How to Zotz The Attack on SS/Medicare, Once and For All.

[TygrBright]

All we need is for a few Congresscritters to offer a WIDELY-PUBLICIZED amendment to the bill, allowing all Americans who have been paying into the funds for three years or longer to take all their money, plus accumulated interest in a cash buyout.

That is all.

helpfully,
Bright

[warrior1]

1. hmm

[theophilus]

2. I miss Tom Poston. Thanks for this reference. It speaks to my younger days.

I wish we could Zotz all Corporate shills.

[liberal N proud]

3. Do you have any idea how many fools would take them up on that?

I know of a mass of idiots would would love to get their money back out of SS, claiming they could do better in the stock market.

[bluedave]

12. Let them

take it and more power to 'em---then too bad.

[liberal N proud]

13. The strength of Social Security is the contributions of those who work

You pay for your grandparents and your grandkids pay for your Social Security.

Take it out the system does become less solvent.

[rfranklin]

14. Not true...we had paid it forward for the next 25 years...

It is not a "pay as you go" system. That's a right wing meme.

[Burma Jones]

4. A quite obscure Film reference.....

[PoliticAverse]

5. Can you elaborate on how you think this would "stop the attack" ?

[dkf]

6. There is no money. It went to pay people who are already retired.

Both those programs are simply transfers from workers to retirees. That is it. That money was not saved or invested, except for the surplus. If anything, that is the only money that can possibly be paid out and it certainly isn't the bulk of the funds.

It's basically a ponzi scheme but sponsored by the government so that makes it ok.

[howaboutme]

8. I'd say it went to fund wars and tax cuts for the rich

The revenue surplus and cash flow of Social Security was used to fund wars, US government and provide million dollar tax cuts to those investor non-wage earning oligarchs who likely paid nothing, if only relative peanuts (to them) into it.

[jtown1123]

9. Here you go again. Saying there is "no money" basically allows them to default on US bonds they owe

the American people. If they don't plan on honoring them, they have to pay the $2.6 trillion in extra taxes they took from middle class workers starting in 1983. Treasury bonds are real obligations. They have to pay them back. Why on earth would you call SS a ponzi scheme? Right wing talking points alert.

[DCKit]

15. There is no money, but there are $2.7 trillion in government bonds owed to SS. nt

[dkf]

17. Yes that is the amount we could theoretically take out if we divested ourselves of social security.

Except they would need to raise taxes to pay the bonds to pay you out so it's in one pocket out of the other. The jokes on us.

[DCKit]

18. Yeah. Fuckin' Republicans. Again, as usual. nt

[dkf]

31. The surplus was Ronald Reagans baby.

If that doesn't make you suspicious...

[jtown1123]

32. All they have to do is let Bush Tax cuts expire for upper income workers. Ta da! There's the money.

From Dean Baker:

Under the law, the trust fund must be held in US government bonds. Government bonds are not very mysterious - the vast majority of the public holds some amount of government bonds, either directly or through a retirement account. The bond commits the government to pay interest each year, and then to repay the bond in full when it comes due (usually in 5 years, 10 years, or 30 years). That is exactly how the bonds held by the trust fund work.

The Social Security privatizers try to make this process sound strange or confusing. They claim that repaying the bonds just means that the government is pulling money out of one pocket and putting it into another. While this is true, the important point is that the pockets belong to different pairs of pants.

Under the law, the bonds will be repaid from general government revenue. This money comes overwhelmingly from the individual and corporate income taxes. These are relatively progressive taxes; this money will come disproportionately from wealthy people like Bill Gates. On the other hand, the Social Security tax is very regressive. It is paid only from the first $94,000 of wage income. Income from high salaries, stock, and businesses is not subject to the tax. In effect, the bonds require the government to tax high income people to pay Social Security benefits to ordinary workers.

Of course, high income people don't want to pay the taxes to repay the bonds. That is why they are so anxious to convince the public that the trust fund is not real. I calculated that defaulting on the trust fund would transfer more than $1 trillion from the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution to the richest 5 percent ("Defaulting on the Social Security Trust Fund Bonds: Winners and Losers"). The richest 1 percent of families would walk away with nearly $750,000 each.

In short, there is a lot of money at stake in convincing the public that the Social Security trust fund is not real. That is the reason we hear it called a fiction. In reality, there is nothing more confusing about the trust fund than an ordinary bank account. The public absolutely should demand that the government not default on the bonds held by Social Security and that the politicians and pundits start talking more honestly about the program.

http://www.truth-out.org/article/dean-baker-fiction-social-security-trust-fund

[jtown1123]

30. So you're saying bonds aren't real? If you are, that is 100% false.

Of course there isn't a box filled with cash lying somewhere. That's not how banks work either.

[Historic NY]

7. Sounds Bush league, privitization is what the Pukes want.....

and then the system will fail.

[jtown1123]

10. Sanders has a Protect SS Amendment Bill in the Senate this week

Not sure if there is any hope in it passing, but you can call your SEnators today 1 800 998 0180 and ask them to support it.

[Pharaoh]

11. So they can put it into the market

for their retirement and have it stolen by the wall street greed machine?

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[underseasurveyor]

20. Im not wanting to see that 'term' used here either.

"Zot" leaves a bad taste in yer mouth... blech

[Cleita]

19. A nice Milton Friedman solution to privatize SS and Medicare.

No thanks. Unrec.

[TygrBright]

21. Wow. I guess I should have expanded, clarified, and otherwise...

...provided more information about this only-somewhat-facetious suggestion. Alrighty, here goes:

The money all working Americans have been paying into the Social Security Fund for more than sixty years represents a very large chunk of the U.S. Government's net assets. Most of it is currently "working" (bearing interest for the fund) in the form of loans and investments to other parts of the U.S. government, in the form of Treasury Bonds and other instruments.

Initially (that is, for the first few decades of the fund's existence), the interest paid on that "working" money in the SS fund (paid, incidentally, by all of us who pay taxes for the government to pay the interest on those bonds) was more than sufficient to cover all of the payouts earned by retirees. In fact, the surplus generated by that "working" money was plowed back into the fund to increase the size of the working capital, because the SS planners knew that a time would arrive when the net payout (calculated annually) of the fund would require a larger pool of working capital than could be maintained from annual contributions by workers.

Had that practice continued, the fund would, today, be more than ample for the payouts earned by the large number of retirees anticipated as the "baby boom" generation reached retirement.

Unfortunately, the "deficit hawks" of the 1970s and 1980s "raided" NOT the actual working capital of the SS fund, but the surplus interest that SHOULD have been plowed back into the fund to increase the capital. This strategy allowed them to avoid higher taxes.

The result is that the capital fund of Social Security ("working" in the form of interest-bearing instruments) has not grown fast enough to ensure that the payouts earned by retirees can be entirely covered by the revenue generated by the fund, over the period of anticipated peak demand.

There are actually a number of simple ways to fix this. The most obvious one is to remove the income-based cap on contributions and require contributions for ALL wage- and salary-based income. That would sort things out in a comparatively short time. Combine this with the recent 'upward adjustments' in retirement age, and the fund is entirely solvent for the period of peak demand and will serve future generations without any problems at all.

The reason our good Oligarchs and their GOPpie helots want to end Social Security has NOTHING TO DO with the difficulties of managing the fund for peak demand and ensuring long-term function.

The reason our good Oligarchs and their GOPpie helots want to end Social Security hearkens back to those prior raids on the revenues that should have been added to the fund during the 1970s and 1980s: Diverting the revenues of the fund is the ONLY WAY to keep the government from catastrophic insolvency without a) Raising taxes in the uppermost brackets and increasing marginal tax rates; b) Eliminating the vast subsidies and loopholes that enable our Corporate Citizens to avoid paying taxes; and/or c) Drastically reducing the military expenditures that keep many of our Corporate Citizens' cash flows healthy creating materiel, technology, and various other boondoggles.

The point here is that if our good Oligarchs and their GOPpie helots manage to zotz SS as a working retirement program, you can bet your sweet bippy that they have no intentions whatsoever of turning loose of the capital fund in any realistic way. The amount of money that all workers have paid into the fund, PLUS the interest accrued over the period of each person's contributions is far greater than the government can afford to pay out, all in a whump, to the contributors.

Therefore, you can take it to the bank that their plans for zotzing those funds do not involve such payouts.

Making those payouts a condition of liquidating the fund would put a stop to this nonsense in jig time, believe me.

helpfully,
Bright

[Cleita]

23. Could you put up a link because you are not correct.

I believe whatever your source is, it will be possible to trace the root back to some right wing think tank that are known to cook their stats. Social Security is in very good shape and will only run into trouble by 2034 only if there are no fixes before then and even then it is projected to be able to pay out 80% of benefits. That is if nothing is done and the only thing needed to be done is to raise the cap on rich people. That's the only fix it needs. \ The investments that Social Security does in Treasury Bonds are the highest rated in the bond market because they are so safe. So chicken little the sky is not falling.

[TygrBright]

25. Yes, that's actually what I said, if you read carefully.

I do seem to be having problems with writing for reading comprehension today, sorry.

My point was exactly the same as you expressed more pithily.

There is not a problem with SS, although management for peak demand presents some issues that are easily overcome with comparatively minor and not too painful temporary fixes.

The drive to zotz the program AS a retirement program is not based on insolvency, it is based on them wanting to get their greedy little mitts on the revenues so that they don't have to raise taxes, eliminate corporate welfare, or cut war expenditures as strategies to reduce the deficit.

Forcing them to disgorge the whole thing would make that untenable.

ever more hopeful of being understoodly,
Bright

[Cleita]

27. Okay, then don't say stuff like people should get back

the money they put into it after three years. The Newt Gingrichs and Grover Norquists of the nation have wet dreams over doing just that so that they can put future retirement funds in the private sector. Because SS is run like insurance, it would destroy the trust fund and they know it. Those of us who are collecting SS after a life time of contributing to it would be hung out to dry.

[TygrBright]

33. They no more want to give back every buck, plus interest, than...

...they want to bottom in a BDSM dungeon for a crew of rabid liberal kinksters. Seriously.

What they WANT to do is give back some little token amount per person based on age, etc., with no accumulated interest and no actual relationship to the amount accumulated in that person's account over the years. If they were to do THAT, they'd HAVE to raise the top marginal tax rates back to what it was in Eisenhower's day, eliminate corporate welfare altogether, and starve the War Department, just to prevent a complete catastrophic meltdown of the economy that would put all their Oligarch masters out of business.

Even hint that you are going to force them to put their money where their big fat ugly pieholes are, and watch them backpedal so fast you could power a major city with the energy.

cynically,
Bright

[Romulox]

22. Social Security is a PAY AS YOU GO system; there are no personal accounts stored away.

"amendment to the bill, allowing all Americans who have been paying into the funds for three years or longer to take all their money, plus accumulated interest in a cash buyout."

There is no money for them to take, nor have they earned any interest. Social Security is a SOCIAL INSURANCE PROGRAM, not an investment portfolio. :hi:

[Cleita]

24. Exactly. You have to think of it like life insurance

except that you get the money when you retire not when you die.

[TygrBright]

26. When you pay life insurance premiums, the insurance company invests those premiums in...

...interest-bearing instruments.

This is why they are able to pay out fixed amounts based on the value of the policy no matter when you die.

ALL forms of insurance are based on the principle of investing premiums to increase the size of the fund to enable payments based on fund revenues, not just the accumulated principal of the premiums.

helpfully,
Bright

[Cleita]

28. And so does SS. They invest in Treasury Bonds.

:shrug:

[TygrBright]

34. So, insurance programs (like SS) ARE investment portfolios. Not pay-as-you-go programs. n/t

[Cleita]

35. LOL! You are too much. I don't know of any life

insurance where you don't pay a premium, so I don't know why you are confused.

[TygrBright]

37. Which premiums go into a fund invested and managed by the insurance company. n/t

[Cleita]

38. What is your premise?

Is it that SS shouldn't invest in TBs? Perhaps Wall street shouldn't invest in itself either?

[TygrBright]

39. Uh, no. Upthread, you responded with "exactly" to the poster who called SS a "pay as you go" system

Which it ain't. It is, like every other insurance program, an investment pool designed to use the returns earned on the investments to increase the size of the fund to cover the payouts.

clarifyingly,
Bright

[Cleita]

40. Well you don't understand how pay as you go works.

It works the same for insurance and Social Security and I can't clarify it any further for you if you don't understand that it's all in today's money.

[Arkana]

29. Helps to have the Senate Majority Leader flatly against ANY changes

to Social Security, too.

If he doesn't want there to be a vote there won't be a vote.

[Motown_Johnny]

36. that both defeats the purpose of the programs and endangers them

If to many people opt to cash out it would bankrupt the system.


Also, what do you do once someone takes the cash out, spends it and is still in need of aid? Leave them to suffer with a "to bad, go somewhere and die quietly please"?



To me this sounds like crazy talk.