New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.
The health of the Social Security program exists in proportion to the health of the Economy in general. This is not the first time the program has dragged its feet and it won't be the last. But to perceive these occasional bumps in the road as death knells is to succumb to the kind of paranoia which is being promoted by fanatical Libertarians and by corporatist propagandists whose ambitious agenda is to turn the gold-mine, which Social Security is, over to the Wall Street gamblers who are responsible for the present economic crisis.
"gold-mine"????
Really?
As noted, that "gold-mine" was NEVER meant to be the source of one's retirement, in total.
It was meant to provide for "basic necessities". How anyone can perceive it as a "gold-mine", or 'market' it to gullible American citizens as a "gold-mine" for their golden years, is beyond me.
A significant percentage of every weekly or bi-weekly paycheck of every working American, along with a matching sum attached by his or her employer, is transferred to the Social Security Fund. If you don't consider that fund to be a metaphorical gold mine that the Wall Street speculators would trade their children to gain control of I respectfully suggest that the Three Stooges, Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity, have so effectively bent your mind that you have trouble with even the simplest propositions.
Further, those "bumps" referred to are coming hard and fast and more frequently as the years tick by. Why is that? Why would a program that is ONLY supposed to provide "basic necessities" (something very simple), be in the red this frequently, this fast since it's inception?
The Three Stooges have convinced you that the Social Security Fund is "in the red" when in fact it is perfectly sound. If it makes you happy to believe those corporatist propagandists I won't try to spoil your pleasure. But try to understand that with a few minor adjustments the program will continue to function indefinitely as flawlessly as it has for the past seventy-five years.
Even further, you've assumed that I'm all for turning the program over to Wall Street.
Wrong. I'm for turning it over to the people who are contributing, whether they want to or not, to the program. The funds are taken from them, out of their earnings, without their consent. This is a constitutional republic, and a free society, and those two things mean that people should be able to control the funding of their own retirements with the money that is basically stolen from them every time the eagle shits.
If someone wants to sinnk their funds into Wall Street...So be it. If they know what they are doing, they'll do a WAY better job than government is doing. It would also force people to actually THINK about their senior years, and their retirement, instead of sitting back on their ass and assuming, incorrectly, that SS will be enough to "get by on" in their later years.
The best answer I can give you has already been put forth by
DaGoose who said the Social Security program has been implemented as a necessary and effective means of
protecting average Americans from themselves! That is it in a nutshell -- and it's been doing a fine job of it for the past 75 years.
The kernel of the program's wisdom rests in the critical component of your above paragraph;
"If they know what they are doing." Where planning for the future in this advertising-driven consumer culture of ours is concerned, maybe you and a few others know what you're doing, but the average American simply doesn't. They are literally hypnotized by Madison Avenue into spending every penny that comes into their hands, often on things they don't need, and until they reach their late forties they simply don't believe they ever will grow old and retire. And whether you wish to believe it or not, or whether you like it or not, those are the facts.
And there's the money line....Big bad ol' BOOOOOSH did it! No one else. Never ever, no one else.
If you're not "alert" enough to understand that this problem was caused by BOTH parties, over years and years....this is going to turn into a pissing contest, real fast.
Go ring out, jr....You're done.
I won't suggest that the Democrats have always acted with complete altruism but the fact is the present economic disaster has its roots in Reaganomics. And there is no way you or any member of your neo-Conservative cult can factually deny that George W. Bush inherited an impressive projected surplus and immediately set about to waste it and to utterly sabotage the Economy in order to advance the interests of his "base."
If you don't believe that, if you cannot understand that patently obvious fact, then your mind has been effectively altered by The Three Stooges and there is nothing that I can say that will change it.
