Entitlements? A Tale of Two People [Reader Post]

Loading

He is sixty eight years old.

She is sixty seven years old.

After more than forty five years of paying into Social Security and Medicare with each and every paycheck they received; they retired.

Sometimes that payment meant that they did not eat for a day or two.

That is not BS; when your income is low any deductions hurt.

Between them they receive a total of $19,680.00 ($1640.00 per month) after paying still more for Medicare.

The Social Security administration is with holding 10.53% of their money to pay for Medicare part B.

(Government controlled health care insurance)

That is 11.86% of her Social Security, and 9.465% of his.

That Medicare part B government run health care insurance comes to $1,158.00 annually of any ones Social Security; it is $1,158.00 no matter how little your Social Security payment. Suppose you only received $5,000.00 total per year. Your net would be $3842.00. Could you live on that for 12 months? ($320.50 per month)

Between them this couple receives $1,640.00 per month after Medicare withholding. They paid into Medicare for over forty five years without using Medicare. Now that they are old enough to use Medicare they find they still have to pay into Medicare.

They still have to buy any medicines they need.

They have to buy supplemental health care insurance because Medicare is another one of the democrat’s “Ponzi scheme” rip offs and leaves them short of needed coverage.

Did I forget to mention that Medicare is a democratic Ponzi scheme?

So is Social Security.

Out of this very poor return on their investment; they must cover real estate taxes, home owners insurance, auto insurance, water, gas, electric, telephone, food, laundry, dental, medicine, and any maintenance costs for home and auto. And they must buy supplemental health insurance to cover what Medicare does not cover, or only partially covers.

Good thing their home is paid for. (More sacrifices hidden there)

Their real estate taxes include taxes for schools; they have not had a child in school for way over twenty years.

It also includes taxes for the local Vo-Tech school where none of their children have ever attended.

This couple is not stupid; they knew “Social Security” was not secure. They chose to take part of their income, and live on less, and invest privately for their retirement.

When Obama was elected and the democrats gained control of the House and Senate the market tanked.

Their retirement investments lost forty three (43%) percent of their value between September and the end of November in 2008 when the Kenyan imposter was elected. That is effectively a 43% tax and is not recoverable. The markets knew that all three braches of government being controlled by democrats would be a total disaster.

Democrats turn Social Security into a Ponzi scheme.

Social Security was “sold” as a retirement trust fund that would make money and last forever. It was not to be touched by any agency for anything.

It was touched by democrats; they spent it.

Trust the democrats. Perhaps this was their plan all along.

Social Security is nearly insolvent because the democrats raided and spent the Social Security funds for their own programs.

This couple paid into Social Security, in good faith, for over forty five years; of course they had no choice, it was another of those “mandates” by the democrats, but still they paid and they should receive.

Calling them parasites simply shows ignorance.

If this turns out to be another loss by this couple, but will help America, so be it; they have given to their country before, and will continue to do so.

If this is ANOTHER RAPE by democrats, you can readily say that they are VERY pissed.

The Social Security program is only one of MANY programs started by, corrupted by, and destroyed by democrats that were simply designed to take your money.

If you support democrats, then you do not know anything about democrats.

You would have to be an absolute idiot to vote for a democrat.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
23 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Al,
You blame only the democrats for the Medicare and Medicaid financial problems.  Please keep in mind that when the republicans were in control they could have put Medicare back in an interest baring account like it used to be, but chose not to.

Clark Howard said that if a 15 year old would put $2,000 per year in a Wroth IRA for only 7 years and left it there they would have about $1,000,000 at age 65.  That’s just $14,000.  If SS would have been kept in an interest drawing account like it was, how much would us retirees be getting now?  I would rather that the government mandate putting a certain percent of our income into a retirement account OF OUR CHOICE, like 401(k), and let us take care of our own retirement.

My 401(K) account was averaging 14% before Obama took control.  Now Obama wants to take the 401(k)s and put them in the federal treasury to pay for his kingdom expenses.

What really makes me mad is that there are illegals getting a bigger SS check each month than I am and that the politicians have come up with other programs to spread the SS money so they can get more votes.

I don’t capitalize democrat, republican, or congress any more because it is just one big shark feeding frenzy to get as much money and power as the politicians can while they are in congress.  We need to put republicans in office this next election to defeat the liberal agenda, then we need to vote ALL of the politicians out at the next election and start over.  It can’t be any worse than it is now.

When Obama was elected and the democrats gained control of the House and Senate the market tanked

The market fell through the floorboards before Obama was elected. It has recovered on his watch. The near-collapse of the entire U.S. financial system also occurred before Obama was elected, as did the housing market crash, and the mounting wave of unemployment.

Until January 2007, a republican majority controlled Congress. This had been the case for 12 consecutive years. Remind me if I’m missing something, but I don’t recall any significant changes the new democratic majority made to the nation’s long-established tax or regulatory environments during 2007 or 2008.

It was touched by democrats; they spent it.

And republicans haven’t? Somebody remind me how the wars in Iraq and Iran were funded. Who it was that came up with Medicare Part D? Where did they think the trillions that program requires will come from? And what was supposed to make up for the revenue lost to 10 years of tax cuts?

What about all of those years when the country was booming because of too-easy credit, the continuous lowering of interest rates, and trillions of dollars in imaginary money based on unregulated credit default swaps? The whole d-mn economy was being run like a Ponzi scheme.

Democrats aren’t the only ones who seem to have thought it was possible to have your cake and eat it too. There’s plenty of fault to go around.

Many businesses started preparing for an Obama presidency by CUTTING back as much as possible as soon as it became obvious that Obama would be elected.
That was MONTHS before the election.

Greg, shall I remind you what the DJIA was on January 12, 2007, just days after Nancy Pelosi took a hammer to that glass ceiling? Or what it was a year later, two years later, after two years of Democratic Party control of the majority? Shall I remind you how Nancy Pelosi told all of us that we should elect Democrats in the November, 2006 election because Americans could not afford $2.39/gallon gas? Or maybe I should remind you how it was a Democrat who enacted the Community Reinvestment Act and how it was another Democrat that put that act on steroids, creating the mortgage mess we are currently dealing with? How about I remind you what the deficit was the last year of Bush and what it is now?

Or maybe you would like me to remind you how it was a Democrat that got Social Security passed, claiming we were all going to be taken care of in our twilight years after we turned 65, but knew that the average life span of a white male, at the time, was only 58, and a lot less for a black male? Shall I remind you that very Democrat never intended Social Security to ever be collected by the majority of those who paid into it because Americans were not expected to live long enough to collect it.

Oh, I could go on. And you can blame George Bush for the mortgage meltdown all you want, but it was not George Bush telling American that the GSEs were sound, it was a Democrat by the name of Barney Frank who should be in jail for what he has done to this nation.

Now, I am sure if you understand Keynes, you would think yourself a Keynesian. But Keynes would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that the Democrats are using his economic philosphy as a basis for their over-the-top spending.

I am no fan of Social Security, but:
– it is not inherently a Ponzi scheme, in that it does not require an ever-increasing number of participants in order to continue functioning. It is true that changes in life expectancy and average family size have completely wrecked the assumptions on which it was founded, so that drastic and unpopular changes will be required to keep it solvent; but unlike a Ponzi scheme, it does not have the mathematical certainty that it must collapse.
– as Greg noted, Republicans have not made any serious attempt to abolish it, nor have they treated its revenues any differently than the Democrats when they were in control of Congress.

bbartlog, actually, SS is a Ponzi scheme since it required, from the start, more than one person to pay into the system to cover one person. It was expected that when the first generation started collecting SS, it would take the tax contributions (damn, I hate that word for taxes) of two workers to cover the cost of their monthly payments. Now what is it? Four people contributing to pay for one person’s monthly check? That by any defination is a Ponzi Scheme.

The system was wrecked from the git-go. It was designed as a feel good program, never taking into account that modern science was going to prolong life expectancy. Stupid Democrats creating a stupid feel good program because FDR was in deep political do-do. Sound familiar? Now Obama is talking about doing more mortgage “rescues” for people who are about to lose the house they could not afford in the first place. How many
“Affordable Housing Acts” do we need to have before we realize some people are just not qualified to own a home? Hell, the first year of Nancy Pelosi’s reign of terror, the Congress passed a $300 billion mortgage bail out program. How many people did that help? The last report was less than 250.

And as each year passes, more and more people become zero-liability taxpayers. That means that they either get back ALL they paid in, or in the case of millions of tax filers, get back MORE than they paid in because of another feel good program, the Earned Income Tax Credit. What happens when 75% of Americans no longer pay taxes?

Having multiple workers paying to support one retiree does not make it a Ponzi. If (for example) each person worked for forty years on average, but only had a life expectancy of eight years following retirement, then one would expect that five workers would at any given time be taxed to support one retiree. That’s assuming a steady-state system, of course, which social security never has been. And of course eight years is these days a ridiculously low estimate of the number of years a person would on average collect social security. Nonetheless there is no reason why such a system could not have long-term stability, which makes it different from a true Ponzi scheme.

‘What happens when 75% of Americans no longer pay taxes?’

Inflation? Personal income taxes don’t come close to covering the federal budget (nor would they under any realistic scheme). And there aren’t enough savers on the planet to buy all the government debt that is being issued. So the Fed buys it using money printed by the Treasury.
Anyway, while it may be unjust to have a highly progressive income tax that leaves 75% of people paying no taxes, I can’t get all that worked up about it (taxes should be low, after all) so long as they’re not actually receiving welfare or other government support. The problem is and remains *spending*; if we could balance the budget while not taxing 75% of workers, it might be all right, so long as the taxes on the wealthy and/or corporations were not too high as a result.

bbartlog, you cannot deny that Social Security is at least a Pyramid scheme. Eventually, it will run out of people to support the program because you would have to tax everyone at 100% to fund it. I am also not in the “tax only the rich” camp. I do not believe in the Marxist system of progressive taxation and I don’t feel that certain people should be exempt from taxation while others tote the entire cost of government.

I believe that Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid are unconstitutional programs. When it comes to Social Security, the SC agreed that it was unconstitutional until FDR threatened to stack the court (adding additional justices) because he had a Democratic majority that would allow him to do that. The SC caved after FDR threatened them.

It is time to phase Social Security out. Meet the requirements of those who have paid into the system all their entire working lives (against their will, I might add) and be done with it. I don’t believe in social welfare, but at least Americans viewed SS as an investment for their later years.

I do not care where the blame is, wrong is wrong. A rip off by any name is immoral.
This couple invested, by force, and should receive an annuity.

The guaranteed return is the paramount fact.

“We took your money and promised you a return.”

“We have screwed up the economy, and you are just out of luck; so please vote for us again and we will fix it”.

Yeah, right.

In your dreams.

If you do not stop the democrats NOW; this country is done.

You will not get a second chance.

@Nan G, #3:

Many businesses started preparing for an Obama presidency by CUTTING back as much as possible as soon as it became obvious that Obama would be elected.

The recession began in December 2007, before Obama had even been nominated. The conditions that led to it set in long before that. No one seemed to care, so long as the economy was booming.

@Greg:
Greg, conditions for humans to fail in their endevours set in when Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
You comment may as well have been that drinking milk leads to heroin addiction.
The recession could have been turned around before it went beyond anything since WWII had Obama pushed policies that would have worked instead of Keynsian stimuli.

@retire05, #8:

It is time to phase Social Security out. Meet the requirements of those who have paid into the system all their entire working lives (against their will, I might add) and be done with it.

Where does the money come from to do that? Current workers aren’t going to be willing to pay taxes to support elder retirees during a phase-out period, once they’re given to understand that the next generation won’t be returning the favor.

That would put working people in a position where they must support the up-coming generation and the elder retired generation, while simultaneously putting back everything they’ll need for their own eventual retirement.

Greg: Where does the money come from to do that? Current workers aren’t going to be willing to pay taxes to support elder retirees during a phase-out period, once they’re given to understand that the next generation won’t be returning the favor

Well, welcome to the real world, Greg… that the SS system is a ponzi scheme that can’t be supported, and what money was in the “trust fund” is nothing but a box full of IOUs.

Thus the need for reform and phasing out.

Congress put the nation in this pickle. Decades of following Congressional sessions have put the IOUs in the trust account that, when called in, will have to be robbed from someone somewhere, or financed. They need to get us out, and we need to oversee just how they plan on doing that… carefully.

@Nan G, #11:

The chart only demonstrates that the Obama Administration has had to deal with the worst and most prolonged economic downturn since the Great Depression.

It might be helpful to keep in mind that with respect to the red line representing the current recession, month zero on the bottom line would be December, 2007.

The economy had been in a nose-dive for a solid year before Obama took office. I, for one, am inclined to believe that Cause most commonly precedes Effect.

It took another 12 months to pull out of that dive, level off, and begin a slow-but-steady climb out of the pit.

Drastic circumstances required drastic measures. The policies that Obama pursued kept us from crashing and burning. We’ve had The Great Recession instead of another Great Depression.

I’m guessing that the alternative policies some think Obama should have pursued are probably much similar to those that were in place when the economy went into the nose-dive to begin with. Thank you, but No thank you. I didn’t like the results the first time around.

Nosedive?
Greg!
Look again.
The first chart.
Obama secured the nomination at week 6 of the red line on the chart.
At week 13 he took office, having already pow-wow’ed with his economic team and Bush’s to set up HIS plan instead of Bush’s so that HE could hit the ground running.
At week 13 we are at 3% job loses relative to the last peak employment month.
That could have easily been turned around.
Look at the other dips on that chart.
Others turned around abruptly!
Most turned around gradually.
Only three got worse than that before getting better.
Obama owns the results of his own policies.
He’s been anti-business.
He’s been pro-higher taxes.
He’s been pro-gov’t growth.
He’s been pro-temporary fixes.
He’s been pro-welfare/food stamps.
He’s been anti-work ethic.

@bbartlog: – it is not inherently a Ponzi scheme, in that it does not require an ever-increasing number of participants in order to continue functioning.

Social security was enacted 1935. First payroll taxes were started in 1937. The first monthly payment was issued to Ida May fuller in 1940. She had paid in $24.75. By the time she died 35 years later, she had collected $22,888.92 on her $24.75 contribution.

Who paid for those benefits? oh… that’s right. It’s not a “ponzi scheme”…..

What it requires to work is how they originally planned for it to work. That the majority of people would never live to collect the benefits.

Congress wanted a piggy bank. They created one…

Medicare was signed into law July 1965. At the bill signing, the first recipient was signed up… those poor charity cases, Harry and Bess Truman. Harry died seven years later. Bess 17 years later.

How much did either of them pay in the system, and who paid for their benefits?

But oh… you don’t think it’s a ponzi scheme.

For both – the PC snow job for a “health insurance plan” and a “pension plan” run by the government – you pay a lifetime. For health insurance that you may, or may not be able to collect at age 65… depending upon if you live that long, or if it’s still solvent. For the pension plans, the government seizes your cash, lets the Congress replace it with IOUs, and you never have control over your own “savings”.

I don’t know about you, but frankly I don’t like paying for a “health insurance plan” today when I don’t get benefits and may never get benefits. And I most certainly don’t like the rate of return of government held “savings” on my behalf, nor not having any control over how those funds will be invested.

Serious snow job pulled on Americans for both entitlement programs. And now we’re paying the piper.

Greg, let me give you a few hard facts: you keeps saying the same crap that Obama says, he inherited a recession. Well, let’s look at some numbers that are historical record. On Jan. 8, 2007, right as Nancy Pelosi was breaking that glass ceiling, the DJIA was @ 12,423.49. On Jan. 9, 2009, after two years of Democratic control and bank-busting spending bills, the DJIA was @ 8,599.18. Now, if you really wanted to know the truth, you could match up almost every decrease to the DJIA in those two years to a spending bill the Democrats passed. But that wasn’t enough and Obama was elected. The last day of trading before Obama took the oath of office, the DJIA stood at 8,281.22 (1-16-2009) and immediately on 1-20-2009 it fell to 7,949.09.

You see the market has no confidence in Obama, not then, not now. Yes, the Dow has reached 12,000 again, but in the last month it has lost 548.78 going from 12,638.74 on 5-6-11 to 12,089.96 today. We are still almost 400 points from where the DJIA was when Nancy Pelosi became speaker.

And let’s not forget this:

“With skyrocketing gas prices it is clear that the American people can longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress and its failure to stand up to Republican big oil and gas company cronies. Americans this week are paying $2.91 a gallon on average for regular gasoline, – 33 cents higher than last month, and double the price when President Bush first came into office.
Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing as prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, and tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

Nancy Pelosi statement, April 24, 2006

And where are we now? Where are those lowering of gas prices promised by the Democrats as they were pandering for the majority ? How about food prices? Checked them lately? Oh, the Democrats held their little dog and pony shows called Congressional hearings on gas prices, but they found no evidence of the gouging they claimed existed and while Pelosi bitched about gas subsidies, the Democrats decided to line the pockets of corn producers and the producers of ethanol, which cost more in subsidies that does the oil industry and employees a hellofa lot less people.

Now, you continue to defend Obama who history, I’m sure, will record as the worst president in modern times. Hell, he’s as bad as Carter. No worse.

George Bush didn’t create the housing market crisis any more than Truman did. As a matter of fact, there have been a number of books written how it all began under Carter, and his policies were put on steriods by Clinton. Thomas Sowell has written a great book on that, as has Professor Stan Leibowitz. But don’t read them. It will destroy your BDS.

The DJIA took a dive in 2008. As of March 6, 2009, it stood at 6469. The eventual recovery to current levels seems to have taken place with Obama in the White House and democrats in control of the House.

A republican refusal to raise the debt ceiling–which will accomplish precisely nothing that will lower spending, but more likely increase it by raising interest rates–just might throw the markets into another tail spin and set unemployment rates climbing again. No doubt they’ll try to pin that on Obama, too. It might prove to be a hard sell, taken with all of the other specious merchandise they’ll be peddling in 2012: more high-end tax cuts on top of already questionable high-end tax cuts; the benefits of replacing Medicare with vouchers; the phasing out Social Security; the evils of unions; the need for more deregulation of corporate America; the proposition that firemen, policemen, teachers, and public employees in general are parasites. It’s quite an interesting assortment they’ve been rolling out. There’s something there to offend or anger just about every identifiable group of mainstream American voters. Add to that the fact that they can’t even seem to come up with a candidate that a majority of republicans can agree on…

You might think this would please me, but it doesn’t. I’d be happier if they’d get their act together. A credible, articulate opposition is necessary to keep either side from veering too far off the middle course.

Greg, as usual, you resort to left wing talking points. To begin with, Republicans don’t demonize teachers, police officers and firefighters. But they do realize that those civil servant’s paychecks are covered by LOCAL taxes, not by the federal taxes. The salaries for police, fire and teachers is part of a city’s budget, not part of the federal budget. So that argument is moot.

Also, if the debt ceiling is not raised, as it should not be, then the Congress will have to figure out what programs to cut that can reduce the spending to meet the current debt ceiling. And why should taxpayers have to extend the credit card of Congress because they are spendaholics? Why shouldn’t the government have to live within its means just like every family in America?

The increase in the Dow is not due to anything Obama has done, unless you want to admit that under Bush it did better, reaching over 14,000. You can’t have it both ways. But the truth of the matter is that it is the Congress, not the president that takes actions that affect the Dow. Odd that in just a little over two years after the Dems took control of Congress the Dow reached its low point.

There is a paper written by an Austrian economist, and university professor, titled Anatomy of A Train Wreck. I suggest you read it. It will tell you how, due to actions taken by two Democrat presidents, a condition was set up for the failure of the housing market. Now, you won’t like it, because you are a true BDS believer, but there is no disputing in facts. It was NOT Bush who threw standard mortgage lending practices out the window or imposed social engineering through finance on mortgage lenders.

@Greg:

You make your arguments here as if the democrats, who have swerved ever more solidly into progressive ideology, are not to blame for anything, and also as if the GOP is united in it’s goals, and that they are the opposite of the democrats. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I am not interested in playing a game of who is to blame for what, as both major parties have taken to acting in opposing concert with another to further take the country to the same goal of bigger government, in more control of people’s lives. The actual conservatives, which you seem to want to include within the liberal/progressive wing of the GOP, and then wrongly claim the party entire as conservative, do not want, or do, anything you ranted on in your #18, at least in the sense that you implied.

Someone who wants real fiscal responsibility brought back to DC should be looking at the democrats and shying away in fear of their aspirations for the country, yet you seem to champion their ideology as the one that will get us there. Has none of the history of the spending over the past four years or so given you second thoughts on their goals?

Add to that the fact that they can’t even seem to come up with a candidate that a majority of republicans can agree on…

And how many candidates were there for the democrats a year and a half prior to the 2008 elections, and how different were their platforms?

johngalt: And how many candidates were there for the democrats a year and a half prior to the 2008 elections, and how different were their platforms?

oooo oooo! Pick *me*, she says while wildly waiving her hand in the air. LOL

Eight candidates… five of which dropped out Jan election year. One – Alaska’s Mike Gravel – left the Dems and joined the libertarian party in March of election year. Hillary hung on until June. Then again, it was Obama/Oprah and Clinton who were raking in the cash early in the process.

The pledged delegates were distributed well among the three leading candidates, Obama, Hillary and Edwards. Edwards, of course, shot himself in the foot and has managed to make himself obsolete in politics until the day of his demise. Therefore, that there are consistently three leading candidates in the GOP, most especially this early, differs from Greg’s party not a snippet.

But then, Greg lives in a perpetual parallel universe when it comes to facts, history and events. But if that pleases him, hey… who are we to argue with his peace of mind?

@retire05, #19:

Also, if the debt ceiling is not raised, as it should not be, then the Congress will have to figure out what programs to cut that can reduce the spending to meet the current debt ceiling.

Congress can’t figure out a generally acceptable approach to balancing the budget without first turning the nation into a deadbeat debtor? Something about this reminds me of Nero’s approach to urban renewal.

Generally acceptable implies compromise, which has been central to getting anything substantive done since the nation was founded. What republicans have offered is the Ryan plan, which has nothing whatsoever to do with compromise. In return for drastic program and spending cuts that will adversely affect the long-term security of 80 percent or more of the population, that 80 percent gets what? Yet another round of deep, high-end tax cuts, for a segment of society that’s already enjoying a larger share of the nation’s total wealth and income than at any other time in history.

This is never going to fly. People, in general, are not stupid. It’s obvious that this approach to balancing the budget is placing nearly all of the sacrifice on one side of the scale, and nearly all of the benefit of it on the other.

Besides which, the underlying supply side economics premise is bogus. It’s a sales pitch that hasn’t withstood the test of reality. Before the Reagan administration launched us on our 30-year experiment with high-end tax cuts and trickle down prosperity, there was a far more equitable distribution of wealth and income, and the total national debt accumulated over the course of two centuries stood at only $900 billion. Thirty years later, the wealthiest are on their way to owning the country, and the national debt has been multiplied by 15.

We need across-the-board spending cuts, combined with an elimination of the high-end tax cuts that are already in place. That’s what will work, both politically and budgetarily.

: President Bush also has to share blame for the housing market bubble and collapse. Or have you forgotten his promotion of the homeownership society? He’s not as much to blame as Greenspan was, and Clinton laid the foundation, but Bush had eight years to see the problem and do something and seems instead to have concluded that everything was A-OK in the American housing market.