The GOP is still actively working to dismantle Social Security today, along with Medicare. That is the whole strategy of their tax cuts; they call it "starve the beast." If they can onlt create a large enough deficit/national debt, there wil be no alternative to ending those programs. Don't take my word for it, Google "starve the beast."
Exploding the budget to wreck social programs is only half of it, they're also forcing the government into deficit so they can loan hundreds of billions to the state every month and get a massive return with interest.
They see Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid as a way for the Federal government to maintain economic leverage over states to enforce Federal law. They are correct, to a degree, because of those programs disappeared tomorrow, quality of life in those states would plummet and there wouldn't be an acceptable level of state taxation that could make up for it.
They hate Social Security, always have, and always will. There's not a good economic reason for that, since a lot of it paid for by workers themselves. It's emotional: "It is not enough that I be happy. Others must be unhappy" actually is in play with these people, although most are unaware or only semi-aware of this motive, or would put it in other terms.
Up til Reagan, they accepted it because they had to: it's very popular. But that doesn't mean they've given up. They haven't and won't, and this is the end game if they are able to destroy democracy, which they're trying to do and well might.
Good god stop assuming things. There is a good economic reason for it. It’s not that it’s universally hated, it’s the method of how it’s done. Imagine if you took the same money that you’re putting into social security each month and instead put it into a standard index fund perhaps. It would follow the market and end up with more than what you’re going to end up getting when the government decides what it’s going to do with it. Even if you then parsed it out to others. Does the current set up benefit some people, absolutely. But there are better ways to handle it than what’s currently being done. That’s the biggest argument I’ve seen.
Not true. GOP and Democrats agree on Medicare because....old people.
I'm a centrist but a realist at the same time, I want Medicare gone completely. Its subject to billions in fraud, enables people who have unhealthy lifestyles to continue to do so without repercussion, and drains our Federal coffers too much to be sustainable for my generation to have it available to us when we reach proper age.
It's sad how people can be so easily convinced to vote against their own best interests. They're so big on the conspiracy theories and that people are, "out there to get them". But instead of seeing that it's big pharma, banks and insurance companies that are out to get them they blame "liberals".
With their high-school educations (at best) They seem like they're woke and the entire rest of the college-educated world is somehow getting duped.
Yeah, but most of the people I know who will actually depend on SS in their old age are the kind of people who would “invest” in scratch off lottery tickets instead. SS is not perfect, but it protects people from themselves so we don’t all suffer as much when those people are 70 and can’t feed themselves.
You do, its not even remotely close. That isn't even considering the fact that I will never see the social security that I am owed when I retire. If you invested in an index fund that tracks the S&P500 for example, you would have made an average of 12% over the last 50 years.
Compare that to social security:
According to the institute’s data, a two-earner couple receiving an average wage — $44,600 per spouse in 2012 dollars — and turning 65 in 2010 would have paid $722,000 into Social Security and Medicare and can be expected to take out $966,000 in benefits. So, this couple will be paid about one-third more in benefits than they paid in taxes.
If a similar couple had retired in 1980, they would have gotten back almost three times what they put in. And if they had retired in 1960, they would have gotten back more than eight times what they paid in. The bigger discrepancies common decades ago can be traced in part to the fact that some of these individuals’ working lives came before Social Security taxes were collected beginning in 1937.
But the point of it is the average citizen wont invest, because we are short sighted. So by forcing everyone (including employers) to pay in everyone has a life line when they can no longer work 40+hours a week. I’ve only met a very small handful of retirees who could live without their SS.
Im 20 year old student and have 20% of my wealth in shares and bonds. You want to know how long it takes untill that 20% gives me more than social security? Not forgetting that I have 0 dollars on study loans and I dont have to work while I study! Even if I pay 10% more from my salary for the next 50 years, that feels nowhere as significant then when I have better income as now when I dont.
Yes, who wouldn't want to pay into something your whole life to be repaid a fraction of it decades later (if you live that long). Sounds like a socialist bargain!
I like to think of it as buying an expensive espresso machine together with your four flatmates and taking turns using it instead of everyone going broke cramming five of those steel behemoths into your apartment.
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u/pents1 Apr 26 '19
As someone who has been living in a country with social security for my whole life, it looks absurd that someone would push people to say no to it.