Social Security
 

So this weekend I spent a few hours with my first wife helping my older daughter move into her McMansion on the hill. ( a few miles from me, man am I happy although why a new construction 4 bedroom house is needed for a first home I'll never understand... that is a different subject though)

She tells me how at years end her job will be eliminated along with hundreds of others. Tough situation, too young to retire, too old to get rehired. So we talk about social security... and to my amazement she has no clue how it works or that it is essentially regressive. $118,500 being the top amount for taxation.

I explain how the poor pay the same rate as the middle class and the rich... except that over the $118,500, nothing is paid. How the employer has to match what you pay and the self employed like myself has to pay double.

That she did not know shocked me but did not surprise me. Here is a women paying this tax for 50 years who is a genius, literally, who does not know such basic stuff. If she does not know, how many people culturally do?

my guess is very very few. It helps explain why so many vote GOP even though it's against their best interests.

I then think back to when I was 25, 30, 35, 40, 45.... I was so damned busy with career and family that I really did not know the details of much of anything.... not that I realized it at the time.

I was always comfortable though these years and if I hadn't become ill I really would not know what I know today. I guess it;s the perfect template for a government. Keep the people comfortable and occupied and you can then make a killing by exploiting them and their toil.

Thoughts?

Proves the point for SS in your statement. The majority of people will not care or think seriously about retirement till close to the day of.

Most when pushed have given little thought to SS except wanting someone else to pay the bill when due. Just see the amount taken out each pay period as money loss today.
Just liken it to the many who fail to save for retirement in their 20's 30's then when in the 40's see the need all to late.

This is a problem created by those who never liked SS to begin with. Using the idea "It's your Money so Invest in the Market" or "You will never live to receive a check" What needs to be reminded is not everyone is smart with money! So a plan for all is needed.

After all SS was created due to the fact it was noted people get old and are in need of help. We can give them the ability of independence and care rather cheaply with the SS system. Or go back to the old way where they moved in with family members.


Barney

That people are indifferent and ignorant about so many important issues which affect them does not surprise me. They know everything about Beyonce and the Kardashians and will talk sports all day.

SS works for the people in a basic way. What is devastating is the virtual disappearance of private pension.

FDR was not a friend to the common man. The New Deal wasn't a good deal.

Yep. Americans should be taught how the retirement system works when they are in high school. But, virtually none of us are. Instead we are taught that the only people who deserve to retire are those who've "earned" it and that anyone who receives a check from the government for any reason is a "moocher". Completely ignoring the fact that "retirement" isn't an option, everyone gets too old to work, eventually. It also ignores the fact that people who've paid into SS and Medicare HAVE worked, for the most part.

The next big problem will be the failure of the 401k to provide adequate retirement income for the vast majority of Americans. I know people in their 50s who have worked and saved their entire lives.........and have $20k, maybe $30k in the 401k. The payout from that, even if they work until they are 70, may not be enough to buy a pizza by then. Low wages, kids, college debt.........They simply could only afford to save so much.

It's insane.

Care to elaborate?

Precisely.

Yes the assumption that everybody is responsible and smart enough to prepare for old age on their own is as foolish as the assumption that everyone is too stupid.

The question to ponder is this; Are selfish and callous enough to let those who failed to prepare, or for whatever reason simply could not, perish?

Mebbe not, but he played one on the radio, and that was sufficient.
Eleanore and Francis Perkins, otoh-----.

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Yeah, I can't wait to read it.

At this point Social Security has been so demonized and politicized that I would never trust state or local school boards or individual teachers to teach kids about SS with any degree of uniformity or honesty. Look at what has happened with evolution.

Nailer is full of s&it.

Millions of Americans who lived through the Depression felt strongly enough to re-elect him an unprecedented three times. Only a myopic fool would discount Social Security, arguably the most powerful tool cementing together American loyalty to the concept of the United States since Hamilton's decision to make the American currency good for all debts public and private.

And anyone who knows about FDR's creation of a place for his fellow "polios" in Warm Springs Georgia knows about his ability to connect with others who were victims of his disease.

A radical leftist wouldn't require elaboration.

Humor me. I'm curious to see whether you can transcend the meaningless to ambiguous one liners you rely on.

Yeah I would not trust school boards with SS.

Am not. The New Deal was a minimalist appeasement to keep the mob from rebellion and as Pio pointed out FDR was a great salesman. He was also a great leader and it was our dominant position at the end of WWII and the myth of that and our post war dominance, not New Deal SS, that provided your cement.

Come on now Nailer...time for some expansion, distillation. Yeah! Elaboration!

Humor yourself which is what you do on a regular basis. For example, your second sentence.

"Minimalist appeasement" aside, it was revolutionary for its time and achieved its objective of pulling most of our elderly out of penury. That's something that a dominant economy doesn't even address.

I knew you couldn't do it.

The New Deal covered about half the populace. No need to noblesse oblige any more gold than is necessary to maintain control of the mob.

Yeah whatever. You are on SS or will be soon. And we will never get rid of it nor Medicare.

You're correct. I'm unable to humor you. :cool:

Particularly Texas schoolboards. Kansas might run a close second.

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No I'm not, nor will I be unless Congress makes my pension part of SS.

Deals which were friendly to the common man.

Promotion of unions.

Fair Labor Act.

Large government employment.

SSA

Help to tenant farmers and migrant laborers.

As I said before, it was revolutionary. Part of your problem seems to be a failure to view the New Deal in context. Nothing like it had ever been done before or even tried and the results were spectacularly successful.

Plus he is ignorant of Roosevelt's genuine feeling for those not as well off as he was.

And whether or the New Deal worked or not is not really the point.

You can be friendly without being a friend.

The deals being made in parts of Europe were revolutionary.

Now we're looking at paying the price of the New Deal not being a good deal unless something revolutionary occurs soon.

I guess you're talking about the rise of fascism or perhaps the consolidation of power by the Soviets. These are false equivalencies at best and completely irrelevant at worst. But then that's your stock in trade here.

Evolutionary, not revolutionary. It's need for periodic updating or tweaking is no reason to denigrate Social Security. No program can be expected to exist in its original form over a long period of time. Social Security is over 80 years old.

The same anger and cynicism that fuels the Trump movement seems to have touched other sorts of folks, including Nailer. Politics is the art of the possible, a saying too much forgotten. The ability of the government to spend in the 30's was not limitless, and the forces of conservatism, reaction, and authoritarianism were not powerless. Anyone can think up better ways to do things; not so many can make them happen.

The fear and loathing of the right wing gaggle i mentioned is waxing now, and disparagement of social security can only fuel their determination to tear it down.

There's been an ongoing campaign to return the country to the industrial feudalism of the latter 1800s by those who can never have too much and the idiots that carry their water.

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Not talking about fascism. Talking about the social contract between the rulers and the ruled.

Where have I denigrated SS?

I pointed out my view of FDR and the Democrat's New Deal prior to this primary season.

The only problem Kansas has with school boards are politicians trying to second guess them and constant funding cuts.

They'd be happy with pre 1929, but with all the modern amenities.

That's me. Problem is, anything saved over the past 30 years has been decimated by inflation and the stock market fluctuations.

Unless you made lots of money and saved a big chunk of it, you couldn't' have possibly saved enough. Most folks didn't make that kind of money.

Far from revolutionary and neither specific nor codified and which no government is obliged to implement and honor. Magna Carta was a great deal more "revolutionary".

Yes, why would anyone suspect you were denigrating Social Security when, in a thread titled Social Security, you claim that FDR was "not a friend of the common man", that the New Deal, of which SS is a central component, "wasn't a good deal" and that it was a "minimalist appeasement" of the "mob"? A person would have to be crazy to think you were denigrating Social Security.

Indeed they would. :cool:

Indeed. And the masses are too powerless and busy trying to make ends meet to do anything about it. History...repeating itself.