Hello all, this is Bernie Sanders. I’m afraid Mr Galles is victim of a common misunderstanding. To say that some people are getting more money than they put into the scheme is to believe that your money belongs to you and that benefits are somehow related to payments. This is not true, all money, including that in your pockets belongs to the government. We are the guardians of your life from cradle to grave and we let you have money in your bank to give you the illusion of ownership, but the fact is that we’ll take it whenever we want and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. Just like we are the owners of your body (next time there’s a war, you’ll see), we own your property, your kids and all your cash.

Mr Galles could be a little bit more grateful. Money, schools or hospitals wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for us. These things exist because we care. Wicked capitalists think just because you work your income is yours. Money appropriation is a form of cultural appropriation and we will not tolerate it. Remember when Obama said “you did not build this”, the same goes for money.

Welcome to the Tax Farm...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Perfect text! To show people that still beleive there is no such thing as the devil. (Using the alias STATE)

Hey Bern, think its time to go back to school and take an Econ 101 class, you economically illiterate dolt.

I think Bern was joking.

As was I. Just playing along, having a lil fun.

Oh, sorry. I got his joke -- but missed yours.

All good.No harm, no foul.

A lot of valid points are made in the article but no mention is made of the fact that while everyone who has worked all of their adult lives has been forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars (at minimum) into the scheme - none of the families of those who die before retirement or shortly after ever see a dime of what their family member was forced to "invest".

How many of your family members have died in their 60s? Where are the tens of thousands they paid in? Did the government write you a check? No? Didn't think so.

Unless there's a willingness to make this point, continually making the point of how much people have "gained" (when they live into their 80s, etc) is not a useful math argument.

If the surviving spouse was also paying into the system over the decades, the actual dollar amount that will benefit her is miniscule. Saying the "surviving spouses are eligible to receive survivors benefits" as a blanket statement does not make it so.

If it were true that the decedent's SS was rolled over to the spouse, my current SS benefit would be about $1500 more than it is.

Your statement is not true in the way that you intended it to be true. It is a partial truth generally applied, resulting in a tenuous link to Reality.

During the 80+ years that my late husband and I were both pulling paychecks, we earned a wage. Before that wage was given to us in a paycheck, a chunk of it was taken out and given to the SS program.

It may not be income earned in its present form, but it is certainly income lost over the decades and I have the paperwork that illustrates that.

I will try to educate myself. Sorry I'm so stupid that I can't add and subtract. That paperwork we received from the government identifying specifically the nearly $100,000 that was taken out of our combined paychecks must have been wrong. I assumed it was accurate. Oh well - - - I will set aside that silly adding and subtracting - with a running total.

What is neat to realize is that, according to your assertions, if both spouses are killed the same day in a car accident, their estate will receive the benefit of what would have been their ss. /sarc.

I agree with your premise. There must be at least thousands of people who die each year after making forced contributions, sometimes for decades, and collect little or nothing. The survivor benefits can be paltry or non-existent: "If you are already drawing Social Security on your work record, you will receive survivor benefits only if they exceed your own payment. Social Security will pay the higher of the two benefit amounts."

who is getting more than put in?

very small %

like lottery winners

I am going to edit my reply.

I am not sure that the population collects for more than it puts in, at least not yet. According to the article, "However, for Social Security, whose major Ponzi expansions came further in the past, an average-earning male retiring in 2010 would make $300,000 in contributions, for only $277,000 in lifetime benefits. For women, with smaller average lifetime contributions and longer life expectancies, it was about a wash. And things are worsening. By 2030, that such men will be “shorted” 16 cents (10 cents for women) of every tax dollar paid."

The government's own figures show that a middle class person would "earn" a return of only almost 2% from their contributions -if- they live to life expectancy

I think the problem is more that SS is a rip off because the benefit is too low as compared to the mandatory contributions. I know I want out because the risk of ending up upside down outweighs the benefits, as I see it. Although an employee may be misguided because only half of the contribution comes directly from their paycheck and the other half comes indirectly from their paycheck.

they "contributed" dollars worth far more (at the time) than the paid out dollars they receive

I would like to be wrong about paying more into SS than getting back and I hope I am. But..

In my case as a single male who was not a huge earner for extended periods, SS contributions are about $210K so far according to SSA and would have been close to $400K if I had continued anywhere near the pace I was on until 65. Which means that I would have earned back my money if I retired at 65 and lived to about 79, based on the estimated monthly payment from SSA of $2400/month but not assuming that the payment would increase with inflation. From the tables I see, there is a 40% chance a 65 year old male does not live to age 80 and a nearly 80 percent chance he does not live until 90.

Based on my case and the examples from the study referenced in the article, I do not see how a typical person would receive far more in SS benefits than paid in.

"entirely by your employer"?
I dont know what you do, but I was hired to do a job at 14. I took the job based on the work and what they told me they would pay me. I said sounds fair. I get my first check and immediately notice that the math of hourly rate x hours worked dont add up. Then he explains the deductions for things like socialised insecurity.

I agree the employer pays in and the employee pays in. To say it is entirely paid by the employer is false.

You have it completely backward. The cost is borne completely by the employee. All of it is money that would have been paid to the employee if SS didn't exist.

It's the same as paid vacation, paid sick leave, health insurance, etc. All of those are exchanged for wages to the employee.

It's an illusion that the employer is paying for any of those.

Every cent of pay comes from your employer, in exchange for the work you do.

in reality, the full amount of FICA comes from the employee, similar to company paid health insurance, for example. as the employees must produce (via the employer's operations) the gross marginal profit to actually pay for it along with and on top of the wage they are paid

in other words, the employee has to first produce the money, in order for the employer to have any to pay him with in the first place

uncle "splits" it between them as a payoff to the employers via a tax deduction for their 7.65% "share"

this FICA money, were it not necessary to pay would be available for increased pay, lower prices, other benefits, capital investment, etc or any number of other ends

FICA is also paid with pre tax dollars and not tax deductible to the employee

any and all benefits paid to the "beneficiary" are paid with inflated (devalued) dollars making it even more of a loss to the employee

"SS is a transfer payments system paid for entirely by your employer"

no

heh, you are correct

con-tribut(e)-ion

it is tribute, right there in the word they selected to describe/name what it is.

They get to pick which one is higher. The benefits of one of them willl be eliminated. POOF-all that other money that was paid in disappears...

And if there is no surviving spouse, and you die at 65, the state pays your estate $255...

also the spouse only gets half.

Social Security is bankrupt. It's creditors, like any creditors of a bankrupt institutions should have a call on the assets of the underwriting entity which is the US government. All participants in the program should be repaid by selling government assets. There are plenty of sellable assets to cover the repayment.

The added benefit to the country's people is that returning those government assets to private hands will likely make them performing assets. This would be a huge boon to the economy. And greatly weaken the political power of the DC establishment.

In theory I agree. Unfortunately SS is legally defined as a benefit at which the U.S. corporation can terminate at will. The beneficiaries are unsecured lenders to the Trust Fund that make financial contribution under duress. Fund disbursements are at the discretion of the Fund managers.

In short, it ain't our money but we WILL pay.

'Government is like a baby:
An alimentary canal with a
big appetite at one end and
no sense of responsibility
at the other'
-Ronald Reagan

Somewhat true. But when Congress agreed to borrow from the fund, that changed. It became a government debt to the trust fund. Guarenteed by the government.

And no, although Congress and the trust fund managers can adjust disbursements there is no provision for the Congress or the fund managers to cancel the debt. Should the fund managers do so would require Congressional action. Not likely. The trust fund managers could also be personally sued for breach of fiduciary duty. Bankruptcy is the best option. Especially for the young.

Sure the government could get away with it. After all, the government violates the Constitutional limits to its power all the time. But this would be a big problem.
Shining a big fat light on what the government is isn't going to be something that the powers that be want.

The same goes for ending the Ponzi scheme we currently have. In fact it is likely to get worse with new FICA taxes. Perhaps it would be best to get behind an idea that would either open up peoples eyes or force a change? Or not.....

Or people can continue to think SS is just going to go away. Younger people will continue to get ripped off. Not the best option imo.

Thank you for your thoughts. Glad to hear from one that understands. My greatest concern is are the current demographic numbers. 157 mil employed, 169 mil receiving some form of state issued benefits, and a 10,000 a day retiring.

I had opportunity to discuss the demographic time bomb with a respected economist three years ago. In short, those age 48 and above are the core skill set holders that make the world go round. The plumbers, carpenters, painters, mechanics, and so on. The average age of this core group then was 55 which is now 58. There are insufficient apprenticeship programs in existence to supply future requirements.

This skilled work group that knows how to be productive without constant supervision are leaving the work force in mass. The only foreseeable fix for SS is to just print more prosperity. And wee see how that worked out for the Weimar Republic.

It's even worse in agriculture. The average age is something like 60.

On the other hand, the average age of bureaucrats and university professors is probably still pretty young. so I guess we're OK, right?..

As far as social security goes, it’s even a worse deal than above. If I “invest” hundreds of thousands over my working years, I don’t expect merely to have it returned in depreciated dollars. I expect to have a return in my investment. When we consider that everyone pays 15% of their wages into this money pit, and if they were to earn a compounded return of even 5% annually, the average worker would retire a millionaire, with no need for Medicare or social security. This should, in a rational world, provoke outrage. But we don’t live in a rational world. Politics brings out the worst in people as they fight each other for the spoils.

heh, social security....

there is this thing called the ISSA, which pre-dates the US's involvement in this state scheme by 6 or 7 years. one of the rockfelller's early "internationalist" endeavors (towards one world communist government)

edit, can't figure out how to link so here it is https://ww1.issa.int/home

did you think ss was concocted by the thieves in the us congress and then spread around the world?

Lost in all the anti-socialism commentary (that I genuinely agree with) is the comment of Aaron Lauer. He is absolutely correct that too many of our wealthy Capitalists are all too guilty of fascist-leanings and find no contradiction in using their crony connections to exploit personal and corporate gain through government regulations. Our central banking and financial regulatory system are perhaps the most obvious recent and egregious example. We need to clean up both sides of the isle.

Adam Smith noted accordingly.

Democrats don't think, they know they will be successful. And why shouldn't they. The US Federal Government is a paltry $20trillion in debt. These won't really matter until it's 2 to 3 times that much. Besides, it isn't their money anyway because these folks get generous government pensions.
And don't think for one minute that the true losers are people with incomes higher than 133,000. The losers in Social Security have been and will continue to be men, mostly from non-Asian minority groups, who have the lowest life expectancies in the population and will see the least of these benefits. But don't worry the real winners are and continue to be majority and Asian women who have the highest life expectancies. And don't forget that these same men who are typically in the lower wage groups get (and have been getting since the inception of the program) double blasted as their retirement savings are predominately in (anti) Social (in) Security and not in private investments that can be transferred to their heirs.

Oops, I was wrong. From the CDC:
Alternate Text: The figure above is a bar graph showing life
expectancy at birth, by sex and race/ethnicity, in the United States
during 2011. In 2011, life expectancy at birth was 78.7 years for the
total U.S. population, 76.3 years for males, and 81.1 years for females.
Life expectancy was highest for Hispanics for both males and females.
In each racial/ethnic group, females had higher life expectancies than
males. Life expectancy ranged from 71.7 years for non-Hispanic black
males to 83.7 years for Hispanic females.

So all of the money will go to Hispanic women with non-Hispanic black males paying for the whole mess. Well maybe not all as non-Hispanic black males have higher suicide and murder rates among the younger of the group so I am curious to see the numbers for adults over 30.

I'm not sure if non-hispanic black males have incomes high enough to finance SS.
Perhaps you could look at the % of population, their mean incomes, and the % of SS contributions across these demographic segments, too.
I'm not a statistician, but merely using life expectancy seems insufficient as a base for making these judgements.

The next step is to reduce benefits and raise taxes.

Unfortunately.

If someone tells you that Social Security is bankrupt, ask him for his definitions of "Social Security" and "bankrupt".

No doubt, he could come up with two definitions that would allow him to claim that the statement is true.

Likewise, if I am free to make up arbitrary definitions and want to prove to you that the moon is made of green cheese, I can do so by defining "the moon" as "my coffee table", and "green cheese" as "wood".

By any of the generally accepted meanings of "Social Security" and "bankrupt", the statement is simply not true. "Social Security" generally refers to either a certain US government agency, or to a government program. No agency, and no program, can ever go bankrupt by any normal definition of "bankrupt".

It isn't just a harmless bit of intellectual confusion by a few uninformed voters. It is a widely held, dangerous delusion that has led to a serious national problem and is blocking steps to fix it.

Here in UK it was always calculated that given the max lifespan of a typical av UK male at 66 years in 1900 and retirement age set at 65 years, there would be no need to pay out much in retirement pensions. They got caught out by the longer life spans now being experienced.

We pay National Insurance on our wages of 12% for employee and 13.8% for employer up to a max point. It has evolved into a form of tax and is not held hypothecated as a separate fund.

https://www.gov.uk/national...

Just goes to show how the politicians 'fix' it for the average Joe. The pension paid at retirement is less than the poverty level and so has to be supplemented by a means tested pension credit guarantee!

The rich get richer, the poor get stuffed, that's all you need to know.