An alternative approach to solving the Social Security mess

[Richard 23]

Quote by: tivodan1116 And therein lies the mess. Gorgo and others think that "Fixing Social Security" means ensuring that future generations can continue to be leeches on the rest of society by sitting on their rear ends and doing nothing while collecting a handout merely due to their age. I think "Fixing Social Security" means ending the taking by force of money from my pocket to service a system that is inherently unfair.

Are you ok with elderly people living below the poverty line or homeless?
It might be possible to follow the rules work low wage all your life and wind up poor
People generally don't choose to be poor on purpose. It's not fun.
I'm not proving anything here, just saying it's possible.


Should we leave it up to the free market (to help out)?
Should they be die "on the street?" (out of sight)
Should we offer to put them to sleep?
Or shame them into doing the right thing?
Force them?

Let nature take its course?
Bring back poorhouses?
Orphanages?
Debtor's prison?
Jail for vagrancy?

I'm asking because it's going to happen. I don't know about
pre-Industrial, but since the migration to cities we have had
plenty of poor. Did we just let them die? I really don't know.

No matter what people are taught, how often they are nagged,
someone's going to fall through the cracks and then what?
Someone's going to wind up saving nothing or losing everything.
Thieves, hucksters, stupidity, luck, any number of reasons.

Social Security goes farther than the useless oldies.

What about a family that loses the primary or sole income provider?
Tell them they should have thought ahead?
No survior benefits?

And disability benefits? For leeches only?
Tell them they were supposed to buy insurance?


These are issues that the free market isn't concerned with.

Should we bother with other useless members of society?
Downs syndrome, mentally retarded, crippled, stupid?

Should we bother with vets with no arms and legs?
What about the Gulf War Syndrome,
DU exposure, Agent Orange?


The attitude a society has for its weakest members
reveals something about a society. I forget what.

Finally, an elderly person who has worked up to retirement
could be thought of as an externality; a corporation passed
the responsibility onto society. Does society do likewise?

Externalities can include a dead breadwinner from externalized
waste products, accidents, etc.


Before Social Security, poverty rates for old folks was something
like 50%, it's closer to 20% since that time. I'd argue that it has
outperformed expectations. Other than the occasional tweak, it
mostly runs itself.

One way or another we will have to deal with the misery that
accompanies poverty. With poverty comes hatred for and
dehumization of the ... individual.

I actually prefer forking over a slice on the off chance that among
the leeches is someone like me or my mom or dad. Something
went wrong and now they're in a world of hurt. So I forgive them.

I don't want to become so dehumanized that I can walk past
people who are out on the sidewalk because they have no shelter
and no food. That makes it easier to tolerate other behaviors.

I know that's a lot to dump on you, and I'm sorry. This issue is
so disturbing to me, I don't like to imagine all these scenarios.
I can't help thinking of black and white ... films.

Just don't say "Let em eat cake." People get violent.

[Mr.Vicchio]

Private accounts won't leave people out on the streets. Quit with the scaremongering. "OMG Bush and his pals want to just leave people high and dry suffering in the cold, how COULD you agree to such a horrid thing"

Makes me sick people turn off their brains and allow themselves to be pulled by the nose with such outlandish, and absurd imagery.

[Richard 23]

Quote by: Gorgo Tivodan, you think you are alone in the world and create your great wealth by yourself. You are not and do not. Society provides a great deal so that you can have whatever it is that you have and look down on those that work harder than you ever could for nothing.

I agree with you but understand why this assertion pisses people off.
He might succeed and that's great. He may have gotten help but we
didn't sign a contract and attach strings. So it's understandable.

If Tivodan sits on his ass but was smart enough to inherit money, he's fine.
If Tivodan works his ass off and makes a couple mil, he's fine.
If Tivodan works his ass off but never gets a high wage breakthru, he's dead.
If Tivodan has lots of money in the stock market and it crashes, his bank
goes belly up, his son rips him off for crack, if he trades it all for magic
beans and they don't work, he's dead.

I hope if this happens, Social Security or something like it, makes sure that
he's ok. He's not going to get to be a welfare queen, but I don't want him to
starve. I don't want to dangle a loogie over him and say, told you so!
I'm willing to cover him even if he would refuse to cover me.
I'm not somehow superior, I just have a different view.
I might be pissed if I'm on the street and he said it's
my fault I ended up poor but bad things happen.


So you can congratulate him, ask for a loan, show him pictures of starving people, bring one to his home, but if he doesn't care or won't allow himself to care you can't make him do it. He may dislike Social Security, it might burn him up to help lazy or stupid people, but I hope he's in the minority and collectively we decide not to ignore preventable suffering.

If the U.S. gets too socialist or whatever, he can take his fabulous wealth somewhere else where they value his right to keep every penny for himself. I'm sure there's plenty of room out there. I don't mean "get out!" It's up to you.

[Richard 23]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Private accounts won't leave people out on the streets. Quit with the scaremongering. "OMG Bush and his pals want to just leave people high and dry suffering in the cold, how COULD you agree to such a horrid thing" Makes me sick people turn off their brains and allow themselves to be pulled by the nose with such outlandish, and absurd imagery.

Asking a question is not scaremongering.
Nobody's pulling anyone's nose.
I believed those to be honest questions.

Absurd? Really? Homeless people do exist.
If people have no money then what is to
prevent them from ending up on the street?

People don't generally live rent free, they are eventually
warned then evicted by marhalls if they are unable to pay.

I'm not saying that private accounts = old people without money.
That is irrelevant. Forget Social Security, private accounts, etc.

This is as simple as it can get.
In the absense of everything else....

What do you do with old people who have no money?
Skip it if you deny a person with no money is not possible.

What about Disability and Survivor benefits?
Are these things that society should try to provide?

I'll shut up for awhile and let people take it or leave it....

[Mr.Vicchio]

Homelessness does in deed exsist.

And it exsists witht he current welfare systems in place. Perhaps the question should be asked "with all these poor and homeless people, is welfare really working or is it really part of the problem?"

[Rainbow]

Quote by: Scribbler1 The only thing that works with SS is the fact that most people don't save squat, and if left to their own devices they would be the grasshopper more often than the ant. The only unfair thing is that it penalizes the people who CAN intelligently manage their finances to a degree that their return would exceed SS bennies.

That seems to be very accurate. I agree.

How to solve Social Security "mess" ?
Maybe we should start all over, again ? :-)))

[kharmajunkie]

Vic, I'm with you on fixing SS but GW is not the guy for the job. He's proven over the past four years that he knows nothing about the economy by turning a surplus into a deficit. You can spin that any way you want and evoke 9/11 a few times as a reason for our recent struggles but at the end of the day, we have a tax & spend republicorpacrat who alienates us from the rest of the world with his arrogant attitude and whose only real talent is as a motivator. If that's what we needed then we should've nominated Mike Ditka.

[Mr.Vicchio]

Kharma,

Spin this little fact:

1999-2001 US Economy was in a depression.

Period. We went to war, twice. What do you expect would happen to the economy? PS: There was never any surplus.

[kharmajunkie]

No surplus huh. You need to source that statement Vic. Bottom line, Clinton and a Republican congress gave us balanced budgets for 4-5 years. You guys nominate a so-called conservative and
he pisses it away. You can blather on about the wars all you want, they obviously had an impact,
but in the end, GW doesn't know how to work within a budget; the very thing him and your ilk accuse
Democrats of. The man failed in every business venture he started and his only real success is as a
"war president" (his words)

[donkrabbit]

Quote by: Scribbler1 My point is that, if nothing else changed and only SS was eliminated you would have a massive increase in welfare payments. Even with the government allowing for voluntary savings, many people wouldn't save anything.

That may very well be true- if nothing else changed and if SS were eliminated. But the discussion among people who are opposed to SS deals with how to abolish SS in a way that does the least amount of harm as possible. People will lose money. Government programs tend to have negative effects like that. Nevertheless, the string has to be cut somewhere. Better sooner than later.

Quote by: Scribbler1 I agree that in a perfest world. if there was still a SS program you would be able to collect dividends (or something like that). But I'm just talking about SS as it exists or the typical politician plan to eliminate it.

In a perfect world SS wouldn't exist. Property rights would be acknowledged.

Quote by: Scribbler1 Like it or not, the people apout to collect SS have been promised ALL of their lives "pay into this and we WILL allow you to collect" and now they are seeing "oh well, too bad you lose".

I don't disagree that SS is a negative program that should never have been adopted. How do you propose to end it without causing some harm? It can't just be allowed to snowball.

Quote by: Scribbler1 If you want to change X how will you address Y and Z, which are also affected by this change?

The issue should not be limited to abolishing SS. The discussion should be on the abolishment of all government transfer-payment programs.

Quote by: Scribbler1 Apples and oranges. Pick an example that doesn't include so much death, OK?

I was just comparing two economic misconceptions that are based on the Broken-Window Fallacy.

[donkrabbit]

Quote by: Gorgo There is no social security "mess." http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...10&ItemID=6823

That's irrelevant to my argument. Social Security should be abolished because the theory it is based on is immoral.

[donkrabbit]

Quote by: Gorgo What I think, Vicchio, is that you don't think you take other people's money. You think are all alone in the world.

Do you acknowledge a difference in voluntary transactions and forced transactions?

[donkrabbit]

Quote by: Catch 22 Tivo what’s the matter with providing a general basic income to those of us who biult this society but are now too old to continue working. I don’t see why you think grandma and grandpa should be forced to live on cardboard just because they didn’t have investing smarts or were put in an economic position in which they couldn’t save up great deals of money. Last I checked we as a society valued the welfare of others, especially that of the elderly.

Nothing is inherently "wrong" with it. What is wrong is forcing somebody to give money to "charitable" causes, instead of allowing them to do so voluntarily.

What is your opposition to abolishing all government transfer-payment programs and allowing people to spend their money as they wish? That way, the people who value "the welfare of others, especially that of the elderly" can give money to appropriate causes in accordance with their valuation.

I don't see why we should lump every individual in America into the collective "society" just so that we can define our collective "values" and then collectively spend "our" money accordingly.

[donkrabbit]

Quote by: fushigi This is a point that is often unexplored. With private accounts come private decisions about how to invest that can turn out badly. In a world with private accounts, what happens to the sucker who invests in the most aggressive plan and loses his shirt at age 65? Maybe he can turn to his family for support. But what if he has no family support? Do we simply let him suffer?

Are you arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to make the decisions about how to spend their money because they might use poor judgement?

I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging the fact that risky investments entail risk. The benefits and consequences of these risks fall entirely on the person making them. If a person wants to avoid risks, he as the option of putting all of his money into a savings account, or investing it in government bonds.

[Mr.Vicchio]

Kharma, do you what a surplus is?

The government overtaxing you.

[tivodan1116]

Donkrabbit says it perfectly.

There is nothing wrong with charity. What is wrong is FORCED charity at the threat of violence. This is not charity at all, it is merely theft. The purpose of the funds you are stealing from me does not make a difference. I work for the Public Defender's Office. If one of our lawyers says that a person stole a package of diapers to use on their baby because they are poor, does it absolve them of the crime? Theft for charitable purposes is still theft.

End Social Security. Everyone who is now exempt from donating money to a wasteful government handout will now have that money to do with as they please.

[kharmajunkie]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Kharma, do you what a surplus is? The government overtaxing you.

Talk about a flipflop. Let me get this straight, you guys (along with the Clintonites) bragged about balancing budgets a few years ago but now your brushing it under the table because it
doesn't fit in with this administration's war platform. Yea, bitchin' about taxes make you a real unique
patriot Vic. We're overtaxed. What are you the minister of the obvious?

[Mr.Vicchio]

I'm not, the budgets weren't balanced. They were the result of the abnormal "tech bubble" and the economic boom that went with it. When it busted, so did the governments budget. The budget was all ready busted before Bush even TOOK office. Which is something you are conviently ignoreing.

[kharmajunkie]

I'm not ignoring; it's news to me. I've heard our government officials from both sides of the aisle brag about our balanced budgets of the nineties. Keep defending your boy while you remember that he never ran a successful business before politics and now we're putting our economy in his hands.
Apparently our elected officials don't have to worry about doing their jobs properly since people are so willing to elect the mediocre; how pragmatic of the American voter to settle for average or below with who runs our country.

[Mr.Vicchio]

Of course it's news to you.

You don't read the news, you have it told to you, and you accept it without question.