Which must be why you're so butthurt about everything, because your idea of logic is crying silver spoonery at everything.

or you're just not familiar with well known logical fallacies.

Whatever captain.

You seem to forget that you're white as well, unless "severe acne" counts as a race.

Yes, I forgot the color of my super-privelaged white boy skin.

I'm quite sure I've already answered this question. Work on your brain development and give it another shot some other day.

Oh it doesn't affect me. Why should I care? I'm not starving, I'm not in debt. Why should I care?

Let them take more and more of my paycheck out. I'm not starving or in serious financial crisis. Why should I care? I guess when it gets to the point that 75% of my pay is taken out in taxes, I should care right? When government bloat and wasteful spending is increasing more and more but I'm still living large and not hungry, why should I care?

From here on out I'm going to adopt the Rob mentality. I'm going to care about jack **** until it directly affects me. Higher taxes, higher spending, bigger government, I'm going to give a **** about it until I start seeing my left ruined. Have fun, guys!

Well put.

I know what you're trying to say and this is more a matter of semantics than anything, but technically you are taxed for Social Security.

OH NOZ TEH EVAL GOVUNMENT IS GOING TO TAKEZ MY LUFE AWAY!

Again, the Rob mentality shines through. Don't care about a single thing until it adversly affects you.

Also caring about fiscal matters in the goverment earns you the mantle of "paranoid"

I also don't understand the republican desire to decentralize government. Big government ftw.

If it was a true tax, those with other government retirements would still be paying, no?

The definition of tax is more forgiving (looser) than that, I think.

Yes, I suppose you're right. However, I think I prefer this definition...

"a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand."

So true..lol

Government is not efficient. The more we try to make make sure every single person is taken care of, the slower we progress as a society. Sure maybe we are all subsisting, but that not really the point of human life is it?

really? ...really? heres the problem... in matters of social engineering (and thats what big government does, like it or not) the federal government is largely incompetent. in fact in most areas involving any fiscal issues our government is pretty incompetent!
why should the government be able to redistribute money that i worked hard for? and if what i earn is just going to go to someone else, why the hell should i work hard for it? why not just let someone else work for it and and then I can just enjoy the benefits of "big government"?
and i'm not complaining about taxes that go to basic things like road construction or police or fire and all of that stuff.

but back to the topic at hand, even if social security is not a tax, the further forcing of the rich to pay even more is simply MORE redistribution of wealth! seriously, why is everyone like 'hur! so and so is be rich! i dont care if they worked hard to get what they have... we should make them pay even more anyways!!!

The problem is that there are a limited number of jobs to be done. Most of which are local by definition.

A big government is not horizontal, it's vertical. You have layer after layer of useless people who only exist to pass paperwork to the people higher than them. It's like an artery of responsibility with the occasional aneurysm of accountability that hemorrhaged into a committee. Decisions can't be made because nobody wants to be blamed if it's a bad one, everybody who has a real job has 6 bosses who don't know ****, nothing gets done and nobody in the middle contributes anything to society beyond their ability to spend tax dollars on themselves.

A big liberal government is a lasagna of failure. A neocon government is a platter of fail-lasagnas. What the world really needs is a 90" pizza, with the soft crust of labor and the crispy cheese of leadership.

I hate to say it, but I'm pretty much with Rob on this one.

That's not at all surprising.

best analogy of all time

Pizza Hut supports The Rebellion.

Social Security is nothing more than coddling the folks who are too stupid/lazy/incapable of taking a set amount of money out of their pay each week and putting it away in a bank account. If everyone did this, it would basically be the same thing as Social Security, only it applies directly to you! And if you don't have enough to survive on it's your own damned fault!

I'm all for a little socialism, but people need to stop being so goddamned ignorant and learn to be accountable for their own lives instead of expecting the government to make sure we all live happy and free :downs:

You can thank the baby boomers for this, by the way. They didn't save a dime, they didn't have enough children, and they have a positively unholy entitlement complex. Politicians can't suggest scaling back social security out of fear for their lives.

I don't know the specific situation in the United States, but in Canada nobody from my generation will ever see a dime out of social security even though we will have to pay for it for the rest of our lives. We have a fully-universal healthcare system which cannot possibly sustain the burden of the Greatest Generation's ****ty Encore, and we have a pretty generous welfare package that I would tend towards describing as excellent if the people raking in the cash bred enough goddamn offspring to actually pay for the stupid thing.

Don't we outnumber the baby boomers by this point, though? Couldn't we just kill them all and try to at least make some progress?

They comprise about 25% of the total population and they are all going to retire within 10 years of each other.

There isn't much hope for improvement. The sociopaths in government like the baby boomers because they make a stable base and they're easy to keep happy. Generation Xers tend to be more jaded and pragmatic, probably because they grew up watching their baby boomer parents be baby boomers.

The baby boomer presidents were both pretty damn lousy, but it remains to be seen how much Obama is going to pander to the my-hip-replacement-is-more-important-than-world-peace crowd.

I hope it's with bullets.

If baby boomers got us into this mess, why the hell should we be stuck getting them out of it. If they have to suffer for their own irresponsibility it severs them right.

Obi, you know I have no personal problem with you but that seriously ranks among the stupidest "serious" posts ever. The baby boomers didn't create the Social inSecurity system. They've simply always been the biggest indicator of how rediculous the idea is as it is perpetually defined.

What does this even mean.

I wasn't being totally serious, just grumpy. My real point is that it's a shame that the baby boomers are the only people who will end up really benefiting from Social Security, while every one else will get screwed. If we had stopped misusing social security money back in the fifties and sixties this situation wouldn't have happened. Just because it started during FDRs administration doesn't mean they don't bear some responsibility for letting it get out of hand.

It's not as much that money was misused in so much as the fact that with every generation, they are receiving more than they contributed to the system.

They didn't invest it, they spent it, and expected to get away with just paying future retires from their input. If they can responsible used the money, we would be giving out more money, not worrying where were are going to get enough to pay everyone off at uselessly low rates.

Social Security was flawed from the start; it's a scam at best. Think about it. You pay into it your whole working life, and you can't collect (normally, for argument's sake) until you hit 65. Tim Russert, one of the biggest Social Security advocates in the US media died at 58. Russert's son is over 18, so he doesn't get any benefits. The only thing that family gets is a death benefit.

All the money he's paid in his entire career is gone.

Seriously, a 401(k) or any savings plan is more financially sound than Social Security.

Obama's idea to remove the contribution cap from Social Security is extremely troubling. It's essentially a regressive tax. "Rich people" would be paying more than the "working class" and getting the same benefits (those are the titles he gives). It would be different if the received benefits were relative to the contributed amount, but that's not going to happen. This is just an attempt to make the taxpayers foot the bill for all the money that congress has blown over the past 50 years.

If that still doesn't seem bad, think about it in raw numbers. Each person pays 6.2% annually for wages up to $102K (as of this year), where it is capped. The employer matches that amount. In reality, all that money is coming directly from the employee, because the employer is going to take Social Security withholdings into consideration when determining wages.

To make numbers easy, a person making $50K a year would directly pay $3,100 into Social Security annually. In reality that person is paying $6,200. This person won't feel the brunt directly. A person making $1 million annually would have to pay $62K, but in reality that is $124K.

To make things a little more clear, let's say the 2 previously mentioned people will have the same wages for 30 years after this change takes effect (take inflation out as well), and then both people will be eligible for Social Security. Since this change has been enacted, the $50K person has paid $93,000 directly, but has actually paid $186,000. The millionaire has paid $1,860,000 directly in withholdings; but in reality that is $3,720,000.

Here's where it really gets ugly. As of right now that millionaire would only pay $6,324 directly per year, but will actually pay $12,648 in total. Over 30 years it would pan out to $189,720 directly; $379,440 actually. The difference between the current rates and Obama's plan would cause the millionaire to pay $1,670,280 more, with actual withholdings being $3,340,560 more. Where the **** is all that extra money going to go?

The funny thing is that both parties were seriously ripped off. Neither person will fully collect what has been paid into the system, but the long-term implications will be devastating. That simple idea to "make America better for the average person who can't get by" will make a major impact on the GDP.

Oh my gosh! I totally see your point!

How can anyone ever live on only $876,000 a year! Thats chicken feed! You can't even feed a family on that! Or own a car! Or a house!

Man that sucks!

Man! You didn't even read his post! That sucks!

And after all that, it still doesn't work, for the same reason wealth redistribution always fails. Take all the money from the richest 1% and divide it up 99 ways and everyone is still poor.

As of 2001, the top 1% of the population held 38% of the privately-owned wealth. The bottom 40% own less than 1%. The average wealth of the top 1% is ~$10,000,000, which means a redistribution of wealth from the top 1% would give all of us an extra $100,000 in beer money. Of course, if you did that, beer would start costing $100 a bottle.

I'm confused, so maybe someone can explain this to me.

I'm currently investing money into a 401(k), an IRA, and a savings account (hooray for being single!). I'm not expecting to get a dime from Social Security.

However, there are people who cannot afford to invest into an IRA - they may be stuck working an unskilled labor job that pays $7 / hour and trying to support a family on that, or they may be working a decent salaried paycheck in a city, but rent and utilities takes such a significant part of their paycheck that they don't really have an opportunity to put anything away. These people aren't necessarily lazy or incompetent - they're in a less-fortunate position than others and are thus unable to put anything away (as opposed to unwilling, which a lot of people seem to be implying). Are we supposed to let them just hope that their kids make enough as adults to support them in their old age? I disagree with Rob's communist leanings, but, for those who propose doing away with social security, what do you propose that would allow these example people to have the means to live in their old age?

Encourage responsible personal financial management. A poor person with a paid for house doesn't need much to subsist. And even with our increasingly socialistic system, this is America. Unless someone has a serious physical or mental disability, anyone can achieve a basic level of financial independence.



That's complete BS. If they've paid into Social Security, they have met their obligation, required by the government, to collect their payments. You are also generalizing by saying these people didn't save anything during their working years and that is a moot point since their individual wealth, or lack thereof, is not a factor in one claiming their entitlement upon eligibility.

You and I would agree on the absurdity of the Social Security system in general but to denigrate an entire generation is to fall for the same class warfare arguments that typical liberal elite politicians like BHO foster and depend on.



See, this is where I know you are simply trolling and trying to get a rise out of people. It amazes me that people have taken you so seriously in this thread. The problem is that I know you are smarter than that. I seriously doubt you really believe a person grossing a million dollars a year would net $876,000. When all is said and done, their net income would likely be in the $500,000-600,000 range and I doubt, although I could be wrong, that you support confiscatory taxation of income in the range of 40-50% derived by considering the cumulative effect of federal, state, and local taxation.