socialist Security sees mainly a bottom line of Supply and Demand and is incapable of seeing Supply (Security) or Demand (Obamanation).

I do not think even with such a "multiplier effect," and I think you guys debated that phrase earlier somewhere around here so there is no need to get into it now, I do not see private enterprise providing an equivalent pension or insurance. We can call it a Ponzi scheme, or claim it is redistribution, and even if they are right on all counts, the lack of a serious equivalent just gets a vote for the Obamanation from many that might never vote that way.

Some see health care as a right, just as they see other insurance as a right. And an insurance that has existed and was figured into every employment contract surely becomes a right more than one that has never existed.

Quite a few people with a pension from a major corporation, without Social Security, would only have enough money to eat.

Consider if you needed to live near needed services such as hospitals and so forth or just near work, and all the zoning laws in the metro area said you had to build bigger than you wanted to. There is somewhat of a right to be compensated for an economy that demanded greater and then now gives less to keep it. In essence once again a forced upsizing that has existed, and was beneficial to the bankers and builder's pensions, surely becomes a right to keep it.

So going with a "multiplier effect," to replace forced insurance and forced upsizing, gives a windfall: to the few silver spooned inheritors who are safe due to no ex post facto law renegotiating all those old retirement contracts, and those who benefitted from force upsizing.

I figure that without Socialist Security many would have to downsize, severly, and I am quite sure that if some downsized and bought a tiny plot of land somewhere near needed services the first person to die would be the one that told them that they could not build a shack on it; then when that does not have the needed effect...the "liberals" always have decades of public schools "teaching by any means necessary."

There are just way too many varibles to rely upon a "multiplier effect."

 

In my opinion, it depends on the end of such a public policy choice. Ending social security by attrition would not be a bad thing if persons have recourse to unemployment compensation that clears our poverty guidelines. What excuse could a person have if they can no longer claim to be in official poverty?

 

I am only advocating ensuring full employment of resources in the market for labor and increasing the circulation of money in our money based markets.

 

And how are you going to deliver full employment, particularly as your minimum wage would have to be so high that it would certainly generate unemployment? Nothing you have said makes sense!

 

Would it really matter if a person could work or apply for unemployment compensation that clears our poverty guidelines?

 

Meaningless prance!

More meaningless prance!

Even more meaningless prance!

Utter drivel. The minimum wage cannot be used to 'solve poverty', nor can it deemed to be 'market friendly' (except in the sense of removing monopsony failure, a completely different issue).

 

In the case of the scenario presented, we merely provide recourse to public sector intervention in private sector markets to ensure a form of full employment of resources in the market for labor as a form of benchmark Standard that also conforms to the theory of supply and demand, for example, and the assumption of perfect competition in those markets via that natural public sector monopoly that capital based markets consider an externality to any institution of money based markets.

Using the Socialism of States and Statism to correct for natural inefficiencies of Capitalism can be considered a States' right.

 

"Would it really matter if a person could work or apply for unemployment compensation that clears our poverty guidelines?" (danielpalos)

Well, darn, it seems you want to replace Social Security Insurance with an unemployment welfare system?

 

Unemployment compensation for simply being unemployed is pretty simple and we could experience a lower tax burden by reducing our need for government in that manner.

 

With this logic you can say the same thing about funding airports, roads, bridges, parks, environmental, education, health care, etc. in which if you allowed any of these taxpayer programs to be optional when paying taxes, many of them will fail as well.

I believe in a minimal government, but I also believe there are programs that government must sustain in order to manage the general welfare of the nation. With 60 million currently receiving SS benefits, and if 1/2 of them suddenly did not have this income, which leaves them with zero income, how is the nation going to deal with this?

 

This is completely meaningless. I appreciate your need to go for these sort of comments though. When you do bother with reference to actual policy you make awful error (such as the complete hogwash over minimum wages). I'm not sure which is worse: the ideological splurge for the irrational SS privatisation or your simple abuse of basic economic concepts. Both don't score well in the intellectual stakes

 

Social Security from it's inception failed from an intellectual perspective because it did not address the problem. The problem was and remains a lack of personal wealth accumulation by individuals during their workling lifetime which left them without the financial assets that generate income during their old age. The lack of income was merely a reflection of a lack of wealth.

FDR and Congress did have an immediate problem in the 1930's that needed to be addressed which was that millions were too old to begin accumulating personal wealth. That immediate problem, it can be argued, required a welfare program to address. The prblem of a lack of income for retirees too old to accumulate wealth required the immediate implimentation of a "safety net" but a long term solution to the problem of a "lack of personal wealth" wasn't addressed so the problem has become worse and not better.

If we eliminate the problem which is a lack of personal wealth then the need for the safety net diminishes and eventually disappears. "Privatization" is about using existing dollars already being taken from the individual, or perhaps that and a few dollars more, and applying universally accepted investment principles that historically never fail to create personal wealth over the working lifespan of the individual. Intellectually a person addresses the problem (a lack of personal wealth) as opposed to a symptom (a lack of income).

By analogy we have a boat that is sinking and some say we should just continue to bail the water out of the boat (provide income) while others argue that fixing the hole in the bottom of the boat (creating personal wealth) is the real solution. The intellectual would advocate fixing the hole in the bottom of the boat so that we can stop bailing out the water. This becomes even more evident when we realize we don't have enough buckets (revenue) and the boat is slowly sinking because the hole is getting bigger.