by Smitty
Gabby Hoffman seems uncertain about whether the additional money the government is extracting is going toward anything useful:
Hoffman, a 21-year-old Virginian who works at a nonprofit, estimates her paycheck will be roughly $30 less this biweekly pay period, or about $780 annually, thanks to the end of a two-year cut on payroll taxes, which fund Social Security. The tax has risen back up to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent, costing someone making $50,000 annually about $1,000 per year and a household with two high-paid workers up to $4,500.
“As a newly-graduated person, someone coming straight out of college, I don’t like the idea of having less money coming to me due to the selfish interests of people in Congress who don’t have any interest in reducing our financial problems,” Hoffman told FoxNews.com. “This is an impediment for future economic growth. It’s going to make it harder for young people like myself to get married, find a better job, you name it.”
Read the whole thing.
I, for one, hope to hear from Paul Ryan at CPAC13 just how the GOP proposes to emancipate Americans from working on the Social Security Plantation. There has got to be some way to craft a legal theory that a Ponzi scheme is a Ponzi scheme, despite the dodgy SCOTUS history.
via Sissy Willis
To paraphrase some old advice: Move [Mid]West Young Lady!
Elections have consequences. I have no sympathy for anyone who bought the Barack Obama ticket and is now complaining about the bumpiness of the ride.
However, looking at her blog, she looks like someone that did not buy the ticket. Too bad we’re all stuck going along for the ride anyways.
Gabby is one of the good ones.
SS is NOT a Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi scheme is setup to be an investment that returns a dividend. Only the investment never happens or does not return a dividend.
Social Security is a Pension scheme for one generation that is charged to the next or working generation.
No claim of a dividend was ever made.
Yeah a lot of politicians claimed it was an “investment” but then anyone who believes a politician deserves what they get (or don’t get as the case may be).
It is totally a Ponzi scheme in the general sense of being a ripoff.
No, a Ponzi scheme is a very specific type of ripoff. A bank robbery is a ripoff, but it isn’t a Ponzi scheme.
Tomato, Tomahto…both result in us getting bent over.
That is not correct. When Social Security was first founded, there was a claim of a dividend, in the form of interest. It is a Ponzi Scheme.
Good grief, how long ago? The ’40’s?
It hasn’t been promoted like that for years so for people to take some pol (I assume some pol or commentator made that point. BTW where’s the link to this claim of it having a dividend?) speaking 70 years ago as a definitive statement of the aims and means of the SS system.
A step in the right direction is to allow people below a certain age to divert some of their FICA taxes into individual accounts with right of survivorship. Investment choices should be limited to a mix of stock and bond funds.
The two groups this would help the most are minorities with low life expectancies and married couples given that the lower paid spouse receive absolutely no return on their “investment” since benefits are based solely on the higher paid spouse’s “contributions”.
Paul Ryan voted for the New Year’s deal.
I hope Paul Ryan does some ‘splainin’ at CPAC.
I suspect his explanation will be the feeble “but…but…but…it was a tax cut” talking point.
Insufficient.
The critical need right now is to address health care expenses through Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare. Veering off topic into Social Security – which is still within range of repair with fairly innocuous reforms like raising retirement ages and means testing for the very wealthy – merely invites a return to the classic demagoguery which has thwarted every previous attempt to deal with the subject. Been there, done that.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, always expecting a different result.
The SS tax should never have been reduced at least not for individuals. SS is currently operating in the red and that and medicare taxes are the only federal taxes many Americans pay. If we are going give SS benifits they should be paid for.