Before It’s News – by Josey Wales
Our Government has proven not to be a reliable partner when it comes time to protect our social safety net.
It has been reported for quite some time now, trillions of our tax dollars have been looted by Wall Street, wars, global corporations and the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population. The economic crisis has made this blatant fact much more evident to the average person. Now that these elaborate schemes are coming undone and major cuts to vital social programs are beginning to be implemented, the American public is going to get a harsh wake up call.
Every dollar generated by the 1983 Social Security tax increase, money ostensibly earmarked and saved for the retirement of the baby-boom generation, is gone, it has been spent by our government.
The government’s emptying of the Social Security Trust Fund is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public.
They, the government, have embezzled all surplus Social Security revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike, and spent the money on wars and other government programs. None of that money was saved or invested in anything.
The Videos in this article By Jim Gries will help you understand how this may directly affect you in your retirement years.
The Social Security program is broke. The cost of paying full benefits in 2010 was $49 billion more than Social Security tax revenue for the year. So the government had to borrow $49 billion (probably from China) in order to pay full benefits. And the gap between the cost of benefits and Social Security tax revenue will get bigger and bigger in the years ahead.
The government IOU’s in the trust fund are not like the marketable U.S. Treasury bonds held by China and America’s other creditors. Those marketable bonds can be converted into cash at any time by selling them in the open market.
The IOUs in the trust fund are like a handwritten note that a bank robber might leave behind in the empty vault, stating how much money he has stolen. The note tells the bank how much money is missing, but it won’t help the bank get the money back.
Similarly, the IOUs in the trust fund are a record of how much Social Security money was taken and spent on other programs. But the IOUs are not marketable, and they cannot be converted into cash. And the interest income, that the SSA claims the government is paying, is not cash interest. It is in the form of more of the same worthless IOUs that the trust fund already holds.
The harsh fact is that Social Security does not have any cash reserves. That is why, during the government shut down, President Obama said that he couldn’t guarantee that Social Security checks would go out on time without a budget agreement, because “There might not be enough money in the coffers to cover them.”
The government owes Social Security $2.7 trillion, but the government is both unable and unwilling to repay the stolen money.
Social Security is probably the most widely discussed, but least understood, government program. Confusion is pervasive even among policymakers. In a recent letter to President Obama, a group of self-described experts claimed Social Security cannot run deficits and does not contribute to the federal budget deficit.
1. But contrary to such claims, the latest Social Security
Trustees’ report shows Social Security will run
annual cash-flow deficits until 2036.
2. These deficits, which began in 2009, could add trillions to the
federal debt held by the public and hundreds of billions in annual interest costs.
How could the experts be so wrong? This commentary explains the arcane budgetary treatment of Social Security and addresses
some of the most common trust fund fallacies.
Using Social Security as his prime example, Professor Friedman explodes the myth that the major expansions in government resulted from popular demand. In a speech delivered more than 30 years ago, he directly relates this dynamic to today’s health care debate. This is where we are today, listen to Milton Friedman’s warnings about Obamacare.
As you saw in the video above, not only is social security just another form of a tax, now comes the Obamacare tax as well.
According to the Social Security .gov website, this increase in cost results from population aging, not because we are living longer, but because birth rates dropped from three to two children per woman. Importantly, this shortfall is basically stable after 2035; adjustments to taxes or benefits that offset the effects of the lower birth rate may restore solvency for the Social Security program on a sustainable basis for the foreseeable future.
One useful way to describe the effect of the change in the aged dependency ratio and the resulting effect on the ratio of beneficiaries to workers is to consider the implied number of workers per beneficiary. For the past 35 years, there have been about 3.3 workers per beneficiary (consistent with the ratio of 30 beneficiaries per 100 workers). After 2030, the ratio will be two workers per beneficiary (consistent with 50 beneficiaries per 100 workers).
When individuals look at the financial status of the Social Security program, they often ask, “Will I get my benefits?” Assuming no future change in the law, this question can be answered directly by focusing on the “solvency” of the Social Security trust funds. Solvency for the Social Security program is defined as the ability of the trust funds at any point in time to pay the full scheduled benefits in the law on a timely basis.
Because the ability of these programs to pay benefits is directly dependent on the availability of assets in their respective trust funds, the existence of assets over time in the future is the critical indicator of solvency.
Taken from the 2009 Trustees Report, Chart 1 shows that under the trustees’ intermediate assumptions (alternative II), the combined assets of the OASI and DI Trust Funds will soon peak at over 350 percent of the annual cost of the program, but will then decline, reaching exhaustion in 2037. The relatively more optimistic assumptions of the low-cost alternative I show solvency for the program throughout the 75-year projection period, while the relatively pessimistic high-cost alternative III assumptions show trust fund exhaustion even sooner than 2037.
Embezzlement is a crime, and every participant (all the presidents and members of Congress who supported the practice) knew they were committing a crime against the American people as they used the people’s Social Security money as general revenue over the past 25 years.
Back in the 1930s the people never demanded the creation of “Social Security”, nor did the people in 1913 demand the creation of the “Federal Reserve Bank”, nor did the people demand implementation of the “Civil Rights Act (s)” of the 1960s, “Medicare” in the 1970s, nor “ObamaCare” in 2013.
It was all foisted on us to grow big government.
Bill Clinton was the last president to steal the SS funds,the coffers of which were overflowing with cash covering SS for at least 30 years out.
SS will always be there, checks will always be issued because the government cannot eliminate the tax, they need it for revenue—but SS will
become worth less and less as time passes.
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The govt. can make all the excuses they want. They forced us all to pay into social security by reciving a pay check by working , we had no choice if we wanted to or not, they just took it out of every paycheck. Seems to me that the govt. should be paying interest to all that have paid into that damn program just like any one else would have to if we took out a loan. Merhaps the govt. employees should all be taking a pay decrease untill all of these trillions are paid back to us all that have been lied to and robbed by the crooked govt. as they are the thieves that promised us all social security and that is the bottom line – simple as that,the govt. owes us all who have paid into that SSI fund and were promised it back. How about obama stop all of those fancy parties paid for by the tax payers, how about the retirement fund and body guards being paid for by the publics tax dollars for all those ex presidents being taken away, that would be a start seems to me , not much but a start all the same.
In 1964 the Good Demorats voted to loot the SS fund… They spent it on the Great Society and Vietnam. Thanks to all who are and voted Demorat. The party that keeps on taking.