John McCain says that the Social Security system where working people pay into the system in order to receive Social Security benifits when they retire is a disgrace.
Since that is the exact description of how the system was set up to work from August 14, 1935 until this very day, McCain feels that the whole system is a disgrace, and everyone who pays into it and everyone who receives Social Security are disgraceful.
McCain has no understanding that from the day it was set up, there were a certain number of people who were to receive a certain amount from Social Security. That figure was used to determine how much had to go into the Social Security fund to equal what went out the other end.
The same situation applies today in determining how the inflow and outflow must work. It’s no different now than it was then. That’s why if the original premise of Social Security is kept the same as the day it was set up, inflow equals outflow, Social Security can never “go broke.” In other words, the self-regulating system, which is what Social Security was from day one, by definition is set up to sustain itself.
But, the tinkering with the taxes by the Republican multi-millionaires who feel that they shouldn’t be taxed has upset that required balance of inflow and outflow. They reduce the inflow below the outflow, reducing the amount available needed to pay out the required commitment, then they can pretend that for some reason they don’t understand, the system is going broke. And that’s a good reason to shut it down. Because they sabotaged it. Because they don’t need it. Because no one else should need it, either.
There’s a very good reason why McCain doesn’t know and doesn’t care how the system works, and that is the fact that he will never have need of it. A retired Senator’s retirement package is provided for by the government.
McCain is disdainful of those who must depend on Social Security provided by the government during their retirement while at the same time being perfectly alright with doing the exact same thing, himself.
Not having had a job for the past 26 years because he became a politician instead, he expects to receive retirement benefits from the government paid for by the people who have worked at an honest job to pay the taxes that will provide him those benefits. And yet he has the gall to say that those working people who are paying for his retirement are disgraceful for even expecting to have the same rights as he has.
This is the problem with having only multi-millionaires run for president. They are not like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t know what we know. They don’t care what we know. They don’t care what we think. They don’t care whether we starve or how miserably we live. They do care that we have a job and work and pay taxes, which is where their retirement benefits come from. They are the worst possible people in the world to pretend to represent us. The fact is, as we have seen so conclusively with George Bush, the only people who multi-millionaires can represent or even want to represent, are other multi-millionaires like themselves.
Lincoln’s expectation was that our government of the people, by the people, for the people would not perish from this earth. Lincoln could not have forseen that we would wind up with a government of multi-millionaires, by multi-millionaires, for multi-millionaires and for that reason, the government he hoped for has perished from this earth. Well, except for the multi-millionaires.
We had a whole batch of unrepresentative multi-millionaires running for president, now winnowed down, presumptively, to just two. And, inevitably and unrepresentatively, once again, one of them will become president.
Since that is the exact description of how the system was set up to work from August 14, 1935 until this very day, McCain feels that the whole system is a disgrace, and everyone who pays into it and everyone who receives Social Security are disgraceful.
McCain has no understanding that from the day it was set up, there were a certain number of people who were to receive a certain amount from Social Security. That figure was used to determine how much had to go into the Social Security fund to equal what went out the other end.
The same situation applies today in determining how the inflow and outflow must work. It’s no different now than it was then. That’s why if the original premise of Social Security is kept the same as the day it was set up, inflow equals outflow, Social Security can never “go broke.” In other words, the self-regulating system, which is what Social Security was from day one, by definition is set up to sustain itself.
But, the tinkering with the taxes by the Republican multi-millionaires who feel that they shouldn’t be taxed has upset that required balance of inflow and outflow. They reduce the inflow below the outflow, reducing the amount available needed to pay out the required commitment, then they can pretend that for some reason they don’t understand, the system is going broke. And that’s a good reason to shut it down. Because they sabotaged it. Because they don’t need it. Because no one else should need it, either.
There’s a very good reason why McCain doesn’t know and doesn’t care how the system works, and that is the fact that he will never have need of it. A retired Senator’s retirement package is provided for by the government.
I'm not defending the bum, but you're twisting his words. He said, "Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today,and that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."
How he would fix it who knows, but he didn't say what you claim.
If only he were enlightened enough to want to eliminate Social Security!
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Darren Wolfe (5 articles, 155 quicklinks, 93 diaries, 695 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 7:55:04 AM
I fail to see why it's a disgrace. This is the very principle on which Social Security was founded: the people who are young enough to work pay for those who are retired, and later, the people who financially support the old will be supported by a younger generation. Of couse, it can be a problem if the ratio working/retired becomes unbalanced.
And yes, among the reasons we get terrible leaders is the fact that, in the US--and this does not exist in most other Western democracies, except possibly Italy--only billionaires need apply to run for President.
Bush 41 and 43, Kerry, McCain, Romney, all these guys are very wealthy, or have wealthy wives. This is one of the ways the voting system is rigged: somebody who never had to worry for his daily survival has no idea what ordinary people's life is all about, and does not care anyway. These guys are so removed from the real world it's like they belong to a different specie.
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francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 327 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 9:37:12 AM
Given there is the option to apply a means test to social security....yeh, I can hear the rich people howling from here...but anyone who is bring in $100,000 a year in retirement hardly needs the safety net of Social Security. SOCIAL SECURITY is the name of the system....it is to keep us off the street if we have just missed out on the golden ring others manage to get. Me, I enjoy my small business and will keep after it until I am 70...but after that I have every hope that Social Security will help me....the oceans don't drown me and President Shit-for-Brains is still in jail.
Veteran, '66-68
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Roger (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 359 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 11:25:36 AM
With the shift in population age, there are fewer people paying into the system than there are collecting from it. In order for the people collecting from the system not to lose any benefits, the people contributing at the other end will have to have a greater percentage of their wages garnished to keep the system solvent. We haven't even reached the peak of the curve yet. Is it right that the burden of social security should continue to get heavier and heavier on the working people requiring larger and larger amounts to be drawn from their pay? Social Security is threatening to make paupers of the working class in order to support those who do no work.
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Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 11:43:39 AM
What's a disgrace is that is that anyone thinks they'll money there to pay them.
It's over - the bank has been robbed and the robbers are laughing their asses off at all the fools that think there's still something in the bank.
Come spring most of you are going to looking at the real possibility that you won't live to see summer. Or if you do it will from the inside of one of the 800 FEMA Camps waiting for you where you can live out what's left of your miserable lives being Ginnie Pigs for their extermination experiments.
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Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1419 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 12:35:28 PM
McCain, and all politicans in DC have their own priveleged retirement packages far superior to anyone's social security. Who does he think is paying for HIS retirement and full health care coverage? You and I.
Many people's prime investment for their future is real estate. My retirement was to be subsidised by but not totally funded by my Social Security. Now I am stuck with property I can barely pay for and no way to sell it and still realize any return on that investment that I have to retire AND work just to live. And I am limited in work because of a bad hip I can't afford to have fixed.
What was McCain doing while the economy was falling apart? Which of his many homes was he sleeping in while others lost the only home they had?
Of course the rest of us are still expected to pay taxes to be used to fund wars, and congress's special benifits.
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Paul Kruger (29 articles, 1 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 247 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 2:07:57 PM
So McCain thinks it's a disgrace that working people pay taxes so that retired people can have a pension after those retirees paid taxes their entire working lives so previous older retirees could have a pension. Carry this back more than seven decades of one generation assisting the previous generation. How horrible that such a system has worked so well!!!!!!!!!!
In the meantime, McCain and his similarly mentally handicapped GOPers have begun, conducted and will continue to conduct a war-crimes escapade in Iraq that must be paid for by people who haven't been born yet. And their children, grandchildren, ad infinitum, will pay for this monstrosity. But McCain says he will continue conducting this war-crimes fiasco. No wonder they hate abortion; they need as many future people as possible to foot the bill for their crimes.
If Americans haven't figured out that this kook is wrong for the nation, they may get what they deserve.
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tabonsell (29 articles, 0 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 249 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 2:23:23 PM
According to Martin Feldstein of Harvard (I hope those credentials are good enough for you) SS is costing us 5% GDP growth every year. Projecting that back 30 years we're living at about 1/3 the standard of living we could have had. How can anyone call this immoral Ponzi scheme a success?
There's also the relationship between welfare & warfare. The government powerful enough to implement things like SS is also powerful enough to wage imperial wars overseas. It never ceases to amaze me how progressives are always so shocked when the monster they've created (big government) misbehaves.
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Darren Wolfe (5 articles, 155 quicklinks, 93 diaries, 695 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 4:36:28 PM
Last I checked social security was predicted to have an annual 248 billion surplus by 2012 and the trust fund at it's peak in 2019 will be 2.9 trillion dollars (currently about 2 trillion). Too bad the money just gets spent on other stuff besides social security. Instead, what's left are nothing more than IOU's that pay some interest, money owed by government to itself. If that money was available for when the babyboomers retire, there would be no crisis in 2019 when the SS would no longer operate at a surplus. Instead, when this happens, we will have to borrow the money under our CURRENT system.
The last SS crisis was in the 70's due to high inflation and an overcompensation for inflation for adjustments that led to benefit increases that were nowhere near financially sustainable. This was corrected by Carter and taxes raised. Reagan then introduced a tax on the benefits for higher income recipients (about 50% of all ss payments made) and he took the SS Trust Fund Off Budget (which meant the money spent for other purposes did not add to the Federal Deficits). In the 90's, Clinton and Congress doctored CPI to ensure it understated inflation and would reduce COLA's for SS recipients. All of this anticipated the coming baby boomer retirement and increased the surplus for when this would occur.
But the surplus is a fiction. They spent it. One more example of government defrauding it's citizens through lies and deception, made possible by the ignorance of the population thanks to socialized education system that teaches students not to question what they are told. If they are from Harvard or they are an Insider (government or industry), they must be right. You must have faith in your superiors. Trust them.
And then there is the issue of Totalitization. You are told immigrant workers help contribute to SS since they pay SS taxes and never receive benefits. Google totalitization agreements, including the one proposed with Mexico. Imagine paying illegal immigrants SS when they retire to Mexico, or if they are given amnesty and citizenship and their payments made while as illegal immigrants get counted.
The fact of the matter is, the government could just print it's own money for social security and medicare payments and not take it out of peoples income with taxes, which is definitely not healthy for an economy whose growth is due to fictitous capital and population growth due to immigration, while real wages are declining (this is masked by the lie that is CPI) in a shrinking productive economy. Job creation seems limited to industries where handling a bed pan, serving fries, or ringing up sales are in the job desrciption. They do not pay well and have poor benefits.
Unfortunately, people are so ignorant of money and our current financial system and have been brainwashed into believing thats not possible, and it can not even be discussed. Also, some of our Presidents and others have lost their lives even considering it, so there is a fear factor at play.
Under the CURRENT system. it is just a matter of time before a World Currency will replace the USD, and we will then default on our debt. IMF has already decided to audit us, and Bush agreed, so long as the results come out after he is gone. Once we default, we need to go to the IMF, as any other bankrupt 3rd world country, and they will set conditions for credit. One of those conditions will be the scrapping of social security and medicare.
Now that would be a disgrace.
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pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 466 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 6:46:13 PM
Johnny boy, who will bomb them all cannot relate to the average person. We are just there for target practice. Anytime anyone tells the truth about rich people running our country they whine about "class warfare" It IS class warfare and the 5% with the money want to pretend we are all the same. We are all the same except they don't need social programs,like medicaid and medicaire and unemplyment ins, social security. It is a big pile of our money that they feed off off. Then they treat us like beggars and lowlife"s They turn us against eachother over scraps. We can always afford a good war for the corporations. A new missle system and anti missle system and a new jail if you don't like it.
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robert braunstein (26 articles, 0 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 95 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 7:02:15 PM
"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed." [Transcript available from Congressional Quarterly]
Mr. Martin,
The media is bad enough as it is for putting a spin on the news. For the future, please make your quotes are accurate accounts of what the articles say, so that those who read your posts can depend on the truth in your "facts."
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Glowski (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 10:43:41 PM
This is what McCain said about Social Security:"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed." [Transcript available from Congressional Quarterly]
His exact words that you post show his complete lack of economic knowledge. "paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers" is exactly how the system has worked since 1935. If the Social Security Administration had been allowed to retain it's receipts and invest them, just as most pension funds do, there would have been a huge surplus now as the baby boomer's enormous SS tax contributions in the last 40 years would have grown exponentially by now.
Instead, the SS funds, which should be retained and invested, are taken each year and spent on current year government expenses, and as others have posted, in exchange the SSA gets IOUs and below inflation rates of interest. Instead of the fund growing on the strength of prudent diversified investment, as most pension funds operate, the SSA fund is in the greater part worthless IOUs.
How dare anyone criticize Social Security, when it is the on and offshore "personhood" entities who control the actions of the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the corporate media who have stolen these Social Security funds paid by working people. This is government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations doing what it always does, stealing public assets and transferring vast wealth to private accounts.
Meanwhile, John McCain self-righteously cheers on the destruction of a system that was designed for solvency only to have its funds consistently stolen to help mask staggering deficit spending that funds massive miltary industrial welfare giveaways in the trillions, as so-called conservatives turn a blind eye to that, while foaming at the mouth and cheering each veto of any increases in social programs that educate and enrich this nation.
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csnet (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 12:42:28 AM
to me like McCain is trying to lure in the younger voters who might be enticed to to keep 7.5% from being deducted and roll the dice. Those close to retirement will still get paid. In an economy with declining real wages and inflation it might work. Of course, we will borrow the money or increase some other tax to pay the retirees, but the young are dumb. I know because I was young and dumb once. If only I knew then what I know now, I might be partying with those at the Bohemian Grove now.
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pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 466 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 1:48:46 AM
We don't all leave our wives to marry billionaires' do we know? THAT, (Marrying for money) is a disgrace! It makes him a Gold-Digging male prostitute. I take that back, I respect the working girls, they are doing the best with what they have to earn a living on their own, a thing, McCain and most Republicans have never tried.
Gee I wish I had thought of marrying for money, don't you? Oh, wait, jeepers, I forgot, I earned my own and never gave marrying for money a thought. My "disgraceful" family, who DID pay into and receive SS, raised me with a sense of ethics, that excluded exploiting others, like fidning and marrying a rich woman, even though I grew up in a neighborhood of rich women. Gosh, what the hell was wrong with me? Must have been those parents and grandparents who disgraced me by paying into SS and disgraced me further by teaching me about taking responsibility for my actions.
Bytheway, unlike McCain I have never called my wife by the "C" word. Calling anyone the "C" word, NOW THAT is disgraceful, especially after using her money to avoid working and to run for public office. Being shot down indeed does ot qualify one to be president, and marrying into money and then insulting the source of that money, should disbar one from running for president.
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Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1311 comments)
on Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 11:29:25 PM
Ponzi my left ear. If SS is a Ponzi scheme than what is the 8.9 trillion spent on corporate welfare, NO-BID contracts, since 2000? What then is the public school system, from primary through state universities? What are the grants given Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Colgate, etc, where the rich matriculate over the eons? What is a dunce with a 95 IQ getting into Yale on his father and grandfathers points system? 3/4's of the points need were bequeathed him by his elder family members? What is the oil depletion allowance and the write-downs, write-offs, if not Ponzi? What is the Corporate Tax rebates and grants and Corporate welfare in tax gifts of more than 33 trillion, if not Ponzi which 1000 times what all the welfare mothers in America get? What is using the US military at a cost of 3 trillion to steal oil for the oil companies so they won't have to spend their money to steal it? Isn't that welfare racket on top of murdering our own youth so we can be robbed by the oil companies and then protecting the slime-balls from us? What are the pensions of the Congresspeople and the Military career men and women?
What are we here for if not to care for our brothers and sisters? I work so others, less blessed can if not prosper, at least get by.
What is the stock market, where one generation invests to finance its heirs??
I have had enough of the worst sin, worst evil, on the planet AVARICE/GREED, which leads to all evil, the root thereof, as somehow something admirable. It is despicable and so are those who respect the vast majority of the wealthy. How did the Bushes make their money? In Trading with the Enemy Adolph Hitler, from 1932-1942 and hiding Nazi funds of millions until 1951, ILLEGALLY making money over the torture and death of 6,000,000 Jews and 34 million Gentiles.
Don't tell us about Racketeering, Ponzi & Welfare such words are the words of selfishness, or bigotry, or worse, being uninformed.
- where Social Security based on intergenerational solidarity, as it has worked so far in Western countries, is seen as a ''disgrace'' by wingnuts/libertarians.
Think about it, the US, the richest country in the Western world, is the only one that ''cannot afford'' medical coverage and Social Security.
Of course, you cannot afford these social programs if you spend 3 000 billions on wars of choice.
Of course, greed, selfishness, short term vision and social callousness have reached such levels in this country that significant portions of the population don't want the government to invest ANY taxes in anything collective, be it levees in New Orleans or decent retirement for people who worked all their lives. When infrastructure and living conditions are back to 19th century levels, and 80% of the US economy is shipped abroad, the right wingers and libertarians can claim victory, surrounded by a field of ruins.
The calamitous economic situation we are experiencing now is not the result of too much ''big government'', it's the ultimate consequence of 30 years of right wing thinking, Reaganomics, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation giving free rein to corporations, outsourcing, etc.
THat so many Americans who are presently facing economic hardship still advocate small government and reduced taxes as a cureall, whereas these policies are precisely what caused their problems in the first place is truly mindboggling.
This is what makes the US truly unique: there is no other country in the world where the masses fight so fiercely to defend the right of the corporations to exploit them to death.
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francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 327 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 4:53:32 AM
You're not seeing the problem for what it is. The US isn't so different from the rest of the developed world. We have SS, government regulated & funded healthcare, even governement provided levees that fail. It seems that everything the government tries to do is in crisis. The question is when will Americans wake up to the fact that government fails at almost all of the stated objectives of any program it launches? Then we can implment some free markets, finally, & be rid of these problems.
SS has failed us miserably. It is a tremendous drain on the economy costing 5% GDP growth every year. The implications of this are staggering. Projecting back 30 years means that we're living at only 1/3 the standard of living would could have had. Many people are poor because of SS. If you really cared about people you'd advocate against it.
What's mindboggling is that you think that a nonesistant free market is causing todays economic problems. Our economy is massively regulated. The number of alphabet agencies is too great to even begin to list here. We have a central bank & confiscatory levels of theft...I mean taxation. Yet somehow progressives see a free market in there somewhere. Go figure. It's the government that has very predictably failed us again.
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Darren Wolfe (5 articles, 155 quicklinks, 93 diaries, 695 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 7:29:27 AM
NO, the US is very different from other Western countries
And anybody who has lived long term in a number of Western countries (as I did) will tell you this. EVERYBODY in Western Europe has universal medical coverage, and governments there do an ok to good job at managing these programs. So why would the US government be the only government unable to perform this fundamental task?
But the msm have convinced people like you that government = poorly managed programs. And the absurd conclusion they want you to reach is: let's do away with these essential programs. Whereas the question should be: how to manage them better.
There is no reason on earth for the US to be the only western country unable to manage universal coverage--except for the fact that, in the US, corporations do not want to pay taxes and want a government ''so small it can be drowned in a bathtub'';
Unfortunately, many middle class people are fooled by this corporate propaganda and vote consistently against their own interest on these matters... until they are hit by serious health problems in their 50s/60s and have to get heavily in debt to face these situations, like the libertarian mentioned by Mr. Kall in a recent article.
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francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 327 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 8:51:34 AM
Francine's right. These neo-con fascists who think more deregulation is good, have quite likely never lived in a country where universal health care is a given and it actually works to the benefit of all. I lived in Japan 32 years where my wife suffered a stroke May 29, 1990. Japan provides national health insurance for everyone, even aliens and it's light years better than what exists in the U.S. When my wife was pregnant with our child in 1973 in Wis., U.S. medical service was deteriorating while the cost was escalating. I went to work for Manpower, Inc. @ less than legal minimum wage just to pay the physicians who were frequently absent, playing golf, on vacation. Eventually, we returned to Japan for our son to be born and got superlative care for a song. I could write a book about military/civilian health care in the U.S. and Japan. And the U.S. sucks.
In 1997 as a Nat. Endowment for the Humanities Scholar @ Duke U., I took my wife with me because the Duke U Med Center has a world-class pain clinic. A guy there with a Ph.D. & MD from Harvard convinced my wife that she had to have a partial [L-5, S-1] lumbar laminectomy or her chronic pain would only get worse. I tried to persuade her to wait until we returned to Okinawa where I worked but she was adamant. So she had the operation. The surgeon said my wife would be ready to return home in 2 wks. We wound up trapped @ DUMC in a 3-month medical nightmare and the pain only got worse. The fact is medical pros are happy to see patients as long as they think they can do something positive for them, but when they can't, their patience quickly evaporates and chronic pain is not their best suit by a long shot. If the American people wanted single-payer universal health care badly enough, we'd have it, but as long as the corporatocracy holds political sway, it's not going to happen.
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Larry Retzack (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 17 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 10:40:45 AM
Boy what a Hypocrite McCain is. This idiot gets $58,000 Dollars a year in Military Disability. plus his current salary of a Senator waich is about $275.000 a year. when he retires and i hope soon, the sooner the better. he will get a full 100% of his retirement. i am a veteran and my retirement is penuts compaired to this IMBECILE. John McCain still syffers from P.T.S.D. from Vietnam. he should be checked out by medical doctors. HE IS NOT ALL THEIR. if you see him from one day to another. he changes his mind.you ralk about a flip-flopper, McCain is one. The republican party has some dillies, and corrupt politicians and McCain is one of those. If you remember he was involved with the Keiting scandel. with the Saving's and loan corporations going under. sound like the banking industries now.
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vincent passiatore (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 167 comments)
on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 11:36:03 PM
