hah

I know I'm probably going to be the only one responding to this thread because most everybody is annoyed by Mystic0 and doesn't want to encourage crazy ramblings, but oh well. Yes, Social Security is in trouble. However, if you are a sane person who has been following the news, you should know this by now. Relying on Social Security as your only form of retirement income is stupid. Social Security is not nearly enough to live off of, and you should be saving for retirement from the get-go. It kind of sucks for the people retiring in the next 30 or so years as Social Security becomes depleted, but by the time our generation retires we should know that Social Security will be broke and we should have planned ahead.

Wait, they still have money in social security?

Could have sworn GWB spent like most of it...

Yeah, but it sucks that I'm still paying into it..

I would laugh so hard to see the looks on their faces if the U.S. government told them to get lost and stop suckling the government teet. hahahahahaha

.

If they hadn't paid into it at all, I could agree with you.

True.

I don't understand this.

Why is a huge chunk being taken out of my paycheck to pay for someone else's retirement? Why isn't anyone pissed about this? This should be a pitchforks-and-torches mob type thing...

Apparently, the idea is that your kids and their kids and the kids after that will continue to pay into it, thus providing your retirement.

Sounds like a pyramid scheme, doesn't it.. D:

this is why retirement funds where the money you earn yourself goes towards your own retirement tend to work far better, because they dont rely on the government to pay towards you.

The idea of SSI as a retirement benefit doesn't make sense to me either, but in a nation without free health care or a healthy enough economy for retirement savings, I think SSI as a patch is as good as it's going to get until congress starts doing it job.

I'm pissed because we're paying into a program that is going to be bankrupt before we reap the benefits. We're literally throwing our money into a black hole.

What's your problem? You could just get unemployed and stop paying!

I don't think it's the government's job to provide retirement & health care...but maybe that's just me.

Replace the word "retirement" with, for example, "children's education" and you might start to see the rationale. It's taxes, it's that little bit of socialism where we all do our bit and pay to help those less fortunate or able than ourselves.

But this ideology is not prevalent in the US.

But it is! I feel dirty paraphrasing Michael Moore but in Sicko he points out that the US has socialised police forces, fire departments, libraries, schools etc as well. The only really outstanding thing is the lack of public healthcare.

well, seeing as im almost always against socialized public services, my opinion of social security is fairly low. as has already been stated im just pissed that i still have to pay into it.more than just not counting on it, im actually planning on social security NOT being there by the time i retire. seriously making things like this the job of the government is almost always a bad idea.

morons, i was talking about social security, not general taxes.

Social Security IS money I earn myself.

Never did never will. We're screwed, but what they hey.



They're not treated like taxes, they're treated like bonds that the government can't honor.



While none of the other things you mentioned can be successfully regulated by a free market. Healthcare can, it's just a question of fairness. Unfortunately along with fairness is the problem of efficiency. There's no perfect solution or simple answer. If people like Michale More weren't hypocrites, they would quit pointing out obvious problems and get busy coming up with solutions.

yeah, but with the system i was talking about, the money you pay will only go towards your own retirement.

As best I can tell, social security is much the same as the national insurance contributions we pay in the UK which are taxes in all but name. It's the govt. safety net for retirement, disability and unemployment etc.
Unemployment can happen to even the most blameless of people so I'd hope you can see a need for some form of welfare system there, similarly the disabled need help unless you feel somehow they don't deserve a level playing field. Which brings us to the pension. In the UK at least, we've had personal pension companies bankrupt and people have lost their entire pensions, similarly people who have company pensions can lose it all if their former employer bankrupts. The state pension provides the most basic of safety nets for people in these situations. Maybe you guys have a different system that deals with this differently, but I personally can't complain about a system devised to ensure that no-one can be left starving poor due to circumstances outside their control.

well they still can if they becomme unhealthy in their later years, as medicare + Social Security + prescription drugs = not much left for food.

The social security system is going to break, but I'm really far more concerned about healthcare being a for profit industry. That's completely ****ed up.

No, it just needs to be better regulated so that the costs aren't so outrageous.

Regulations increase costs, not decrease them.

Heh - imagine if police departments did that? "Sure, we can arrest this dude for domestic violence. That'll be $799.99 please."

And then it's $35 a month for a restraining order

Hey Mystic0, just a quick thought/suggestion. Why don't you explain exactly what's on your mind, instead of recycling random crazy people garbage? Especially if we have to pay to read it. Seriously, would it kill you to create a coherent, well-formatted argument of your own and post it? Rather than just links to Youtube videos or random books/news stories. If you posted what you actually think, instead of just regurgitating such garbage, I think people around Massassi would respect you a lot more.

Edit: Spelling errors lol

I just want to know if there's a philosophical reason behind his refusal to use capital letters; even in proper nouns and abbreviations. If I like it enough, I might even start doing it too.

hahahahaha. the most selfish generation in human history wanting to fix things for their children and grandchildren? My ***, they're going to fix it so there will still be enough money to last them until they die.

The government forces me to pay into the Canadian Pension Plan even though the government has publicly admitted that the system will fail miserably and I will never see a dime out of it. The whole reason? Because the baby boomers were too selfish to raise enough children who could work for entitlements they demand. The only way to "fix" social programs that are based on income taxation is to either eliminate them or to go back in time 30 years and introduce fertility drugs into the water supply.

It's shouldn't cost 15% of every workers income to do that. They should kill the retirement part, and provide some sort of auxiliary severance package to good workers who can't get it from their old employer while they try to get a new job. They should also try to coordinate as much as possible with charities to provide for the handicapped/infirmed who don't have family with the means to take care of them.

This does not mean taking 15% of everyone's income, promise retirement, and then misuse it so that the eventual retirement becomes worthless.