How GOP Social Security Cuts Will Hurt You

Not everyone has the luxury of an investment portfolio.

The majority of Americans had their wealth tied up in their homes until the Republican/Libertarian Contract ON America deregulations enabled the Wall Street Casino Bosses to run their Ponzi Mortgage scam and steal away that wealth.

Now the only thing that is left is Social Security and the Republicans want to steal that too.

 

The only step that needs to be taken to fix SS is to remove the income cap.

 

Your math doesn't add up. No one making minimum wage would retire as a millionaire under your plan.

Current MW is about $7.50 an hour or $15k p.a. which means they would be only contributing $2,250 p.a. at 15% to their SS fund. Multiply that by 40 years and you end up with a mere $90k at retirement to cover them for the rest of their life. That would only be enough for 6 years assuming that they were managing to live on $15k p.a.

And don't give me any of that bogus stock market investment growth BS either. 80% of all hardworking Americans with 401k's haven't earned anything remotely close to the BS claims of long term investment earnings. The reason for that is because they actually have full time jobs and don't have the time to study the markets and make the right calls at the right time.

 

Nope!

Removing the income cap has nothing whatsoever to do with the benefits cap.

SS was intended as insurance to ensure that no one ended up in poverty in their old age. The wealthy don't have that problem hence they don't need an increase in benefits since they are already entitled to the top rate of SS benefits anyway.

 

I don't disagree that eliminating welfare fraud should be on the agenda. However, that won't solve the SS funding shortfall. Only 10% of all entitlement spending goes to welfare for the unemployed poor. Generously assuming a 10% fraud rate, that would leave a total of 1% of entitlement spending to be saved by eliminating fraud. Not going to save the day,

On "stealing" from people who have payed into the system their whole lives: You just have to follow this thread to see that this is exactly what the GOP and many of it's supporters want to do. Well, maybe excluding retirees, because they, of course, don't want to touch their own funding. It is always easy to cut someone else's for example the young people's. As if they don't have children who eventually need to retire. While raising the income cap wold be very easy to do. But, of course, raising taxes on the 1%ers is poison to the GOP, since those people are their base.

Note that I write this being solidly in the top 10% with net worth, so I not speaking with jealousy, as is the usual attack on people who want to tax the rich more.

- - - Updated - - -

Excellent post!

 

This is just more fake news.

 

It's a Ponzi scheme.

 

Do you know what actually defines the end of a recession? Suggest you do some research before continuing to embarass yourself with silly statements like spending to recover from the effects of a recession is not. necessary after the recession ends

 

Politifact says you're wrong, unless of liberals are lying again. I understand what you're saying, and that has always been my point, why not eliminate the cap and take in more? It is insane to me that there is a cap of a $118K

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...orge-w-bush-borrow-social-security-fund-war-/

Did George W. Bush 'borrow' from Social Security to fund the war in Iraq and tax cuts?

- - - Updated - - -

That's the math that actually matters, and I have to ask, why hasn't this actually happened?

 

Democrat scare myth.

 

If you consider your home as part of your retirement funding then you are just plain stupid. And I still have my house and didn't lose a dime on it nor was it stolen away. Tell me how did Republicans steal homes fro people?

Also do tell me why Republicans want to steal away Social Security? They collect it too you know.

 

Anyone know the exact date Trump and the Republicans are going to slash Social Security benefits? I need to know so I can stock up on dog food for my poor old granny.

 

So you never invested are not invested and therefore want other people to pay for your retirement. Typical leftist.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure it does if you raise the contribution cap then raise the benefit cap and don't try to screw other people to pay for your retirement.

 

I am retired, but I am not yet drawing SS. You are wrong about the age requirement. It depends on the year you were born. Some boomers cannot draw SS until they are 67, while others were able to draw at 62… because they raised the age requirement.

I am not going to argue semantics with you. You're free to call SS whatever you want to call it. It doesn't change the fact that the SS website, itself, calls SS a welfare program and an entitlement.

As to the ACA, if you have a link that shows what the Republicans are planning to do to fix it or what they plan to replace it with, then I'd be happy to read it.

I've seen this one- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...etterWay-HealthCare-PolicyPaper.pdf?tid=a_inl:

As I have already posted, I know they want to keep pre-existing conditions. The PROBLEM is that insurance doesn't want to cover pre-existing conditions without the mandate… and the Republicans want to do away with the mandate. So, does your Republican replacement plan do away with the mandate AND keep pre-existing conditions covered??? Show me that it does and how insurance companies have agreed to do that and I'll shut up about it. Until you do, I won't.

I don't want to do lots of things I have to do… like pay lots of taxes, but I do. The wealthiest among us may have to do something they don't want to do, like pay more into SS, as the caps are lifted- fair or not. You can argue all you want against it happening, but it's the most likely scenario. We have some hard choices to make moving forward. The idea of 5-6% economic growth and the return of lots of high paying jobs is a fantasy, at least in the near term, but that is the timeframe in which SS funding must be solved. As I said before, SS either needs more revenue or less benefits/beneficiaries. So, if they aren't going to cut benefits or remove beneficiaries, they have to have more revenue. That means either raising FICA on everyone or lifting the caps on contributions.

 

National Bureau of Economic Research, suggest you educate yourself before you get snarky else you look foolish.
http://www.nber.org/cycles.html


Lack of rebuttal noted

 

What about a means test. If a person does not need SSA, then why should they collect it? Wouldn't that accomplish the same thing?

 

SS is not "free money". American workers and employers contribute to that fund over life long careers. There is nothing free about it.

 

I will definitely agree with you that the income cap needs to be raised, and IMHO, it should be raised to be what an individual's total income actually is. The current income cap of $118.5k is ridiculously low. It used to be a big deal to make over $100k/year but now it's fairly commonplace.

The other drum I'm always beating is that the U. S. Tax Code needs to be completely overhauled so that ALL tax shelters, tax loopholes, exclusions and exceptions are completely removed! But no political party has ever been willing to do that -- because both "Fat Cat" Republicans AND "Limousine Liberal" Democrats love the special enormous tax deductions they get... and thus, none of them pays much, if anything, in the way of real taxes to begin with.... Obviously, we could artificially set a maximum tax rate of 99%, but if all the shelters, loopholes, and other escapes remain in place, what actually changes? Nothing! If not even the greatest president of my entire lifetime, Ronald Reagan, could fix this tax code monstrosity that the über-wealthy of both the Republican and Democrat parties milk like a blue-ribbon Holstein cow, then no one will be able to.

Social Security and Medicare? These are also monstrosities, cemented into place by the great socialist demi-god, Frankie Roosevelt, and his star-pupil, Lyndon Johnson, respectively. The government programs are now thoroughly infused into our national economic "DNA". All working people (except for school teachers, and several other types) have been forced by law to pay into these "FICA" systems all their lives or face criminal charges and be sent to prison. Anyone, Left or Right, who tries to "change the deal" retroactively is committing political suicide.

I'll tell you how strongly many Boomers (like me) feel about this. If Trump or the Republican Party had adopted a platform plank in line with stealing a person's EARNED benefits, I'd have voted for Hillary Clinton! Sad, sick, but TRUE, even though she's a stupid, corrupt criminal of the most reckless, negligent kind. We Boomers are very sensitive about this because after having built our SS and Medicare benefits into the financial plans we have made all our lives, we will not tolerate anyone trying to steal them from us now.

 

For people (and I'm one of them) who have been forced by law to pay into these rotten, miserable socialist government systems all our lives, the benefits we have EARNED are not (NOT) "welfare" -- which is the way you describe them.

However, it is "welfare" to those who have found ways to get UNearned benefits from them by lies, fraud, and the complicity of bleeding-heart, liberal Democrat social workers who have signed them up by the millions. We need to peel these parasites out of systems they never had any right to draw benefits from in the first place and relegate them to other government handout systems that truly are "welfare"....

The "wall" isn't going to fix anything. Frankly, speaking from the perspective of someone who is very familiar with the border with Mexico, and who has jeeped across many miles of this hostile, forbidding, man-killing mountain desert terrain, I can tell you that we will NEVER build a fifty-foot high wall across 1,550 miles of that country. NEVER. But we could put in strips of land mines and use armed surveillance drones to manage the border very effectively at a tiny fraction of the cost of an idiotic "wall".

Regrettably, though, the poor are not "happy". Whose fault is that? Not mine, honestly. Not the fault of many millions of other Boomers, either. It's time for Uncle Sugar to pay up, and you can believe this if nothing else -- any slimebag, thieving politician who thinks he's going to get away with stealing EARNED benefits from the last well-educated generation this country produced is committing political suicide, and the sooner the better! Doubt it? Ask "Crusader Rick" Santorum or Governor "Butter-tub" Christie....

 

This country is in for a very rough ride under Trump; the rats are in the corn, so to speak. He constantly claims to be super smart, when the facts suggest otherwise. And good luck ever publishing his college transcripts...For instance, he constantly speaks at a fourth-grade level and repeats himself for emphasis.

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/18/don...rision-of-others-bespeak-profound-insecurity/

 

That is correct you did not rebut my point. Try again to learn when a recession ends. It is your mistake that you think when a recession ends it means that the economy has recovered and no additional spending to stimulate the economy is required.

That is why you make silly statements like that Because the recession technically ended in June 2009 that no further spending to stimulate the economy was necessary.

Here is the NBER discussion for your education( optimistically)

http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.html

 

Finally, someone with common sense

Well stated Pollycy !!!!!

 

The problem quite simply is that most Americans are not disciplined enough to save for their own retirement. They aren't discilpined enough to save for their own medical needs either. If you look at the figures about how much the supposedly educated baby boomers have actually saved for retirement it is to put it bluntly pathetic. Now one can argue that the solution to peoples incompetance in managing their own lives should not be the government nanny state but that really won't deal with the issue.

 

I can't argue that. You are correct but remember SS was not designed to be the primary source of income for a retiree regardless of life's work record.

 

Raising the income cap, I think, will certainly be in the mix of tweaks of the next SS reforms.

The strength of a source is how closely their claims match reality. Such a silly, everyone else already knows this.