Social security is not socialism but it needs to be privatized

You can call it a crock of whatever you'd like, but your mere regurgitation of frequently-stated opinions as fact hardly enhances your already-weak argument. Until you substantiate your claims with some solid sources or statistics, you'll have to excuse me from taking you seriously.

You're right. We, libertarian conservatives, were the ones who predicted the 2008 financial collapse and warned of the housing bubble. I am now trying to open your eyes to the stock market bubble. Whether or not you listen and acknowledge this is your prerogative.

 

FDR did not invent Social Security as I have shown in my earlier posts.

 

You have literally repeated yourself for the past three posts. Additionally, every refutation I have provided to you has been met with baseless responses. You have not even come close to giving a fair retort to the fact that the government commissioned the FDIC as an independent corporate entity with unlimited borrowing abilities. This is simply unconstitutional. You also don't seem to understand the fact that, by protecting depositors, the FDIC also protects the banks. How do you think banks make their money? They invest the money that is deposited by their customers. The only source you have presented has been to an admittedly comprehensive analysis of a completely irrelevant Supreme Court case. Again, I have already linked you to sources regarding the expressed powers of the federal government. Only Congress has the power to print and coin money. A private (to whatever extent it is private is, quite frankly, irrelevant) bank does not have the right to do this.

I have no patience to debate those who simply regurgitate unimpressive, inaccruate talking points.

 

Have we gone to war using Social Security dollars? I'm confused by your comment stating the funds were used for something for which they weren't mandated.

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Even if the economy crashes, you STILL have more over the long term for when the economy wasn't crashing. Of course I think you should have the option of putting it in Social Security, you should just have the option to not put it in there.

 

Yes I have repeated essentially the same post. Do you know why?

Because in 1819 the SCOTUS found that the federal government does indeed have the power to create a national bank.
You keep claiming the FED and FDIC are unconstitutional but it is you who have never, never, ever, not even one single time posted a single authoritative source. That "authoritative source," of course, being a SCOTUS decision.
And you keep repeating this thing about "banks should go bankrupt" and the FDIC protecting banks which is not true. The FDIC protects depositors and if the FDIC is forced to step in the assets of the banks are liquidated and sold to another bank. If another bank won't buy, the banks stays closed. That's not protecting the bank but it is protecting the banking system.

Now one more time...say it with me...

SCOTUS...SCOTUS...SCOTUS

People like you have been making this "claim" since the FED was created. You've had more than a hundred years to make your case to the SCOTUS. Where is the decision that supports anything you're saying?
People like you have been making similar "claims" against the FDIC since it was created. You've had more than 80 years to bring that to the SCOTUS. Where is THAT decision that supports your claims?

C'mon give me just one decision supporting your view. Just one. You have more than a hundred years worth of case law. Surely you can find just one. No?

Patience? Please. What you really have none of is an actual clue about the FED and FDIC. SCOTUS...SCOTUS...SCOTUS

 

"...So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund—$2.6 trillion allegedly—then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement possibly threaten seniors’ Social Security checks?

The answer is that the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted. And the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/merril...lion-social-security-trust-fund/#6c12f1314947

 

Maybe they should have thought of that before they borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund... thanks for clarifying though.

 

So you're pretending to not know that Social Security benefits are paid out of the General Fund and that the Trust Fund is as well?

 

You're both off. That is to say, wrong. Yes Merwen, there is that much actual value in the Trust Fund.

This whole thread has been going in circles because of posters who refuse to adjust their views according to FACTS and new information that is presented. You just stick to your disproven biased theories in spite of the facts.

Answer this Merwen (I'll get to Lesh in a moment): If you go to the bank and tell the appropriate person there that you want to invest in a T-bill, and you invest in one, how do you express or characterize the event later? Do you say that the government borrowed your money? Or do you say you bought/invested in a T-bill?

Unless you're very weird, you would say want everyone else says. You would say you invested in a T-bill. That is how it is characterized in the case of pension funds, rich investors, foreign investors, and mutual fund managers. Why do you insist on referring to the same thing as "the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it"?

Obviously it's for effect and in the hope of winning your very biased spin. That is dishonest. Are you dishonest?


You then say "the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling."

Lesh says "Social Security benefits are paid out of the General Fund and that the Trust Fund is as well?


No to both of you. The SS monthly obligations are not paid out of the general fund.

Let me educate you both, and please remember it. You can research it to prove it to yourself, but otherwise these are the reliable facts.....

Monthly obligations are paid first out of current revenue receipts, and any shortfall is made up by redeeming Trust Fund Treasuries. I have explained how those Treasuries are redeemed several times before, but here it is again...

When the SSA needs to redeem TF Treasuries to meet current obligations, it notifies the government of the need. The government then sells Treasury securities totaling a matching value on the open market to the public. The proceeds of the sale are then turned over to the TF and a matching value of TF Treasuries are retired. This keeps the debt the same, unchanged and moves the debt from the TF to the public market.

Questions?

 

I simply quoted an article. The spin is your own.

 

And you posted it because you believe it. The dodge is yours.

 

Congress has borrowed money from the SS trust fund since the 50s. Some of that money has been used to fight wars.

 

It's all in how you word it. All of it.... payroll taxes, proceeds from the purchase of Treasury Bills, Treasury Bonds, Treasury Notes, income tax revenue, corporate tax revenue..... ALL of it goes into the general fund. The general fund is the central repository for revenue. It is all commingled there. Once it's there a dollar from income taxes is indistinguishable from a dollar of proceeds from the sale of a Treasury Bill to a pension fund.

So we can identify liars and pitch men from objective and honest people. The honest people use terms like "Treasury securities" and "Trust Fund value" and "Social Security is fully paid for by payroll taxes". The liars and pitch men use terms like "IOUs" and "stolen SS funds" and "empty Trust Fund" and "SS costs the taxpayer...."

Show yourself for who you are by your word choices.

 

The government itself admits that by 2035 it will only be able to pay out 70-80% of benefits. The Ponzi scheme is collapsing and needs a new infusion of funds. Anything else on this subject is nothing more than obfuscation from that single glaring reality. Questions?

"Today’s report shows that, as a whole, Social Security is fully funded until 2034, and after that it is about three-quarters financed. Considered alone, the DI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted sooner than the combined Social Security funds. I am pleased that legislation signed into law by President Obama last November averted a near-term shortfall in DI. With that small, temporary reallocation of the Social Security contribution rate, the DI fund will now be able to pay full benefits until 2023, and the retirement fund alone will be adequate into 2035. It is important that Congress act well before 2023 in order to strengthen the finances of the program as a whole."

http://blog.ssa.gov/social-security...y-options-to-address-the-long-term-shortfall/

 

Yes, that is true. Has the defense budget or any other budget needed no periodic tweek or change to keep it going? That gives us 18 years to anticipate and adjust for changes! The sooner we start, the easier it will be.

"Collapsing"? So the defense program is also "collapsing"? Does an 18 year window to reach 75% equate to a "collapse"?? Your pitch is obfuscation from this glaring reality.


Oh, yes, and the liars and pitch men also speak of "Ponzi scheme" and "collapsing".

 

According to the SSA:

https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/WhatAreTheTrust.htm

Show yourself for who you are by your word choices.

 

Difference is that SS was designed to be a self funded retirement program and it has already been established in this thread that model has failed as demographics have been flipped upside down since its inception in the 1930s. Now it's crunch time, either privatize SS or turn it into welfare for old people but either way SS as we have known it is in it's death throws and is on life support and needs to go to Hospice. As I've repeatedly said I would choose privatization if it were me but I'll be dead when SS goes broke so it's up to the coming generations to decide. They need to be aware of the real choices here though,the SS your grandmother and mother knew is going away. Now decide if you want; control of your retirement funds or if you want to go on welfare, your call.

 

The government is $20 trillion in debt and yet there are people who still feel they'll be looked after in their old age. Hope again triumphs over experience and reality.

 

The more America becomes like Venezuela the bigger our chances are of becoming Venezuela.

 

SS is fully paid for and has never contributed a penny to the national debt.

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The differences in demographics, culture, history, economics, education, and laws are vastly different eliminating any remote chance of such a fate for us.

 

I was responding to someone else, that wanted the answer. Your agenda is political.

 

Your quote was incorrect. Do you agree with your quote? If not, why haven't you simply said so?

 

This bears repeating

SS is fully paid for and has never contributed a penny to the national debt.

 

I've mentioned the above several times in this thread. When a fund has a "reserve" (as in the case of the SSI fund) what good is a reserve when there are no underlying assets? They've been spent out of the general fund.
It's all well and good to pay benefits out of the general fund with current receipts, but there is NO asset for the reserve in the SSI fund..............aside from an IOU (T-bill). When we are 20 trillion dollars in debt already, how comfortable are you with knowing the whole scheme is a sham? From A-Z, the whole concept is a fraudulent Ponzi scheme and whatever receipts exceed benefits paid is another distortion of reality when you are talking about reserves.

Let's put it this way. I have a vacation fund. I save a few hundred dollars a month and put it in a cigar box. Aw crap, forgot I need some new tires for the truck beast. I'll just borrow $800 from the vacation fund. This happens at various intervals during the year. At the end of the year, when I am ready to go on vacation, I dump the cigar box out and there are a few 5's and 10's together with a big pile of slips of paper stating I owe the vacation fund
$4,000. YAY!!! We are good!! So we actually have $4,200! Alrighty then!
Uh oh..........my general checking account is overdrawn. Guess this vacation is going to suck.

 

You mean there is no pile of bills on the floor somewhere?

These funds are every bit as real as the funds that back up your Aunt Tillie's $100 Birthday gift bonds.

Gonna lie to her as say those are worthless too?

Maybe you weren't aware of it but the government does't HAVE a savings account and has no means to open one. THIS is how it's done