Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
When Social Security and Medicare were constructed it was at a time when most Americans had well-paying jobs, the tax revenue was high enough to support the low cost of demand. Since then Governments have sold the ideal of free trade. Allowing companies to export those jobs to the Third World and replace a job making a product to selling it a mall.
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The failure of Social Security is very easy to explain, and it's a perfect illustration why Socialism doesn't work.
When social security was put into place, a vast majority of the U.S. population was at a working age, and gainfully employed. It doesn't matter how much money they were making, it only mattered that they were paying into social security. Then we had the baby boomers, which made the fund blow up. So just for this post, I'll make up a number. There were 10,000 people paying into social security for every person receiving benefits. That's 10,000:1, and the coffers were running at a surplus.
Other programs that were hurting, saw the huge surplus and thought, "Hey, we can borrow some social security money to help pay for our program. They can afford it, there are plenty of people paying." -- in essence they robbed Peter to pay Paul.
Well then the Baby Boomers started to age, and the numbers started to shift. The entire paradigm of working Americans shifted. No longer were people staying gainfully employed, but now they had all these fat government assistance programs that allowed them to be jobless, but still retain a comfortable way of life. So now there are less people paying into social security, all the time its coffers are being robbed to support programs ultimately built to empower non-workers. So now for there are 10 people paying for 1. That's quite the jump from 10,000:1. But the same amount of money is being taken from social security and allocated into other government assistance programs.
Now we're at a deficit with the amount of people paying into social security vs. the people receiving benefits. Now it's 1 person paying for 1,000, so 1:1,000. And there are no maths in this world where a system like that can work.
When the Social Security Administration starts to panic and asks, "Hey, can you guys start repaying all that money you took?" -- they're laughed at and told that the other programs can barely afford to run themselves, much less repay the SS funds. So now the politicians have to start cooking the books, and finding ways to pay out funds from an empty account. They're starting to borrow money or impose higher taxes on the working class to cover what they fucked up. Back in the 90's, social security was a revolving door, money coming in immediately went out to pay benefits. Since then, social security funds have gone completely into the red, and they're doing whatever they can to get benefits out. The system is beyond broken, it's FUBAR.
But instead of allocating new funds to put people back to work, they're implementing programs to make people even more dependent on government assistance. Welfare recipients don't pay into social security. In a nutshell, that is what will happen to our economy if any type of Socialist policy is put into place. Sure, most people will feel an immediate positive response. But how long will that really last? I'm not worried about myself, but I'm not trying to fuck up my children's opportunity to a great life. I don't want them waiting in food lines, or depending on anyone for assistance.