Ron Paul: On Social Security, Even Though It's Unconstitutio

Stand back! He's channeling the "Revisionist History of the Sovereign Citizens of the Plutocracy of the Founding Fathers" playbook...again...

pineinthegrass wrote: I wonder how liberals would respond today if President Obama came up with such a unique solution?

I KNOW how the conservatives would react. They'd be calling for his impeachment.

Oh wait, they already are. :Whistle

Democracy4Sale wrote: Stand back! He's channeling the "Revisionist History of the Sovereign Citizens of the Plutocracy of the Founding Fathers" playbook...again...

I was quoting directly from Raees' article from the Social Secuirity Administration.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/court.html

I didn't even express an opinion on it.

But thanks for your idiotic canned response.

There is not a single doubt in anyone's mind that the decision reached regarding Social Security was tainted by the threat that FDR and his New Deal Democrats held over the head of the Supreme Court, is there? Regardless of whether you ascribe to "the ends justify the means" philosophy or not, given the decision a year earlier when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for one segment of the population to be taxed for the sole benefit of another segment of the population, now could one argue otherwise? The taxes levied and collected from the current workers yield them no benefits, all of that money, and then some, is being spent for the sole benefit of one segment of the population of which they are not a part. They, in turn, will be dependent upon the tax remittances of others when they retire and have no personal property rights at all regarding their contributions given that, in its 1937 ruling, the Supreme Court said that these payroll taxes are not in any way different from every other tax that is levied by the federal government and that the programs are in no manner different from any other appropriations of the Congress.

What does that mean? What that means is that you could pay the taxes for 50 years and wind up with absolutely nothing if a future Congress decided to eliminate the programs. Your only future security lies in hoping that the posterity doesn't change their mind at some point because the programs have become unsustainable from a fiscal perspective. That's the truth of the Supreme Court ruling regarding Social Security. What they said was that your payroll taxes were the same as your income taxes and that those payroll taxes could be used however Congress decided to use them. They could appropriate that money to build bombs and ships and not pay you a penny of it when you retire if that is what they wish to do. That is why Social Security is constitutional - the taxes are general revenue taxes, not tax revenue which must be used for a specific purpose for a specific group of people. If the latter were actually the case, then the program wouldn't be constitutional because the power to do such a thing isn't one of the powers which was delegated to the federal government.

Two words: Para graph

(They even used them in the Declaration of Independence)

You spelled Para Graph wrong. It's paragraph. You're welcome. And you forgot a period at the end of the second sentence.

For someone with the nick of LOL you certainly have no sense of humor.

Raees wrote: Two words: Para graph

(They even used them in the Declaration of Independence)

Edited it to add a paragraph just for you Raees. Have any comment on the content of the post you'd care to share with us now?

The reality is Social Security is here and I've been paying into it for decades. Arguing about whether it's constitutional on a local message board is tilling at windmills, just like arguing about whether the elephant sitting in your living room is legally there.

I've got friends who have taken their social security early. I don't understand the math but they say if they live past 74 or 76 they will come out ahead. Or maybe it's if they die by 74 or 76 they will come out ahead.

Yep, the reality is that we have a system that is systematically bankrupting the union. We can either choose to change it before it causes a huge fiscal problem and have the generations that are most responsible be the ones who bear the greatest burdens as a result of the change or do nothing and pass the responsibility for bearing that burden onto our children, their children, their children's children and on down the line impoverishing successive generations until the system collapses due to its flawed foundation.

I would choose to do what is best for the posterity, even at the expense of my own future. Even if it means that I can never retire and have to work at whatever I can find until the day my body fails me and my eyes do not open to see the sun rise the next day. Ponzi's fail because there comes a point where the new investors simply can't afford to buy into the scheme at the level necessary to give earlier investors their promised returns. It is not a matter of if the scheme will eventually collapse, it is simply a matter of when. Both the tax rate and the amount of income subject to being taxed have already more than doubled in my lifetime, and even that isn't enough to sustain the program because the foundation upon which it was built is, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from the one used for a Ponzi.

Every worker currently bears an additional 15% tax on their earnings above and beyond what the federal government says that they are paying in income taxes to fund these schemes and the federal government will still have to borrow an additional $2 Trillion dollars from somewhere in order to make good on their IOUs that the "Trust Funds" hold as assets. There are no "Trust Funds" - the federal government has, like the prodigal son, already squandered the money that was supposed to be there. Your Social Security, and mine, is not in any manner, shape or form, secured at the present time. The federal government has been pulling a long con for 80 years now and there comes a point in time when one generation will have to put a stop to it and restructure the program so that it actually takes the money that is contributed and holds the funds contributed over a lifetime of labor for the people who contributed it rather than burdening the next generation with the responsibility to contribute the funds necessary for that purpose. One, perhaps two, generations are going to be the ones hit the hardest by the change and I feel it is only moral and proper for those generations to be the ones who could have done what was necessary and decided to kick the can down the road instead. The generations most responsible are the one that is already retired and the one that is entering the age of retirement; and these are the generations who should pay the harshest penalties. Not GenX, GenY or the Millenials, the Baby Boomers and their parents are the ones who really dropped the ball.