Billionaire's Scam: SS won't exist when Millennial's get old

Gee, Bob, if we can build a zero-reply thread around the usual crap from the NationReview, here's one for ya:

Conservatives’ millennial scam: How young people are tricked by billionaires
Many young people think Social Security won't exist when they're old. It's a lie -- and here's where it comes from
Tim Donovan

According to the gospel of the “fiscal conservative, socially liberal” crowd, welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare are ticking time bombs, and threaten the wider economy. In this narrative, as our society ages, demographic destiny will bring monstrous debt levels, putting us on the same path toward economic stagnation and debt default that has plagued so many of Western Europe’s social democracies.

No single individual has done more to mislead left-leaning Americans about the impending-crisis of “unfunded liabilities” in healthcare and Social Security as billionaire debt-alarmist Pete Peterson. Financier of the liberal astroturfing outfits “Third Way,” “Fix the Debt,” and the deeply misguided “The Can Kicks Back,” Peterson has engineered a brilliant campaign to create the illusion of an imminent crisis from expanding federal debt. Every poll that show millennials don’t expect Social Security benefits when they eventually retire is evidence of Peterson’s overwhelming success.

Polished and well-financed, Peterson’s groups received scant criticism from the left until fairly recently, successfully sowing the impression of consensus around the impossible “fiscal conservative, socially liberal” position they quietly promote — yet tellingly, Peterson’s groups hardly ever offer solutions to this impending “debt crisis” that don’t involve deeply slashing social programs. Peterson’s two-pronged approach is quite simple: summon absurd figures representing our future debt, and combine those ominous numbers with an eager willingness to lump Republicans and Democrats together when parceling out the “blame.”

It’s a brilliant piece of political theater — it appeals to our incipient desire for “above-the-fray” moderation, while allowing Peterson to effectively disguise the redistributive effects of his proposals as just more bad-tasting medicine that adults surely know they must swallow if they want to get well. In his 2004 bestseller “Running on Empty” (which earned a glowing Salon review from Farhad Manjoo, who unironically calls the book”a tour de force”) Peterson blames both the Democrats and Republicans equally for our current “crisis.” In Peterson’s mind, the Democrats are to blame for cynically — irresponsibly? — buying the votes of the Poors with the promise of cushy handouts like healthcare and elderly support (the nerve!), while the Republicans are to blame for giving sweet tax cuts to their rich benefactors before dealing with the monstrous fiscal burden those conniving liberals created. Frequently referring to federal debt on an “infinite time horizon,” Peterson borrows an estimate of $45 trillion in unfunded liabilities from the totally-not-biased American Enterprise Institute.

Despite projected shortfalls (as baby boomers swell the ranks of retirees), Social Security still enjoys a trillion-dollar surplus. And did you know that there’s a maximum contribution limit to Social Security, meaning most of the super-rich contribute significantly less (proportionally) than the average American (and which makes it look like a suspiciously regressive tax)? By simply making the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share we could cover Social Security’s potential budget shortfall for the next 75 years, without taking a penny from any Americans but those who can most afford it. Alternatively, we could naturalize the millions of immigrants already living and working here, expanding the base of young workers paying into the Social Security program and decreasing the shortfall caused by the retiring baby boomer generation.

Social Security problem solved... (Exactly the way I've been saying for the last 20 years...) Remove the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes, (and include income from capital gains), and the problem is solved, for at least the next 100 years, if not longer.

Of course, it will send the Randroids, Americans For Progress, Rand & Ron Paul, Club For Growth, and every other right-wing oligarchical "I've got mine, screw you" organization over the edge, but we could do with a lot less of those clowns anyway.

Of course, there will still be Social Security when the millenials retire. You can't take away benefits because seniors vote, more so than most age groups.
Of course, they will see benefits decline due to tricks like under reporting inflation, chained inflation indexes, and increased taxes on benefits to punish the people who did save instead of spend.

OR, the system could be strengthened and supported by the methods I've already suggested.

You and the teabaggers have your agenda...The rest have ours... (Guess which group has more people in it?)

LadyJazzer wrote:
You and the teabaggers have your agenda...The rest have ours... (Guess which group has more people in it?)

So if this is true, the Dems should have no problem taking the House and holding the Senate, right? What will be the excuse if you don't get either?

Statists don't want the program made stronger, they want the populace made more dependent on the government. Social Security is a pay as you go government program where the current workers are taxed to provide subsidies for those that are retired. So what you are actually proposing is that the millennials accept a higher tax bill to provide for the increased benefits of the boomers who did nothing to correct the inherent flaw in the program.

If you want to strengthen the program then take it off of its Ponzi foundation which necessitates that current investors invest an ever larger share of their earnings to provide for an ever increasing amount of subsidies to earlier investors and turn it into a system whereby the worker is setting aside funds for their own retirement instead of paying the costs of subsidizing others. Then it is something that no damn politician can ever take away from them because they have a contractual right to those funds, something that is currently lacking in the system we have.

LadyJazzer wrote: OR, the system could be strengthened and supported by the methods I've already suggested.

You and the teabaggers have your agenda...The rest have ours... (Guess which group has more people in it?)

:banghead: Silly woman. She still believes in the Social Security lockbox.

Silly conservatives...Believe every bit of the bullsh*t the teabaggers are scamming you with.

With your plan the military industrial complex will have the money they need to expand both the air force and navy. They will just give out these IOU's.

The SWHTF long before this and there will be a new gov. and some other system.
Relax.

FredHayek wrote: With your plan the military industrial complex will have the money they need to expand both the air force and navy. They will just give out these IOU's.

They don't need to expand... And I don't need their IOU's...

Silly conservatives...Still believe every bit of the bullsh*t the teabaggers are scamming you with.

"I'll be glad when schools [and social programs] have all the money they need, and the Air Force has to have a bake-sale to build a bomber."