How Can You Cut Programs That People Are Paying For Each Week From Their Pay?

[TheMastersNemesis]

Both Social Security and Medicare are being paid every week, every month & every year by payroll deduction. Present generations have already paid in. Present younger generations are now paying for future benefits. So how can these earned benefits be called essentially welfare. They should ALWAYS be referred to earned paid for benefits that should NEVER be cut.

Plus where is your paycheck deduction going? Will your paycheck deduction be going directly into the accounts of the Kochs, Mercers, Coors, Walmart heirs etc.

[pangaia]

1. You can fool some of the people all of the time.

[PoliticAverse]

2. "Plus where is your paycheck deduction going" - it goes to pay for current recipients.

Social Security (and Medicare) are basically what's known as "pay as you go programs".

See: https://www.nasi.org/learn/socialsecurity/overview

You don't actually have a right to any specific amount of benefits regardless of what you've contributed. Here's
what the Social Security Administration says on the issue:
https://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html

[BigmanPigman]

3. That's how I felt when I became a teacher in CA.

We are one of the 13 states with Social Security Offset. This means that if you ever earned any income and paid into SS you forfeit about 90% of what you were entitled to receive, even if you have enough SS credits. It sucks! I had a completely different career and many jobs before I started teaching in my 30s. All that was taken out of my pay is lost in the wind. Life is NOT fair, especially when the GOP is in control of all 3 branches of government.

[AJT]

4. It's kind of a pay backwards kind of thing. I paid for my parents generation

and my kids generation will be paying for me. That's why the boomers are such a pain, there are a lot more people who will be retired than people paying into the system. It's easy to fix, just raise the cap but that has never been the issue for the right, they won't fix it because they are against the program itself.

[Irish_Dem]

5. They'll start convincing people that Medicare and Soc. Sec. are bad

socialist programs, welfare for old people, etc. And people will buy it.
Demonize the programs like the do with Obamacare.

[marybourg]

7. They are already doing it

and people are already buying it, including someone I know who's on SSD and who told me in all seriousness that 3/4 of the American people are on welfare. I told him they meant him, but he didn't choose to believe it . . . yet.

[Irish_Dem]

11. I would think SSDs are going to be the first ones to go....

Such denial. People keep voting against their own interests.

[msongs]

6. first pack courts with hard core right wingers, then cut programs. voila, the 4th reich nt

[uponit7771]

8. +1

[exboyfil]

9. Social Security was mostly a pay as you go system until the mid-1980s

The trust fund was mainly in place as a buffer. Kind of like most institutions keep cash on hand. The 1983 Social Security agreement was put in place to build up a Trust Fund to pay future retiree benefits. To accomplish this they upped the withholding and made more workers subject to SS. Right now the Trust Fund is sitting on roughly $3T in U,S. Treasuries. Over the next 20 years these Treasuries will need to be paid back at a clip of about $150B/yr. This is if nothing changes. After that 20 years then benefits will have to be reduced to about 70% of current benefits, and you will be back to a true pay as you go system. Another aspect of the change in 1983 was upping the retirement age from 65 to eventually 67.

Now it appears the Republicans don't even plan to honor the debt incurred by the money borrowed from working class people. Since SS is capped at around $115K, those with higher earned income do not pay SS on that higher income. Also SS benefits are heavily tilted to lifetime lower earners in the benefits formula. Note that only earned income is taxed. Capital gains, dividend, interest, inheritance are not taxed by SS. In effect those making about $60 to $115K are carrying a disproportionate share of the burden for our elderly.

A little side note. We payed about $3T for our war in Iraq. At the time the war was proposed, Democrats thought we should raise tax and pay as you go for this voluntary war.

Another side note. The $!50/yr. the new tax plan is costing the Treasury is about what we need to retire the Trust Fund debt. Funny how that worked out.

A couple of more takeaways. Before the increases in defense spending we have about a $500B/yr. structural deficit. We are currently at about a 100% Debt to GDP (one of the highest in the western world). Are Federal tax burden is lower than on a GDP basis than it was in the 1980s. It is currently 17.5% which is lower than during the Clinton administration.

So the short answer is yes. We are basically paying payroll taxes for the rent seeking wealthy in the country.

[Xolodno]

10. Because, people see them as taxes.

Unlike pensions, 401k's, etc. where you "get" what you put in...these programs, which are designed to supplement, not be the defining benefit, you may or may not get what you put into it.

Then there is this, Rethug's love to quote the benefits they are on hook for, but never mention that its already funded. Something I constantly point out....if the Government is on the hook for Social Security, how is it that Social Security CAN go bankrupt and the Federal Government doesn't? If the Fed was truly on the hook, then the entire government would go bankrupt.

Rethugs, want a few things;

1. Kill the employer required contribution....to an extant. Cut it in half and treat the rest as a tax that fuel Rethug spending plans. In other words a tax hike for the Fed, but tax reduction for a business....aka..win-win.

2. Force everyone into private retirement savings and pre-paying health insurance companies. Exact a minimum, but give you the option to put in more..which most will not. Yeah sure, you get what you paid into it...but....what happens if you didn't put in enough? Sucks to be you. And of course, certain Wall Street firms make a killing off the fees.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

12. Republicsns are thugs & thieves.

And no one with the power to police them will do so, since they're cronies of the thugs & thieves, and are mostly thugs & thieves themselves.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Here's the real problem.

Social Security was intended to be one leg of a three legged stool. The other two legs were to be pensions and savings.

Even though far fewer people had traditional pensions than most people suppose, those pensions still were out there. But they've disappeared. 401k plans have replaced them. And a lot of traditional pensions have disappeared because companies have gotten out from under them. I know. I worked long enough to be vested in my company's pension plan and then, Oh gosh! They went bankrupt, shed their pension obligation, and now I (and every other employee) get 1/3 of what I should have gotten. At least I only worked there about 10 years and never really counted on a pension, but I will tell you that I sincerely wish it were the amount it should have been.

More to the point, employees of my company who worked 30 years or more who were suddenly left with a greatly reduced pension are totally screwed. They played by the rules the asshole Republicans keep on telling us we are all supposed to play by. But suddenly those rules have changed.

Anyone who cares about this issue should read the book Nomadland by Jessica Bruder.