11 days until your SS checks might be interrupted

I know. I made a statement of FACT that lending is by definition investing. For some reason this other poster felt the need to go on about there being other vehicles for investing besides simple lending. I know his post had nothing to do with anything. That’s why I pointed out his post was fallacy.

Nobody has claimed SS is not a tax. Again, more fallacy from you. But the fact remains it depended on an increasing number of investors in the beginning and today to maintain solvency—just like a Ponzi. That’s the point. It’s not a criticism of SS, it’s just pointing out facts.

So? That’s irrelevant. Someone running a Ponzi can change parameters of initial “investment” and returns as well. SMH.

Up to you. You certainly can’t claim any of it was incorrect. So you have the choice to learn or reject knowledge you are preconditioned to fear.

Some of us like to learn and grow. Some don’t. It’s a personal decision just like the decision of whether or not to participate in SS taxation. You can invest in and leverage knowledge or make fallacious comments when new knowledge is presented to you. Your choice.

 

Of course. Import duties have nothing to do with productivity. They are about competition. If they cause a war it is a winner for us.

 

I don't view government spending as an investment either. Investments are made to make a financial return. Government spending is no different from personal spending. The money comes in and then disappears from the hands of the spender. The difference there is that personal spending derives from money that is earned while government spending derives from money that is taken. Government isn't a fraud. Perhaps it is a thief. But we need government; just not nearly as much of it as we have.

 

Government = Fraud.

Without fraud most governments would be unbearable.

"Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason." Charles Curtis

Or, "We are from the government and here to help."

1. https://open.spotify.com › track › 4nSMNPYdJSmOMRiYdTuAIT
   We Are from the Government and Here to Help - Spotify
   Marty Muke · Song · 2021

 

Bad me. I taught school for three decades even though I could have gotten by without taking a dime in salary.

 

The government you see as fraudulent guarantees your freedom.

 

In fact it reduces freedom with almost every legislation.

 

I admire the teaching. I’ve told you that on many occasions. I’m not even really bothered by the fact you made your fortune by creating the productivity/pay gap through squeezing as much of the worker’s compensation into your pocket as possible.

What bothers me is you openly admitting to being an active participant in creating the productivity/pay gap and then endlessly complaining it exists.

 

Government isn’t the thief. A majority of the population are thrives that sanction government to do the taking. We have agreed on this as a society.

We have agreed on this because government spending and taxation give us a return of more value than the tax we pay. I quoted a statistic earlier on higher education having a high ROI. The dollars we pay in taxes to support higher education return value above and beyond the immediate value of the tax we paid. Same for infrastructure and national defense. That’s the whole concept of public goods just explained in a different way.

If taxes aren’t an investment our society would eliminate them. If your mutual fund isn’t returning value over what you invested you wouldn’t keep that investment in perpetuity. We only put up with taxation because deep down we all know it’s a good investment.

Don’t mistake me saying taxation is a good investment for me saying it’s the best possible investment. Far from it. I’m an anarchist (rules/no rulers anarchists, not burning down McDonalds anarchist) at heart and agree our government is often out of control. That’s why when this whole discussion started I was making the point investing in oneself is almost always a better investment than investing in government. But investment in government is the easiest investment for many. Not the best, but the most convenient and “good enough”.

 

You said it's a Ponzi scheme--an investment. Can't be both.

Your posts are filled with incorrect claims.

Some posts are filled with hubris.

 

There are bad guys in the world your government keeps at bay. Americans risk their lives to permit you to speak against the country.

 

I like the Curtis quote. That’s a good one.

I suppose our relationship with government is a form of codependency and sometimes unhealthy codependency.

 

Of course it can. Try and break out of the binary box your past education has put you in. I get the impression some people’s “education” wasn’t as much education as it was training in very narrow disciplines. When some folks intellectually venture outside of the walls created by others to contain them we see they have little understanding of things conceptually. They might know a couple facts about the stock market for instance, but the concept of investing as a whole is completely foreign.

When people believe investments are only vehicles regulated by the SEC you know there was no real education. Such folks don’t even realize they are making the tacit claim investing didn’t exist prior to existence of the SEC. That’s completely illogical.

It’s funny you can’t produce any evidence to support that oft repeated but never substantiated claim.

Aren’t you the guy that didn’t want to get personal in discussion? LOL. I’m confident because there is evidence to support what I post. You seem pretty confident, yet are unable to substantiate any of your claims.

 

Saying a tax is a Ponzi scheme is absurd.

 

Government is a necessity. A rather big government may be a necessity now.
Figuring out how to limit government's potential for harm has been the challenge of the ages.

"Jefferson, however, refused to be consoled. He feared an 'elective despotism*
as bad as, or worse than, the tyranny they had risen against : 'If once [our people]
become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies,
Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.* 37

And while it is true that historical developments in the United
States have hardly borne out this fear, it is also true that
this is almost exclusively due to the founders' 'political science'
in establishing a government in which the "divisions of powers
have constituted through checks and balances their own control.
What eventually saved the United States from the dangers which
Jefferson feared was the machinery of government; but this machinery
could not save the people from lethargy and inattention to public
business, since the Constitution itself provided a public space only
for the representatives of the people, and not for the people themselves.

It may seem strange that only Jefferson among the men of
the American Revolution ever asked himself the obvious question of
how to preserve the revolutionary spirit once the revolution had
come to an end, but the explanation for this lack of awareness does
not lie in that they themselves were no revolutionaries. On the
contrary, the trouble was that they took this spirit for granted,
because it was a spirit which had been formed and nourished
throughout the colonial period."
ON REVOLUTION, Hannnah Arendt, Penguin Classics, NY, NY, 2006. p. 230.

Turn on the evening news to watch and hear the wolves howling at the moon.

 

That’s your opinion and appeal to the stone fallacy as well.

The fact remains, SS is set up as a Ponzi where solvency depends on an increasing number of investors who cover withdrawals of initial investors.

 

Well it’s true the less personal responsibility folks want the more responsibility will be given to government. And we have become a society that doesn’t even want to do our own thinking!

Jefferson was not wrong.

Can’t turn on the evening news. Wouldn’t even if I could. I’d rather spend my time protecting myself from government harm.

 

I told you why your claim is absurd in earlier posts. You're claim I didn't is disingenuous.

Social Security is a tax, not an investment.

 

Many Democrats and Republicans would agree with you, but the American Founders had no such illusions.
The COTUS guarantees our freedom against the inherent threat that government always represents. The thinking progressive Left used to know these things.

“... Secondly, the state is a special force for suppression.’ Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost clarity.” The State and Revolution, VI Lenin, Penguin, 1992, pp. 17, 18.

 

We don't have the luxury of a revolt dismantling things the way some MAGA types would like. What do you suggest we do?

 

I do not speak against my country. I speak against federal government which needs monumental reform. There is only one country that needs to be kept at bay and federal government does nothing about it. Weak argument.

 

Yes we do have the government for which we voted. I do blame voters for the mess. They think they can get benefits from government that wealthy people will pay for and they are right.

 

1. OASI & DI

Old-Age Survivors INSURANCE & Disability INSURANCE

2. FHI

Federal Hospital INSURANCE

3. FICA Taxes

Federal INSURANCE Contributions Act

4. Trust Funds/Special Issues Securities;

When I was an employee, I was a Top 5% earner, thus, TO ME, certainly NOT an investment due to fact that the Trust Fund’s semi-annual interest payments come from the Treasury General Account, thus, my NET tax dollars.

OASI, DI, FHI, they are social INSURANCE programs, Period!

 

Yes, you supplied your opinion.

It is both a tax and an investment. We have you on record enough times denying SS is an investment I believe the time is ripe to once again demonstrate with conclusive evidence you have no idea what you are talking about.

To start with, I know how much you adore labor unions. So I’ve chosen this piece by a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to demonstrate the idea SS is an investment is not just my opinion. It’s a view shared by many serious economists. And for good reason which I will show later. For those unaware the EPI is a pro union economics policy think tank.

https://www.epi.org/blog/social-security-is-looking-like-a-pretty-good-investment-these-days/

Let’s look at the actual definition of “investment”.

Now anyone is welcome to point out where there is an exception in that definition where collectively putting money into something for profit or advantage negates that action being an investment. After all, mutual funds are investments!

Anyone is welcome to point out in the standard accepted definition of investment where if the act of putting money into something for profit or advantage is encouraged or mandated by government that act is no longer investing. After all, health insurance is a good investment. Yet during the 8-9 years health insurance was mandated and many were making “shared responsibility payments” (taxation per the Supreme Court) to fund the ACA, we didn’t stop considering health insurance as a good investment.

Anyone is welcome to point out something in the definition of investment that excludes money put towards something by government through taxation for profit or advantage being an investment. After all, a very common way to refer to investments by government on our behalf through taxation is the term public investment.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/public-investment

Well, I could go on I suppose but I was up all night assisting a c-section on a pygmy goat. So instead I’m taking a nap. Hope this clears some things up for folks interested in actual economics beyond superficial unsubstantiated opinions we’ve been subjected to on SS, investments, etc.

 

This is where your fallacy begins, SS tax is not a loan. No tax is a loan period. I don't care who brought it up, but the idea that a tax is a loan does not meet the reality of what a tax is.

Again, children investment was the point in which investing does not always expect a rate of return. How in the hell can you expect a rate of return for your spending money for your kid to go to youth sports clubs or other activities? Or birthday parties or trips to their favorite amusement parks, or wherever. Simple, you can't. But as a parent, you do it because you love your kids.

I pretty much gave you a history of how SS was funded. That was true, accurate, and complete. We had an income tax since 1913, and the first SS payment did not occur until sometime in 1940 to a person name Ida May Fuller. And since then it has gone through many changes with SSI, SS retirement, Death Benefits, and SSDI, just to name a few.

The metric you are using is based on what the law, as amended is. However, the longevity of life was quite different in the 1930s and 40s. And it has increased every year, slowly, since then because we have advanced our medical science and access to medical care in that time. Access is still there, but the cost is expensive sometimes, which prohibits people from seeing regular doctors and will go to the ER when it is absolutely necessary, thus increasing medical costs, among other things.

That is your belief, but that was not the intended, original purpose of Social Security. It just morphed or evolved that way since the 1950s.

Given the fact we are living longer, we have an aging population, few workers to replace the ones who are retiring, the private economy becoming more and more efficient with jobs being eliminated based on technology, and a whole bunch of other factors, we need to either raise SS taxes to cover today's retirees and permanent disability recipients, improve how SS can invest those taxes to get a better rate of return instead of Treasury bonds, or start thinking of reducing benefits for all future generations. It may require a combination of all three, but I would like to look at the first two options BEFORE cutting benefits.

Printing money is something that the bureau of printing and engraving does exclusively. However, most money is created through fractional banking, and creating more money is not the same as "printing more money." This is what M2 does. M1 is currency in circulation, plus traveler's checks, plus demand deposits. Over half of M1 is demand deposits, aka checking accounts. But money is not limited to how much or how little the government spends. Never has. It is literally based how much consumers spend, plus business investment plus government spending. All three.

No it does not.

there is no profit motive with social security. In fact, by law it is required to purchase any government-issued bonds. The audit of the SSA has always met with flying colors, unlike the Defense Department where every money is accounted for. And when someone steals from the SS by falsely cashing in a deceased person's checks, then they must repay that money back to the government. That is not something Ponzi schemers do or have done. You are using misconceptions about SS, its shortcomings, and a lack of basic economics to make your false conclusion.

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/12/09/is-social-security-really-a-ponzi-scheme.aspx

An investment has an expectation of return. Again, how in the hell can you calculate a return on your kids? And just because you spend money does not mean an investment.

Again, you are explaining how taxation is created, managed and enforced. But the main goal of taxation is revenue for the government. Does not mean that you need to spend. Take Texas for instance, they still have the fee/tax for vehicle inspection beginning in 2025, but any vehicle made in 2025 or thereafter will no longer be required to have that inspection. The government gets the money but not the benefit or investment to inspect the vehicles.

Yes, it is semantics, or you are not having a full understanding of what investment actually means. Again, just because one spends on something does not mean one is investing.

Well, certain industries do rely on government, The fishing industry in Alaska is one and was devastated by the government shutdown. Even Capt Keith Coburn made a statement to the House or Senate at that time in 2013, which caused a shortened Alaskan Crab season and higher prices at the market for those infamous Alaskan Crab legs. But the reality is that it is more faith than anything else. We have faith that everyone driving on the road will at least act reasonably most of the time and also know how to drive. Issuing a driver's license is a government function, but private industry will teach you how to drive. We thus basically have a dependency between private enterprise and government for most of our needs in this country. And that is the reality.