Should We Have the Right to Opt Out of Social Security?

[Annie]

WE didn't strap our children and grandchildren.

WE didn't make the thousands of stupid decisions which bankrupted this nation.

Detail, folks, detail.

Means testing is, I think the only possible solution to the current state of affairs.

And even that depends on the economy recovering, something that I think is basically fairly unlikely.

I've said that for years, not anymore. It's too late and inherently unfair.

 

[editec]

WE didn't strap our children and grandchildren.

WE didn't make the thousands of stupid decisions which bankrupted this nation.

Detail, folks, detail.

Means testing is, I think the only possible solution to the current state of affairs.

And even that depends on the economy recovering, something that I think is basically fairly unlikely.

I've said that for years, not anymore. It's too late and inherently unfair.

Yes, it is unfair. It reflects the unfairness that exists in all sorts of areas of our society, too, doesn't it?

And yes it is probably too late, too.

 

[Indiana Oracle]

Would love to see a list of those who objected to spending SS as general revenue on the vote and since then. The rest are political criminals and should be treated no differently than leaders in the financial sector who are now being vilified by the same kinds of people in Congress.

Btw since Congress feels there is nothing wrong with going back in time to extract remedy, it can apply in this case as well.

Not holding my breath. That whole crowd is such a den of thieves.

 

[Bern80]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

So based on the above it would have to be your contention that social security really isn't there to provide for YOUR retiterment (even though that's what we're told). It's really just your social obligation to give money to the government and maybe you'll get a return and maybe you won't right? I guess the definition of greed in your world is expecting a program that I am required to pay into that I'm told I will receive income from when I retire, to actually provide income when I retire. Yep, greedy as charged.

 

[raceright]

I say yes. After all what are the chances that I have at age 37 to get any Social Security money when I retire.

I suspect that you'll very quickly be talking out of the other side of your mouth if you find yourself unable to work because of some unfortunate accident or illness.

I can't blame you for worrying about it, though, I'll grant you that concern.

The boomers paid and paid and paid to put Social security back into the black.

They paid long over due debts and they funded Social Security to be in good fiscal shape through 2050.

Now we're informed that the money is likely to run out by 2017.

Where's it all go?

Good question.

Can't believe you asked where did it all go,although I never agree with your posts you do appear smart,but you must be gullible
The SS money went into the general budget and was spent buy all the honest Politic ans in the Dem&Rep..party

 

[Annie]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

So based on the above it would have to be your contention that social security really isn't there to provide for YOUR retiterment (even though that's what we're told). It's really just your social obligation to give money to the government and maybe you'll get a return and maybe you won't right? I guess the definition of greed in your world is expecting a program that I am required to pay into that I'm told I will receive income from when I retire, to actually provide income when I retire. Yep, greedy as charged.

Indeed, the new definition of greed is take all my money, given in taxes, distribute among those you deem poor. Do the same with the money the government has confiscated regarding social security. Give that to the 'deserving', lol, not the poor for god's sake. They're pocketing it. Jokes on all of us.

 

[Immanuel]

I would never and have never told anyone to "love it, or leave it." It's utterly nonsensical and against American ideals.

Those who force me to pay my money into a ponzi scheme that I am going to see no return or any kind of benefit at all from is somebody else holding me back. Yes, I do feel entitled to the money that I earned.

I just have to ask this one question:

Are you sure you are a Kennedy?

Life does not come without risk does it? it is not the government's job to attenuate my risk with someone else's money or someone else's risk with my money. (think bail out too as that also applies)

Save enough, be self sufficient and all the ups and downs of the economy can be weathered.

Great advice. I recommend everyone follow it.

And for the hordes that will not, there's living under freeways and begging at stoplights. And the rest of us can just get a darker tint on our SUV windows to deal with that situation.

I think that Social Security should be privatized but I also believe it should be mandatory. In other words, you would be required to contribute that 6.2%. As for the employers portion, that should go to disability and a fund for families who lose their main bread earner early in life.

That is the short version of what I think should be done, but that can't be done overnight. We, as the United States of America, are moralally obligated to support those people who are now retired and living off of Social Security and those who have had to pay into it for most of their working lives. A formula can and should be developed that would wean Americans off of Social Security in a generation or so and that would give people who have contributed to it some kind of return on those contributions.

But, I fully believe that the contributions should be required. Most young people don't understand the value of saving money early. They think that they can spend now and save later. By the time later comes, it is most often too late. So if you instill the habit early in their working careers by the time later comes, they will be well on their way to a decent retirement.

Immie

 

[Zoomie1980]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

Nah....you just have to learn how to conduct a large portion of your income earning business elsewhere..... And it's really not that hard....

 

[Zoomie1980]

I would never and have never told anyone to "love it, or leave it." It's utterly nonsensical and against American ideals.

Those who force me to pay my money into a ponzi scheme that I am going to see no return or any kind of benefit at all from is somebody else holding me back. Yes, I do feel entitled to the money that I earned.

I just have to ask this one question:

Are you sure you are a Kennedy?

Life does not come without risk does it? it is not the government's job to attenuate my risk with someone else's money or someone else's risk with my money. (think bail out too as that also applies)

Save enough, be self sufficient and all the ups and downs of the economy can be weathered.

Great advice. I recommend everyone follow it.

And for the hordes that will not, there's living under freeways and begging at stoplights. And the rest of us can just get a darker tint on our SUV windows to deal with that situation.

I think that Social Security should be privatized but I also believe it should be mandatory. In other words, you would be required to contribute that 6.2%. As for the employers portion, that should go to disability and a fund for families who lose their main bread earner early in life.

That is the short version of what I think should be done, but that can't be done overnight. We, as the United States of America, are moralally obligated to support those people who are now retired and living off of Social Security and those who have had to pay into it for most of their working lives. A formula can and should be developed that would wean Americans off of Social Security in a generation or so and that would give people who have contributed to it some kind of return on those contributions.

But, I fully believe that the contributions should be required. Most young people don't understand the value of saving money early. They think that they can spend now and save later. By the time later comes, it is most often too late. So if you instill the habit early in their working careers by the time later comes, they will be well on their way to a decent retirement.

Immie

Kind of my take on Universal Health Care. I don't mind it, so much as it is PRIVATELY run, and 100% MANDATORY premium participation by ALL.

 

[Iriemon]

WE didn't strap our children and grandchildren.

WE didn't make the thousands of stupid decisions which bankrupted this nation.

Detail, folks, detail.

Means testing is, I think the only possible solution to the current state of affairs.

And even that depends on the economy recovering, something that I think is basically fairly unlikely.

I've said that for years, not anymore. It's too late and inherently unfair.

Why is it too late? The greatest generation inhereted a 120% debt to GDP ratio after WWII.

They paid tax rates of up to 91% and over time the relative debt decreased to 33%, until the cut-n-borrowers took power under Reagan and then the Bushes.

It's too late to work it out with a tax rate of only 40%. We squandered that opportunity by electing Bush.

So now the top marginal rates have to be 50%. Cut military spending to 2000 levels, make SS and medicare means tested, and the budget is solved. Reform health care and make it less expensive for society and we'll be fine.

The problem is addressable. It is worse now than it was because the "pass the buck" generation went the easy way with lower taxes. But we can still solve it now.

The only question is whether we have the will.

 

[MaggieMae]

I say yes. After all what are the chances that I have at age 37 to get any Social Security money when I retire.

This is another subject that is treated like hair on fire every so often. I seriously doubt the liquidity of the Social Security program will ever be in serious danger. You will receive benefits based on your own earnings history. If you've chosen to work under the table for many years and enjoyed not paying any income or FICA taxes, then you would only be entitled to benefits based on taxable income when you retire even though you may have made a lot more.

 

[MaggieMae]

No but I'll tell you what I, as a young American, would be willing to do and sacrifice in the name of the greater good.

I would be willing to pay into the system for the next 20 years and forgo my benefits when I retire as part of a plan to keep checks going out to those currently receiving and soon to be receiving SS but with a clear path to ween us off SS and eventually end it. After that I would no longer have to pay into the system and use the money as I see fit.

I think that's a great idea. But a "path" to weening off SS should include a date specific which would put that "path" in gear and give it the momentum needed to meet the deadline. Otherwise, like everything else not explosive-yet, the "path" will deadend year after year.

 

[MaggieMae]

No but I'll tell you what I, as a young American, would be willing to do and sacrifice in the name of the greater good.

I would be willing to pay into the system for the next 20 years and forgo my benefits when I retire as part of a plan to keep checks going out to those currently receiving and soon to be receiving SS but with a clear path to ween us off SS and eventually end it. After that I would no longer have to pay into the system and use the money as I see fit.

First of all, you might be financially able to pull it off, but the vast majority of people your age and younger could not. Secondly, if everyone opts out, someone still has to pay benefits to those who are counting on those benefits. And last of all, if we allow people to opt out, what we'll end up with is a bunch of retirees with zero income and the government will end up coming in to support them anyway, because we're not going to let them starve in the streets.

The bottom line is that we cannot just shut down SS. It is a decent program that makes sense. What does not make sense is the fact that we have not raised the retirement age since its inception. People are collecting too soon. If we raised the retirement age to 70 or 71, a great deal of pressure would be taken off and most likely we could fund SS without increasing taxes dramatically. The same holds true for Medicare.

People need to work longer now because they live longer. If they want to retire at an earlier age, then they should do it on their own savings. SS is the greatest safety net we have, but it is covering Americans for too many years. That is the basic problem.

The only issue that needs to be addressed is the fact that companies don't like retaining older workers, at least in many industries. One thing that should be looked at is making it easier for employers to reduce the salaries of older workers, assuming there are justifiable reasons for doing so, as in a lower capacity to produce.

Our society has changed a great deal in the last fifty years. Life expectancy has increased by almost nine years. There are so many solutions available, but nobody wants to give anything up. Everyone thinks they have a right to this and that, but in truth, they only have a right to what is available.

What HE said. Bravo!

 

[MaggieMae]

I say yes. After all what are the chances that I have at age 37 to get any Social Security money when I retire.

I suspect that you'll very quickly be talking out of the other side of your mouth if you find yourself unable to work because of some unfortunate accident or illness.

I can't blame you for worrying about it, though, I'll grant you that concern.

The boomers paid and paid and paid to put Social security back into the black.

They paid long over due debts and they funded Social Security to be in good fiscal shape through 2050.

Now we're informed that the money is likely to run out by 2017.

Where's it all go?

Good question.

Well for one thing, wages have basically been stagnant which equates to reduced amounts being added to the coffers as more and more people live longer and start collecting benefits. Maybe it's time for all the minimum wage naysayers to rethink how one affects the other, if this is such a major concern.

 

[MaggieMae]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

So based on the above it would have to be your contention that social security really isn't there to provide for YOUR retiterment (even though that's what we're told). It's really just your social obligation to give money to the government and maybe you'll get a return and maybe you won't right? I guess the definition of greed in your world is expecting a program that I am required to pay into that I'm told I will receive income from when I retire, to actually provide income when I retire. Yep, greedy as charged.

It's time for another Ronny in the White House.

You mean the president who started dipping into the SS trust fund to begin with? You mean the president who, at the time, created the highest deficit since the nation began? That Ronnie?

 

[Annie]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

So based on the above it would have to be your contention that social security really isn't there to provide for YOUR retiterment (even though that's what we're told). It's really just your social obligation to give money to the government and maybe you'll get a return and maybe you won't right? I guess the definition of greed in your world is expecting a program that I am required to pay into that I'm told I will receive income from when I retire, to actually provide income when I retire. Yep, greedy as charged.

It's time for another Ronny in the White House.

You mean the president who started dipping into the SS trust fund to begin with? You mean the president who, at the time, created the highest deficit since the nation began? That Ronnie?

Actually it started under Johnson, the deficits in the 1980's exacerbated the problems:

CRS Report for Congress: Social Security and the Federal Budget: What Does Social Security's Being "Off Budget" Mean?

...Social Security and other federal programs that operate through trust funds were counted officially in the federal budget beginning in FY1969. The change, adopted by President Johnson, followed a recommendation by an expert panel that all the financial operations of the government be consolidated into a single budget.1 It was implemented administratively under broad authority granted to the President by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 to devise the form in which the federal budget was to be presented. In 1974, with passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (P.L. 93-344), Congress adopted a process of its own for developing budget goals through passage of annual budget resolutions. Up to that point, spending and revenue measures were adopted piecemeal through appropriations laws and periodic entitlement and tax legislation. Like the budgets then prepared by the President, the budget resolutions required under the new congressional procedures were to reflect a "unified budget" approach that included trust fund programs such as Social Security in the budget totals.

Beginning in the 1970s, financial problems plaguing Social Security and concern over the program's growing costs gave impetus to measures to curtail benefits. Social Security cutbacks were included in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Acts of 1980 and 1981 and the Social Security Amendments of 1983. However, despite passage of these measures, resolution of the program's financial problems, and the buildup of surpluses in the trust funds, interest in curbing Social Security expenditures continued because of the large federal budget deficits that arose in the 1980s.

This routine consideration of Social Security constraints led to concerns that the public's confidence in the program was being eroded and gave impetus to proposals to remove Social Security from the budget. The result was that although the program continued to be counted in the budget throughout the decade, measures were enacted in 1983, 1985, and 1987 explicitly stating that it was not to be included in the budget, making it a separate part of congressional budget resolutions, and imposing potential procedural hurdles for budgetary bills containing Social Security changes.

Then, in 1990, reacting to criticism that surplus Social Security taxes were masking the size of budget deficits, Congress enacted further measures to separate Social Security from formulation of the budget and from procedures designed to discourage tax reductions or spending increases that would increase the size of the deficits. This was done as part of changes to the budget process included in a $500 billion deficit-reduction package enacted at the end of the 101st Congress. However, in excluding Social Security from budget procedures designed to control budget deficits, the reforms potentially removed fiscal constraints that protected the Social Security trust funds. Concerned that the lifting of these constraints would encourage proposals that could weaken the system's financial condition, Congress adopted new procedural hurdles for bills that would erode the balances of the trust fund accounts.

Social Security Is Now Considered to Be "Off Budget"

For federal budget purposes, Social Security is now considered to be "off budget." If loosely defined, one could say that Social Security has been removed from the federal budget at least three times since the early 1980s, as part of:

1. the Social Security Amendments of 1983;
2. the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget act changes in 1985; and
3. the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990....

 

[Iriemon]

You mean the president who started dipping into the SS trust fund to begin with? You mean the president who, at the time, created the highest deficit since the nation began? That Ronnie?

Actually it started under Johnson, the deficits in the 1980's exacerbated the problems:

That is all true. But during the early part Reagan's term, SS changed from being a "pay-go" system whereby SS tax just paid for current workers to a pay in advance system, where we all paid more payroll tax than necessary, specifically to build up a trust fund to pay the boomers' SS benefits in the future. SS taxes were raised a couple points for this purpose, and at that time, and for the first time, we all paid more SS taxes than necessary.

For the past 25 years, we've all been paying too much SS tax. To the tune of a couple hundred billion a year. With interest it should have over $3 trillion now. It was supposed to be saved in the trust. In what has been the biggest theft in the history of man, it was stolen to fund the deficits.

My cynical view is that some in the the Govt knew these higher SS taxes could be stolen to finance tax cuts. So the Republicans went along with the raise in the tax the working poor pay, and used the to finance income tax cut that benefitted mostly the rich.

So it is the rich IMO who should lose their SS benefits now. The Govt can't afford it because it stole the SS trust to finance their tax cuts.

 

[Annie]

You mean the president who started dipping into the SS trust fund to begin with? You mean the president who, at the time, created the highest deficit since the nation began? That Ronnie?

Actually it started under Johnson, the deficits in the 1980's exacerbated the problems:

That is all true. But during the early part Reagan's term, SS changed from being a "pay-go" system whereby SS tax just paid for current workers to a pay in advance system, where we all paid more payroll tax than necessary, specifically to build up a trust fund to pay the boomers' SS benefits in the future. SS taxes were raised a couple points for this purpose, and at that time, and for the first time, we all paid more SS taxes than necessary.

For the past 25 years, we've all been paying too much SS tax. To the tune of a couple hundred billion a year. With interest it should have over $3 trillion now. It was supposed to be saved in the trust. In what has been the biggest theft in the history of man, it was stolen to fund the deficits.

My cynical view is that some in the the Govt knew these higher SS taxes could be stolen to finance tax cuts. So the Republicans went along with the raise in the tax the working poor pay, and used the to finance income tax cut that benefitted mostly the rich.

So it is the rich IMO who should lose their SS benefits now. The Govt can't afford it because it stole the SS trust to finance their tax cuts.

I agree with the whole fing bunch of them raiding, no doubt on that. I'm moving closer to favoring the return to a state of nature.

 

[amrchaos]

I thought laws can be changed.

If they could not, we would be living under prohibition.

 

[Bern80]

If you don't agree with the laws and rules of the nation please move. You don't have to pay if you aren't here. Bye.

PS SS is one of the wonderful things we do as citizens. Keep doing wonderful things and let the greedy move someplace where they will be happy.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

So based on the above it would have to be your contention that social security really isn't there to provide for YOUR retiterment (even though that's what we're told). It's really just your social obligation to give money to the government and maybe you'll get a return and maybe you won't right? I guess the definition of greed in your world is expecting a program that I am required to pay into that I'm told I will receive income from when I retire, to actually provide income when I retire. Yep, greedy as charged.

It's time for another Ronny in the White House.

You mean the president who started dipping into the SS trust fund to begin with? You mean the president who, at the time, created the highest deficit since the nation began? That Ronnie?

The reference is in name only. no, not that Ronnie