Here's how Elizabeth Warren would change Social Security

You act like the people forced to pay into the SS trust funds are somehow receiving a handout, i.e., they are to you like a welfare recipient. How bout the US government return the money borrowed from the Trust fund? Let's start to raise money by cancelling all payments to and aid for foreign countries receiving US money (welfare).

 

Have you watched Ken Burns new documentary on Country Music....Fantastic! Dolly Parton was featured last night.

 

No, they're the ones who lived on a debt orgy for 30 years and now are crying because they can't afford to live with the high cost of living they created, and zero savings

 

The lower incomes do not get a return from Social Security. The EITC may be an attempt to reimburse people for FICA contributions but it comes out of the general fund, not out of Social Security. Just one more way to mix the two programs causing confusion. Confusion allows law makers to get away with stuff that they shouldn't be getting away with.

Example: Lower income guy makes $15k and contributes $915 to SS. He get's $3000 back from EITC. His SS statement still shows that he contributed $1830 into the SS system for that year and they will pay him as such when he retires.

 

Yes they do based on the their average contributions and then average benefits received and especially those who get the EITC.

"—Lower-income workers come out ahead. Low-income workers enjoy higher rates of return by design, because Social Security’s benefit formula is weighted toward lower-earning beneficiaries and their payroll tax contributions will be relatively lower. A very low-income couple born in 1943 will receive a 6.79 percent annual return, compared with 3.92 percent for their high-earning counterparts."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-miller-socialsecurity-idUSBRE89H0YG20121018

Moot point.

 

You keep saying "they" as if everyone who paid into SS (by force) expects to received the promised benefits is a liberal or somehow created inflation. Talk about extreme stereotyping. If you don't want to pay my Social Security fine, return the money that was taken from me with compounded interest. Maybe your pension should be confiscated.

 

Again, who TF is they? I certainly never lived on a debt orgy. I neither promoted the Great Society, the Vietnam War, etc. etc. nor voted for politicians that did. Define what you mean by debt orgy?

As I pointed out to someone else, I have a nice non SS retirement and a comfortable net worth. But I am not going to support letting old people in America starve, and if that means voting for a fake Indian, so be it.

I have to add you discuss Social Security like it is just part of the overall budget and not a seat aside Trust Fund

BTW, Trump supports a debt orgy and spends like a drunken sailor.

 

The Social Security Act was passed in the mid 30s. Boomers were born between 48 and 64.

 

I know who they are.
They are retiring with en masse with little retirement savings

 

Not sure I agree with this statement. Most boomers I know who are retired have real pension plans and do not depend on Social Security. Of course having a real pension is not an option for younger people for which I blame the offshoring of American jobs over a period of decades.

 

Off shoring occured while boomers ran up massive debt, driving the price of homes to astronomical levels, living off the equity like the were ATMs, thinking they could all retire rich together. Money for nothing

 

In my experience the astronomical price of homes and double digit mortgage interest rates started with Jimmy Carter when the Boomers were not running things. I can remember being in my 20s and thinking I would never own a house.

 

This is why SS is out of money. People, like you, just lump it all into one big money bag and then spend it however they see fit. This isn't the way SS was meant to work. It was designed to be a separate tax and a separate system. The social security trust fund would be fine without the IOUs which will never be paid back. And let's say that you are correct in the EIC being a refund of FICA. Why then would someone that pays $900 in FICA, get a refund of $3000 when their total taxes paid is maybe $1500? It's not a refund of anything. It's a negative tax rate and treating it as if they are actually paying into the SS trust fund which they will again draw from later.

 

Let's see, Warren will:

- Raise taxes on the rich but not give them a commensurate increase in Social Security, thus proving that the system truly is a redistributionist welfare scheme
- Save the non-existant trust fund by bolstering it with more debt.
- She'll drive effective tax rates much higher for those with higher incomes. Yet, revenues to the Federal government as a percentage of GDP have never altered much, so where does she think the money will actually come from?
- A wealth tax is unconstitutional and destroys long term investment in the economy. You know, the thing that creates actual jobs.

It won't pass. It'll be some huge hodge-podge mess of changes that no one can figure out and that will line the pockets of a lot of politicians and their cronies, but the envious, moralizing progressives will feel better about themselves.

 

Which turned out to be unconstitutional.

That's how the system has been since day one. All money that the Federal government collects, every last dime, goes to the general fund. Then, if someone has a "surplus", they issue IOUs in the form of non-marketable, intra-governmental treasury bonds. That's how FDIC funds are "saved", and how the USPS pension funds are "saved." There's no money, just a debt owed by future taxpayers.

 

Your employer doesn't see it as a matching fund. It's just a cost of employment. Either you get it or the government does.

 

You didn't pay into anything. You just had a tax collected from you. Now you hope for an entitlement. Meanwhile, all the money you paid in taxes was spent as it came in.

 

Besides the hundreds of thousands of SS I paid into for retirement I paid well over a million in Income Tax. I’m not “hoping for an entitlement” I want fair return on what I was forced to invest in their system”

 

It's not either/or. For Warren to get her wish, she and her fellow Democrats are going to have to allow the Republicans their drastic increases in military budgets.

Many of which are in Democrat strongholds and provide high-paying jobs for their constituents.

 

Your government is like Bernie Madoff. It spent all the money as soon as it got it. The only real difference between the Federal government and Madoff is that the Fed can tax today's workers so that you get your check.

 

Your rulers spent that money as soon as it was taken from you. If it didn't go to current SS recipients, it went to other government expenditures.

 

I understand the money was spent as soon as it came in. That being said, I expect to be paid.

 

Well, we need to do whatever it takes to get our money back from Bernie. A good start would be to make them pay us back what they stole even if it means preventing them from pissing away trillions on an over bloated military, a mass incarceration prison system, and idiotic war on drugs etc.

 

I have indeed watched all the episodes of Burns' "Country Music", and have enjoyed it all! Growing up in Texas, I was familiar with just about all the songs, especially from the 60's onward, but, a lot of the older classics, too.

My favorite C&W artist today? ALAN JACKSON! He'll be turning 61 next month, so he's a Baby Boomer in good standing. . I doubt that he depends on Social Security, but my guess is that he would agree with me that going TEN LONG YEARS without any decent cost-of-living increase in the payout is ridiculous....

 

I like Alan too. I love Bob Wills and met him under the Santa Monica Pier when I was a kid making out with my girl. He and his “ivory tickler” were down getting a few nips of Jim Beam before a show at the Santa Monica Civic that night. I didn’t know who the hell he was but he said. “Kids, I am The Grand Daddy Of Country Swing” and he put our names on the backstage list. We got in and saw him and Tommy Duncan blow the crowd away for 2 hours. I loved Merle Haggard too and got to see him dozens of times before he passed. RIP...