Good read.

[Noleader]

Short and simple... Has a strong bias to my way of thinking but none the less well thought out and simple.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/12/07/watching_social_security_eat_the_young_alive_97536 .html

[]LoL[Harm]

Simple, but just a complaint letter. There isn't any proposed solution or reference to existing proposed solutions. And the statement "eliminate social security" is not a solution it is just a stated goal.

[Noleader]

It is a complaint letter... But it does have its place. As a socity we actually have to admit there is a huge problem with generational theft. Our parents are doing it to us and we are now starting to do it to our children. At some point as a socity we need to identify that this is a real issue at the core of our morality as a people before we can hope to start offering solutions.

[Noleader]

First off let me say DO NOT take this as a Left v. Right argument because it is not. Second the example below is just to offer some prospective and has no bearing on how I feel on the issue.

Think about it in the guise of the Global Warming debate. Those who disagree with the Global Warming theory are damned as those who want their children to be fish people and kill off all the polarbears.

When spending comes up though some how the consensus seems to be it is bad to turn our children into fish people or take out the polarbears but ok to spend them into debt they can't escape from. Ok to force us and them to pay into Social Security when they will not get a thing from it.

Really the point I am trying to make is there is a lot of people out there that don't think of spending as a real issue so long as they are getting something for free right now. Now agree or disagree with the wars or social programs... we really need to find a way to fund all this crap or end it.

[MickeyFinn]

It's a double whammy that's addressed here. Social Security *and* inflation are a terrible combination that can't be allowed to continue. You can't stop inflation, but you can bring it to a minimal amount if you aren't relying on the majority vote to handle your financial decisions. People will vote for the guy who will do whatever's necessary to make life easier for you right now, not a future planner. It's the reason people abuse the deficit spending theory to shove the economy into a boom, instead of applying it to help speed up a recession and then stop.

[Post]

"It's a double whammy that's addressed here. Social Security *and* inflation are a terrible combination that can't be allowed to continue."

And that's the issue. Anyone level-headed realize that there are major flaws; the issue is that without a better solution, they must be allowed to continue. The fallout from simply taking them away would be just as bad as letting them continue, except happening much, much sooner.

[Noleader]

But a better solution is ending the problem before it gets to bad.

To claim damage control is not a viable stop gap in this issue is kind of cherry picking what is considered a solution, even one as simple as ending the spending, to what you personally support.

I outright disagree with cap and trade and do not support the solution but I also don't think the option is to sit back and kill the earth while I wait for a solution to show up which I consider perfect.

[Post]

So you think it will be a better solution to end it altogether tomorrow?

[Noleader]

So you think it will be better if we continue down this path and it ends in chaos because we don't have money anymore and waited forever for the new perfect solution to shore up the Ponzi scheme (which does not happen or else we could never catch Ponzi scheme runners)? Coupled with the fact that we would have raised a lot more people on the promise of government support at retirement age?

Any side of the coin can be made to look inhumane but at the end of the day if we start to bring these programs to a end tomorrow we will be better off, mostly because we can have a orderly shutdown. It will not be easy but we will be that much less in debt and those that were paying into SS and no longer are required to could use that extra income for personal IRAs or savings.

As it stands now we are setting up a lot of people in my generation for a big crash and no one seems to care at all. That and no one seems to even think twice about continued spending that is going to be dropped on my generation and the ones that follow.

[Post]

That insinuates the only options are stop tomorrow or continue forever. Those aren't the only options. I wouldn't mind a phasing out of it, which yes, would be a better solution than ending it tomorrow.

[Noleader]

I never impiled I would be in favor of just killing it without a phase down period. I doubt you will find many people that would actually call for it to be ended without a phase out period. We raised two generations to be dependent on it (one of which is the baby boomers) but if we plan on phasing it out while supporting those dependent on it we MUST cut spending in a lot of other places now. We can not have public option health care and all those other bells while running huge deficits and expect to end any program in a orderly fashion.

We are starting more programs yearly that from the onset are doomed to crash and fail (Medicare, Prescription drug plan, etc...) yet we keep funding them pretending the problem will go away or the world will never request their money back.

It might seem like I don't care about the little guy but the fact of the matter is I think what we are doing now is actually going to damage the middle class and lower class beyond repair if we do not get a handle on it now.

[]LoL[Harm]

Again you are mainly stating a goal. The end of taking care of an older generation after they've reached a point where they no longer contribute (or should no longer have to contribute) to the work force is something that is very debatable and not something as cut and dried as a the bottom line on a federal budget.

As a society, if we have people who work for a living for 90% of their life, do they not merit some type of return for their continued hard work that has benefited their country, state and city? Pensions and 401k's are not reliable or even offered by every employer, and since a larger and larger amount of our society is merely getting by, should we not reward them for successfully getting by for 60 years, getting by while raising a family, putting kids in to our military and all the other contributions that they provide for the rest of the country? If you answer no, that they don't deserve any more than what they earned monetarily then you aren't looking at the various other ways people who have a stable income benefit society. I also see the perspective that a lowered Federal taxation on their income will directly impact their ability to save for the future, that is something that is easily seen but just the lowering of federal taxation will not be adequate enough.


Our country cannot be full of people who are able to always save up enough money to retire, we rely too much on jobs that pay too little for this and as we shift more and more into a service based industry, there will be an ever larger demand for jobs that pay well below an income that allows you to save adequately to retire on at an age when you could still enjoy retirement.

You cannot address the concept of removing social security, even trimming it down slowly, without first addressing the hundreds of other issues that cause social security to be essential. My mother lost many years of her living wages due to the stock market. She is currently retired, but she had to go back to work in order to make up that amount after already working for 50 years. She did what she was told by "market experts" to do and it still wasn't enough because her IRA and 401k were investments, not guaranteed money.

So its great to theoretically talk about removing social security, but there are issues that must be addressed before even starting to really talk about the removal of it.

You fix it so that all jobs have the ability to allow workers to afford to retire after giving 45-50 years of their lives to work (and compared to the world we work too fucking much as it is) and I'll agree that there isn't a need for a society funded retirement plan. But if there isn't a working system that allows all workers to be able to retire, then you have a broken system that does not deal with the merit that those individuals have worked their entire lives and will work until they drop dead, never benefiting from what is touted as the most successful country in the world and only contributing to it, which is, in my view, a moral and ethical sin.

If the above cannot be provided, then a secondary system must be in place to allow people who have worked a large chunk of their lives to retire. Not only does this free up jobs for the younger generations, it also pays the worker back for their contribution to society through the taxes they paid and for being a meaningful and lawful contributor to society.

Now, this does not have to be Federally funded, and I don't believe it should be. But it must be Federally mandated so that all states or cities or communities have some system in place.

[Noleader]

Again I never said I did not want to provide for those that were promised their whole life that they woudl get SS. I would think people 40 or above (I would even be willing to consider as low as 35) should be given their social security benifits that they have been promised.

I must ask though why do you think that socity owes anyone anything? So what you are old... you worked 40 or 50 years of your life. You should have something to show for your work over all those years. Why do we need a government system in place to allow those that did not plan for retirement to retire. Said worker paid their taxes for services they received while they were working those years. Why do we seem to think it is ok to charge the next generation so we, or atleast those of us that do not have large savings, can retire regardless at a set age?

We all talk about morality of issues as we see them today but never look to the morality of charging a different generation so we can have things we want just because as it stands now we hold the power to legislate.

[]LoL[Harm]

That is it exactly there, you do not, and never have you paid for just the services you receive. I have never called the fire department to my residence, nor the police and I don't drive every road in the city and never will. We all pay for the services but we don't all use them. We may need to use them in the future, but I'm not paying for future use, I'm paying for now use, for the society.

We live in a society, we don't get to pay for just our services, it doesn't work that way.

Our utility rates vary by usage, I may use 1% of the electricity that you use, but since you use a ton of it, demand is higher, output has to increase and my rate goes up.

I don't understand peoples inability to see that we are all interconnected and that the well being of all citizens equals the well being of the nation.

So if I work 50 years and I contribute to the social services (fire dept, police dept, roads, utilities) then I am benefiting society. While I live and earn money, I buy things, which aids the economy. Its a symbiotic relationship. And I believe a life spent supporting the society you live in, through work and your contributions to the community, that you do earn the right to stop working after a period of time. That period of time is up for debate, but for me, the idea that a finite time limit on working does exist.

Why do we need a government system in place to allow those that did not plan for retirement to retire.And there you use the same old tired statement that everyone tries to pass off ignoring completely every point I stated to the contrary. I won't go any further responding the above quoted text until you at least convince me that this lame and seemingly thoughtless concept is somehow legitimate.

Why do we seem to think it is ok to charge the next generationThat's just it, we need to find a solution that permits people to have an option to retire that does not require funding from furture generations. I don't know what that solution is, but a good state government/private sector managed fund could be one. Again I don't believe it should be Federal. But the complete removal of one is not acceptable for the many reason that you did not address in my previous post.

[Noleader]

You pay for auto insurance because you MIGHT get in an accident. You buy home owners insurance because something MIGHT happen to your home. We pay for services all the time that we might never use but none the less we pay for them for the off chance we might need them.

To claim that because you you never called the fire department some how you are not using the service is just ignoring the fact that you might use it at some point. You are paying for fire protection in the event that you actually have a fire at some point... or that the guy next door to you has a fire and they will help protect your property. You don't pay for services for people down the street.. you all pay so when you need/want the service it is there for you.

We may live in a society but that does not change the fact that most of the services we pay for we use on some level. Just because we might not use the services as much as some one else we are gaining personal benifits from all the services provided. Having a police department, even if you never call, protect you from anarchy. Having all those roads allows you to commute at will to vast locations. Having the fire department ensures you will never see your whole city burn because of one careless person. The services provided might not be 1 to 1 with spending but you do gain many benifits from it.

I do understand we are interconnected but that does not mean we should reward bad behavior or create moral hazards. Lets say someone decides to live high on the hog their whole working life and then at 70 decides they want to retire and have no savings... your idea is that although so many of us went without to retire we should now have to pay for the debt riddled dumb ass that spent the last 50 years of work never planning for the day he retired, because we earn the right to stop working at some point. I offer that we only earn capital from our labor that that we have to plan for our own lives. If you really want to help people retire then you really need to focus your effort on battling inflation. That is what killed the lower middle class and will wipe out the middle class if left unchecked.

As for tired statments I am tired of those that support some social program always claiming people have some 'Right' to it or the services. I hate to break it to you there is no right to retire, it is a privilege for those that can.

[]LoL[Harm]

You may be ignoring the fact that a person who lives high on the hog is purchasing many goods and services which helps power the nations economy. In fact that is exactly what we have been urged to do, and that is how our economy thrives at this moment, in that most people buy stuff they don't need and live beyond their monetary abilities and create debt, which directly opposes saving money. But I can move past that to focus more on other stuffs.

Any insurance concept is not very comparable to public services. And though it sounds great in principle to say that we are paying the public services for our own possible future service needs that just isn't reality. Almost all of your tax money that comes out of your pocket goes to helping other people. While I was a firefighter I would say 80% or more of our calls were for elderly medical emergencies. I went on over 300 runs in one year, and I can only recall two major car accidents that required our aid, no fires, and two medical calls to people under the age of 50. In a sick sense the Fire service has turned in to a glorified ambulatory service that is paid for by tax dollars. That doesn't mean they don't offer services beyond that, and that those services aren't invaluable, but for the most part, they act as a tax payer supported ambulance service. (As a clarification, the Fire department does not shuttle people to the hospital unless they are in very critical condition, they only act as a first responder, stabalize the patient and then hand them off to a third party or hospital run ambulance that takes them to the hospital)

So talking about a generation supporting another, you might as well add fire services to the roster, because the fire service, hands down, aids those older and in ill health on a daily basis, while car accidents and fires are marginal. You pay for those services to help that group of people every day. You may think you're paying for your future use, and I agree that a small portion of your tax money may just do that, but not the majority of it. You are far more likely to start using those services when you are older, most likely retired (of course no longer paying taxes) and your children will be paying the taxes that pay for those services.

On the topic of social programs, like the Fire Services and Police Services, which are social programs, I do believe that we have a right to them as society. And on the note of the social programs you were more likely aiming your comment at, I don't like welfare and medicare and such in their current setups, but I do believe that we do have a right to a basic standard of living but that's an entirely different conversation. On the retirement front, I believe that we are overworked, you may see it differently. So I do believe those that are overworked have earned the right to stop working when it starts to hurt to get up in the morning because you happen to be in the declining years of your life.

The disagreement we seem to have is whether or not people are 1) able to afford a savings and 401k account, 2) are educated enough to understand the importance of retirement savings and 3) responsible enough to save. If all three of those "requirements" are met, I believe that we could eventually eliminate social security.

As another take on it, one that is a little more reality based since I don't think number 2 and 3 above are something we can be certain of we could force everyone to contribute and hold a retirement account, then that might be a solution. Since even if you only make $20k a year at WalMart for 40 years you would end up (given that WalMart matches a percentage which I believe they do for full timers) with enough money to live on for 7-8 years (I did some basic calculations with the employee contributing 10% and the employer contributing 5% matching and the employee not owning a home). Those 7-8 years would be livable only because you have medicare and medicaid to fall back on, if you didn't then any health issue, which there are many more when your old, would drain that fund very rapidly. But barring health stuff, even 401k savings for 40 years at WalMart would suffice.

So if you aren't for a social net that will act as a catch-all for those unable to save properly for retirement then would you be up for a state or city mandated retirement account?

[Post]

"I must ask though why do you think that socity owes anyone anything?"

While I can warm up to the idea of getting rid of social security, let's make one thing clear: the reason we pay for things towards society is it helps every person, not just the ones that directly use the help. Just because I don't get direct help from the coast guard being in AZ (not nearly as much as someone on the coast at least), them being there helps society, which helps me as a person part of that society.

Ethical ground is only part of the reason for social welfare. The major piece is that it helps the health of overall society, which helps ME. *I* make more money when our society is healthy. *I* am safer when our society is healthy. *I* get more opportunity when society is healthy.

Society owes me a lot because I put a lot into it. It's giving me something even by helping others.