I don't care if you're somebody's grandma; I don't care if you've never been able to hold a job that paid more than $20K a year; I don't care what your health problems are. I don't want to pay for your Social Security and your Medicare. As John Cogan puts it in today's Wall Street Journal, Medicare and Social Security are like handing a million-dollar check to every elderly couple -- except your name and mine are on the payer line.
Cogan rightly points out that there's going to be some pain involved in cutting back entitlements. (He doesn't seem to advocate eliminating them altogether, which is what we really should be doing -- but scaling back would be a start.) Yes, some seniors who've already paid into the system are not going to get everything they paid for. That's unavoidable because, as Cogan says, the money's already been spent; the Ponzi scheme can't go on forever, nor even for very much longer.
I know that if Social Security and Medicare are eliminated, as they should be, I myself will have paid tens of thousands of dollars, probably well over six-figure sums by the time such a thing should happen, into the system, not a cent of which I will recover. This pisses me off, but I would rather that, than that we continue to violate the right of every individual to keep and dispose of his own property, and than that I get soaked for even bigger sums that I won't get back.
To answer Mr. Cogan's question -- no, I don't want my children to be the ones backing that million-dollar check. I don't even want to be the one backing that check. Instead, we should be allowed to keep what we earn, so we can all plan and save for our own retirement.
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Well said. SS is either tax and spend transfer system, in which case how much you've "paid in" is irrelevant, or it's a "investment scheme", in which case it's a ponzi scheme and almost (*) all the money is already gone.
(*) There is 2.5 trillion in the trust fund. Divided by the 158 million workers plus 54 million recipients that's about $12,000 a piece. BUT, it's essentially all invested in treasury bonds, so the actual value is even less than that because the government's assets (land, buildings, etc.) most likely aren't enough to pay off the entire national debt.
"From 1937 (when taxes were first collected) through 2009 the Social Security program has received $13.8 trillion in income." (http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html)
So of the $13.8 trillion collected, 2.5 trillion is left, about 18%, in special issue treasury securities. So end social security today and give everyone, retired or not, 18% of what they paid in, in transferable treasury bonds.
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