Sunday, April 20, 2025

Time to End the Social Security Scam

For the US reader (if any) this will make more sense.

"Nobody wants to get rid of Social Security" - well i do.  Any government program that encourages dependency is a failure.  Worse, any dependency inducing program that has perverse disincentives (like SS does).

There are several reasons for this including
* Social Security (SS) is an invalid program, that the federal government should have nothing to do with
* Social Security acts like a pyramid scheme
* 75% of the stuff people think they know about SS is a lie - it is not "your money" and therefore, you are not entitled to anything
* For anyone Gen X or younger, it is completely a bad deal

Invalid program:
Social Security was wrongly allowed to exist due to a bad Supreme Court ruling Helvering v Davis.  The court insisted that the government could implement this program due to nebulous wording in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution ("General welfare").  Probably the most misused part of the Constitution, even more so than the "Commerce clause".

That clause was never intended to give the government carte blanche for creating non-enumerated powers.  Exigent circumstances (the Great Depression) weighed heavily on the decision.  The Supreme Court was both short-sighted and incorrect in their ruling.
This decision led to "justifying" massive government scope creep.


True Nature of Social Security:
Social Security is a pay as you go transfer program.  Taxation should NEVER be used for redistributive purposes.   It has always acted as such - see Ida May Fuller (the first recipient of SS).  Even at implementation of the program, benefits were never guaranteed.  Further confirmed in SC ruling Flemming v Nestor.

It is not a "retirement account".  All the money you have paid has already been paid out to someone else.  Like a pyramid scheme, early "investors" are paid by later ones.  Flip the balance of payers and recipients and the program completely falls apart.  People have been put in jail for doing far less than SS does.

If Social Security was truly a "retirement account" there would never be Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs).

The SS Trust Fund is basically an accounting trick to name the difference between receipts and payouts.  There is NO actual savings - just future obligations.  A tax on a tax.  Basically, an overtax on payroll taxes resulted in a "surplus".  However, there is no surplus as it was converted directly into debt by law.  So, the taxpayer was forced to overpay SS taxes, that lead directly to debt - which they will have to pay for with more taxes and/or in the form of inflation

SS is only a tax.  It is not the "retirement savings" it has been sold as.  Also, a competitive disadvantage for US employees.

As the Trust Fund is in no way real, all the associated debt to SS (Intragovernmental debt) should be forgiven.


Raw Deal:
SS is taking money out of your pocket (in the tax itself, punishing employers for hiring workers, and the increased debt load).

SS is basically forced participation in a pyramid scheme.  What could you do with the 12.4% tax Social Security steals from your paycheck?  You could use that money for quality of life, or get this, saving.  Market rates of return are almost always much better than the pittance you would get from SS.

SS should be sunset. Nobody under 55 should get benefits (not like they expected to anyway).  The tax continued for a maximum of 20 years.

You are "entitled" to nothing.  It was never any more your money than income tax payments were.  SS is a raw deal used to influence a voting block by buying votes with the stolen blood, sweat, and tears of the American worker.  Intergenerational theft at best.


Other
Now don't get me started on all the US government has done to screw over the citizens.  From rigging interest rates at artificially low levels for decades (to discourage saving and encourage artificial levels of consumer spending and debt).  Then you get into foreign aid (which should never exist), useless wars, virtually unfettered "immigration", and the general destruction of society.


 


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