Back by popular demand, more political blogging! So, I read something today that just made me shake my head. I preface this with the recognition that my grandparents have benefited greatly from Social Security. In typical Democrat rhetoric, Obama recently trumped up how Social Security needs help, and the rich are certainly the people to make sure that it happens. While none of this is unusual, I love his statement, he wants to "protect" senior citizens "who have earned the right to retire with dignity." I somehow missed the part of the constitution that guarantees that we can retire with dignity. Since when did retiring become a right?
"A secure retirement is no longer a guarantee for the middle class," he said -- "because Washington is not working to preserve this fundamental part of the American dream." Hold on, you're saying that founding fathers wanted to the people to depend on the government for their livelihood? No, I really doubt that. And the government has the best interest of the American public as their top priority?
He did say something I actually agree with. He said Social Security shouldn't be raided to pay for other stuff. Which comes down to having a responsible government who doesn't just blow all my future earnings today.
4 comments:
agreed, of course I am a capitalist and if it were up to me we would do away with the system entirely. Eventually don't people have to make their own destiny? At very least they could privatize it and let me do what I want with "my money". Unfortunately the current state of the system is such that if there is social security when we retire it will only be there because our kids are contributing, everything anyone in our generation has contributed will be long gone.
This is Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin’s stance on SS:
The Constitution grants no authority to the federal government to administrate a Social Security system. The Constitution Party advocates phasing out the entire Social Security program, while continuing to meet the obligations already incurred under the system. Until the current Social Security system can be responsibly phased out, we propose that:
• The Social Security tax is not a "rainy day" fund which politicians can pirate, or from which they can borrow to cover their errors and pay for their excesses.
• Individuals who have contributed to Social Security be allowed to withdraw those funds and transfer them into an IRA or similar investments under the control of the individual contributor.
• Any sort of merger between the U.S. Social Security System and that of any foreign country must be banned, so the distribution of benefits will not go to persons who have not qualified for payments under American law as legal residents.
• Earning limitations on persons aged 62 and over be removed, so that they may earn any amount of additional income without placing their benefits at risk.
• Those provisions of the Social Security system which penalize those born during the "notch years" between 1917 and 1926 be repealed, and that such persons be placed on the same benefit schedules as all other beneficiaries.
We support the right of individuals to choose between private retirement and pension programs, either at their place of employment or independently.
We need to start to reign in this out of control government and neither McCain nor Obama are willing to do this!
Don't you love how most of those in our generation know that SS is a lost cause? We're not planning on it... but, it would be nice to not have to pay and be able to invest those funds in a retirement account of our choosing. Yes. That would be nice.
2 brief thoughts.
1. Are you really sure your grandparents benefitted from it? I mean in terms of deleterious effects would they have been better off under the old system.
2. As to raiding, there are two questions. One, what spending is good. Two, what form of funding that spending is good. I work with a fellow who argues the two are completely orthogonal, so you shouldn't look at the source for the spending. In other words, no we shouldn't raid it because we should be spending less, but not we shouldn't raid it because we got it for a particular purpose.
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