GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Eric Peter’s Reader Rant! “We” Need and “I Believe”…

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Here’s the latest reader rant, with my comments below: Dave writes: I went for years as a healthy individual until a staph infection last April. Almost died. I am 75. You never know when it is your turn to be sick . So I am on the state insurance called Medicare.

Source: Reader Rant! “We” Need and “I Believe”…

*** begin quote ***

I agree that you never know when it is your turn to be sick. But that is not the issue. The issue – the moral issue – is whether your sickness and associated expenses impose an obligation upon me enforceable at gunpoint. And mine on you. My position is that they do not. That your life is yours and mine is mine and we each ought to be free to live our lives as we think best; to plan for life’s exigencies and regardless of them, accept that our problems, whether the result of irresponsibility or not, don’t give us the moral right to pick up guns and point them at other people.

*** end quote ***

As a little L libertarian, I agree that essentially EVERYONE is responsible for their own care.  However, under the guise of “insurance”, the Gooferment has made many promises, suggestions, “spins”, and innuendos about “coverage”.  So it’s no wonder that one of the “clovers” (Peter’s name for “We, The Sheeple”) is confused.  Given the “education” that passes for what happens in Gooferment Skrules, it’s no wonder that the disaster is ongoing.

I empathize with those of us in the same boat.  The Gooferment has stolen our savings by “taxation” and “inflation” in exchange for (non-existent) “protection” and (bankrupt and misrepresented) “insurance”.

What’s a crime victim to do?

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme

Thursday, April 26, 2018

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/04/mark-nestmann/are-you-ready-to-work-until-you-die/

Are You Ready to Work Until You Die?
By Mark Nestmann — April 20, 2018

*** begin quote ***

Social Security suffers from a fundamental problem: it’s a Ponzi scheme, referred to in more polite company as a pay-as-you-go system. Benefits aren’t banked for payment to the persons who earned them. Rather, like a Ponzi scheme, early “investors” have first access to the funds. The so-called Social Security Trust Fund doesn’t exist, at least not in the form most people believe it does. It represents only an entitlement to future benefits, financed by future payments from workers.

Ponzi schemes work as long as the numbers of persons paying into the system and those receiving payouts stay in the same approximate proportion. The proportion of people paying into the Social Security system to beneficiaries is now at a historic low. And in the next 25 to 50 years the ratio will go even lower. In 1960, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was 5.1:1. In 2005, it was 3.3:1. In 2020, it will be about 2.6:1. It is projected to be 2:1 by 2060.

Unfortunately, even that projection is optimistic because millions fewer workers will be paying into the system than even the most pessimistic scenarios estimate. Researchers at Oxford University estimate that a stunning 47% of US jobs could be eliminated in the next two decades.

Bridging the enormous gap between the benefits promised to retirees and the resources available to meet those promises requires a long-term infusion of trillions of dollars. The Board of Trustees for the Social Security Administration (SSA) publishes an annual report on the sustainability of Social Security benefits. In 2012, the board projected that full benefits could be paid through 2038. In 2016, the board projected Social Security would be insolvent in 2035. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency, projects an insolvency date of 2029.

*** end quote ***

That’s the problem with Gooferment. It makes promises that it can’t keep. 

I remember my family discussing many things but Social Security was described as the sacred cow of FDR. My uncles blamed it for breaking up families by permitting old people to move to Florida.

Only later, in college economics, did I realize that Social Security was a “plot” to transfer wealth from poor minority men to rich white women. Conspiracy Theorist supreme! (YACT = Yet Another Conspiracy Theory) It also deprived the poor of their only asset that they accumulated that should have been left to their heirs.

Even later, I heard about Chile who privatized their “social security” system and turned it into a national asset of capital formation. I attributed their success to the fact that the population was illiterate and the designer made it brain dead simple with strict rules and animal logos. While the people may have been illiterate, they certainly understood it was their money.

Where is “We, The Sheeple” DEMANDING “social security” reform. If MetLife did what the Congress has done, then all the executives would be in jail. 

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Let’s get the “unfunded liabilities” out of the shadows

Friday, November 13, 2015

http://blog.independent.org/2015/10/20/milton-friedmans-solution-for-social-security-would-work-for-government-pensions-too/

Milton Friedman’s Solution for Social Security Would Work for Government Pensions Too
By Lawrence J. McQuillan  •  Tuesday October 20, 2015 3:16 PM PDT  

*** begin quote ***

Friedman’s approach to Social Security can also be applied to ending the state and local government pension crisis. The programs are very similar: Social Security and state and local public pensions have massive unfunded liabilities; and they promise a stream of benefits after retirement.

Applying Friedman’s solution, state and local governments across the country would close their defined-benefit pension plans and issue bonds to beneficiaries equal to the current expected value of the stream of benefits owed. The bonds would be due today or at retirement depending on the beneficiary’s stage of life.

As with Social Security, this approach would ensure that people receive what they have been promised. It would force governments to acknowledge the true extent of the unfunded pension liabilities and establish a specific financing plan (something they refuse to do today). And it would permanently close these politically mismanaged defined-benefit plans.

*** end quote ***

The current 18T+ national debt and the guesstimated 200T+ in unfunded liabilities is what our posterity will have to deal with.

“When there’s an elephant in the room introduce him!” From his “Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch (RIP 2007 at age 47)

Just pretending it’s an “off balance sheet” entry is reminiscent of Enron.

Take the medicine now when it’s just disgusting; rather than dies a horrible death from a self0inlicted wound.

Take off the blinders and wake the flock up. 

“We, The Sheeple” are heading for a slaughter!

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POLITICAL: Tax Change — Social Security taxation

Friday, June 29, 2012

The 5 Best Tax Changes We Won’t See
Bischoff: How Congress could make the tax code simpler and fairer with a handful of easy tweaks.
http://www.smartmoney.com/taxes/income/the-5-best-tax-changes-we-won-t-see/?cid=djem_sm_dailyviews_t

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Stop Double-Taxing Social Security Benefits

Did you know that you pay federal income tax on the Social Security tax that is taken out of your paychecks? Well, you do. Even worse: When you start receiving Social Security benefits, up to 85% of that money can be taxed again. This is double taxation folks. Retirees who are at very low income levels don’t have to pay this double tax, but those who are further up the retirement-age income scale get socked with it on anywhere from 50% to 85% of their benefits. Is it unfair? Of course! But your Congress likes this revenue stream and isn’t going to fix the problem until millions of seniors start demanding it.

*** end quote ***

Social Security was estimate as a negative 5% return. Haven’t seen an analysis like that lately.

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ECONOMICS: True “National Debt” is 211+T$

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/06/139027615/a-national-debt-of-14-trillion-try-211-trillion

A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion
by NPR Staff
August 6, 2011

*** begin quote ***

When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.

The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”

It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.

“We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially. Laurence J. Kotlikoff served as a senior economist on President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and is a professor of economics at Boston University.

“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

*** end quote ***

It’s simple. The “game” is rigged against the little guy. So why do us “little guys” still allow ourselves to be fooled?

Stupidity!

It’s like the old joke about the accountant keeping two sets of books!

“Plus shipping and handling”. Like the TV offers that are bait ‘n’ switch. The politicians and bureaucrats throw around deficit, debt, and “cuts” that cut nothing.

Time is running short.

What happens when the Chinese and the rest of the world cut us off. Credit card declined!

I didn’t realize what some unknown executives at AT&T and CSFB by making the defined pension plans fully funded separate legal entities. There was no funny business. Pensions were a sacred trust. The money was taken and invested prudently so that now I’ll get my benefit for the rest of my life.

We’ve “cheated” Social Security recipients, and various Federal and State workers. They are going to get <synonym for the past tense of the procreation act> because the contributions have been stolen by past politicians and bureaucrats to buy votes.

Argh!

We need an honest accounting. Just how bad is it? I know in the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee, guvs of both parties have not funded the pensions. That’s just wrong. If a private company did that, the execs would be in jail. Why are the guvs and bureaucrats exempt?

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Irish pensioners targets of revenue enhancement

Thursday, January 19, 2012

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Irish-pensioners-fury-over-new-taxes-137097448.html

Irish pensioners fury over new taxes
Previously “untouchable” state services get cuts
ByPADDY CLANCY,Irish Voice Reporter
Published Thursday, January 12, 2012, 7:57 AMUpdated Thursday, January 12, 2012, 7:57 AM

*** begin quote ***

Savage cuts to a host of previously “untouchable” state services are now being actively considered by the government as a result of Ireland’s dire financial position.

*** end quote ***

In the search for money to feed the Gooferment spending habit, the “pensioners” are a good target. They don’t “move” so quick. But they do vote.

Look for this idea to travel over the pond and get adopted here.

The USA Gooferment is in perpetual deficit, with an incalculable debt, the IRA / 401K total is about 14T$. Look for the politicians and bureaucrats to steal that.

You heard it. Steal it in exchange for an “enhanced social security benefit”.

Argh!

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RANT: Social Security and other “entitlements”

Sunday, September 4, 2011

http://biggovernment.com/armwilliams/2011/09/01/reawakening-virtues-social-security-and-the-virtue-of-saving/

Reawakening Virtues: Social Security and The Virtue of Saving by Armstrong Williams

*** begin quote ***

Let’s be clear. Social security is not an entitlement program. That is, unlike welfare and food stamps, the people who receive social security have contributed to the program over the course of their working career through payroll taxes specifically designated for the purpose of saving for retirement. They are therefore owed at least the amount of money they contributed.

However, problems started to arise when the Federal government, under both parties, began borrowing from the so-called Social Security trust funds to spend on other items in the budget. The trust funds are not like your traditional private trust funds that are fully funded. In fact these trust funds are empty. The government has borrowed every single dime that comes into the trust funds to spend on current expenditures. We have a problem now because our total national debt is approaching (and may have exceeded) our yearly gross domestic product. Most countries that have this level of debt do not enjoy the high credit rating and low borrowing costs that America currently does.

*** end quote ***

http://www.billoreilly.com/video

Now Playing: Social Security “entitlement?”

*** begin quote ***

Why do many in the media keep referring to Social Security as an “entitlement” program? That’s what a BillOReilly.com Premium Member asks Bill in this excerpt from our newest Backstage Conversation webcast.

*** end quote ***

There’s no money for anything.

An insurance executive, that did what the Gooferment has done (i.e., spent the insurance premiums and failed to pay claims), would be in jail. But politicians and bureaucrats get away with it.

So, if there’s nothing in the Social Security Insurance “lockbox” but IOUs “backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government”. That ain’t going to make for a safe and secure retirement unless you’re planning to work in the “mines” until you die!

Sorry to tell everyone. It’s welfare.

Watch for inflation while there is no COLA or phony rates published by “honest” Gooferment bureaucrats, higher taxes on “social security insurance” income (Yeah that was never supposed to happen!), and then just schedule “adjustments” (i.e., higher minimum ages; lower benefit amounts).

It’s worse than a Ponzi scheme because you don’t get NOT to participate. “Made-off” couldn’t MAKE you give him your money!

Argh!

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