Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Friday, February 22, 2013
The Boy in the Desert
There is a scene from Ben Hur, a movie about biblical events in the first centuty, which moves nearly everyone who sees it. Ben Hur is being roughly taken by some Roman centurions across some desert land. He is choking with thirst but his captors will not help him. When the travelers come to an oasis, a brown-skinned boy of about twelve leans down and gives Ben Hur the life-saving water he craves. We see only the boy's back, not His face. But we know who it is. A centurion approaches to strike Him. Their eyes meet very briefly, the mounted centurion and the boy in the desert. The centurion sees something in the boy's eyes which men and women have been seeing for over two thousand years in their best dreams and their best moments. Whatever it is that the centurion sees in the boy's eyes makes him back off, though he seems to understand that the boy does not despise him, means him no harm, has no visible means of doing him harm anyway, and in fact somehow seems to be quietly blessing him. We Christians properly concern ourselves with churches and denominations, theories and dogma, the details of communion, whether it is best to have total immersion in baptism or if a sprinkle on the head will do, or how to tithe when bill collectors are knocking on the door, or the order of worship. But can anyone fail to feel that the brown-skinned boy in the desert, coming to the resecue of a suffering man, touches the heart while the powder-dry details discussed in church board meetings can be deadly dull, even if they are necessary? Or that the boy become a man and dying on a Cross for the sake of suffering, sinful humanity trumps any interest we may have in the comings and goings of all the deacons, elders, priests, preachers or popes there ever were? When we finally see Him will we be concerned with whether to have mass in Latin or English or what some 'church leader's' slant on the meaning of Communion may be? Would we choose to dig to the depths of Calvin's theories on Total Depravity if we knew we were about to meet the boy in the desert? Don't all those mundane concerns, even if important in the world we inhabit, fade into insignificance when faced with Him about whom they exist? Is there not good reason to envy the rough Centurion? After all, he actually did meet the Boy in the Desert, and saw directly into those eyes, and for an instant perhaps he knew that he had seen the windows into Heaven. When I was about twelve I remember squirming in church and playing around with the tie my mother made me wear, and wishing that she and my father had just let me sleep in my nice warm bed while they went to church with my blessing. I have in fact come to appreciate churches more as an adult than I did then, but I would walk through the door and out of any church in a flash to look face to face into the eyes of the boy in the desert.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
The Facts About Social Security
Social Security has traditionally been a prime target of those on the far right, and now the left, and the subject of more misunderstanding and factual mistatement than almost anything else under public revue. As a conservative I find this very embarrassing but I have to plead guilty, having repeated a lot of the nonsense at one time or another myself. This essay is offered in order to try to clear away the cobwebs and misunderstandings created by Social Security's detractors by showing (A) That Social Security is not a "Ponzi scheme" as its detractors claim, (B) That it is not "broke" (C) That if you are in the system there is an account with your name on it, contrary to the claim of the detractors and (D) That the shortfall in Social Security's ability to satisfy its purposes, predicted to occur in about the year 2035, is not so serious that it cannot be corrected fairly easily and satisfactorily with clearly available and sensible measures. I am not, however, interested in being a propagandist or cheer leader for Social Security. It has its problems. They can and should be solved and, with some repair work, the system with its basic structure can and should be maintained. Here are some common errors and my response to them.
(1) "Contrary to what you are told, there is no Social Security account with your name on it". That is not true. There is an account with your name on it, identical in kind to accounts maintained by private insurance companies for people who purchase commercial annuities. The difference between Social Security and a "managing agency", which a ponzi scheme purports to be but is not, is that Social Security does not hold, or claim to hold, a lump sum for the client which he originally contributed to his account, plus interest accruing over time, and which he can demand and receive any time, or on specified withdrawal dates during the year. This is what a "managing agency" is. Social Security is a "pension program". There is no "lump sum" belonging to you because you never contributed a "lump sum" in the first place. A sum of money cannot accrue interest if there simply is no sum of money to accrue. WHEN CONSIDERING SOCIAL SECURITY, "RETURN ON INVESTMENT" IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE INDIVIDUAL ANNUITANT BECAUSE THERE SIMPLY IS NO MANAGED "INVESTMENT" OF PRINCIPAL. Or here is another way of thinking about the matter. Suppose that Joe Shmo buys a five dollar lottery ticket and wins a million dollars while at the same time Doris Doe also buys a five dollar ticket but wins nothing. Does Doris have a right to complain that Joe won an amount which was enormously in excess of what he paid in while she lost her whole payment? No. Each one paid five dollars and each received what he and she paid for, a chance to win a large sum of money --- not the same dollars used to buy the tickets, or those same dollars enchanced through wise investments and prudent savings. Each purchaser wanted a windfall, but Joe Shmo won and Doris Doe lost. I may pay into Social Security all my life and die too early to receive any benefit while someone else receives benefits for many years. That's the system. Those are the breaks of the game, and that's the way all insurance works.
(2) "When you die your heirs will get nothing from Social Security". True, but irrelevant. Social Security was never represented as a way of building a transferable estate. If you want that, you will have to do it on your own or persuade the government to convert Social Security to something else. It is a pension annuity program and like all pension programs its benefits expire with your death or the death of you and your spouse. If you buy a commercial annuity from an insurance company your annuity will also expire with your death unless you take a reduced monthly amount with a joint-and-survivor feature.
(3) "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme". That is simply untrue all the way through. The name "Ponzi" came from the name Charles Ponzi, a Boston swindler who operated a pyramid whereby a small number of investors were paid from the contributions of a larger number of more recently enrolled investors. The scheme required an ever-increasing pool of "investors" whose contributions were used to pay earlier "investors". Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist, in citing a writer named Mitchell Zukov, wrote in a September 6, 2011 column; "Ponzi's scheme was a deliberate swindle that lured its victims with bald lies and get-rich-quick promises, . . . . whereas Social Security fully discloses its operations and makes no promise of huge returns. Ponzi schemes are intended to defraud; Social Security was designed to be a social safety net for the old". IN SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS, IT HAS NEVER MISSED A PAYMENT. Social Security is not only not a "Ponzi Scheme", it is not in any way a fraudulent enterprise, as every aspect of it is out in the open. Fraudulent schemes and embezzlement do not result in $2.5 trillion surpluses, which is the surplus now managed by the Social Security Administration, estimated to rise to $3.7 trillion by 2022 after a near-term PLANNED fall due to the influx of Boomers. In any case, while some adjustments will have to be made to preserve Social Security even on the assumption that the Treasury pays its debt to Social Security (see paragraph(4) below), I am quite sure that Bernie Madoff's clients wish that his scheme had performed as well and reliably for them as Social Security has.
There are two necessary caveats, however. First, If Congress never intended to pay its debt to Social Security's beneficiaries, incurred by means of bonds as discussed at paragraph (4) below, but instead intended and intends to devise some scheme for defaulting on that debt and blaming Social Security itself for running out of money it will be the greatest case of grand larceny in the nation's history, a monstrous crime with no historical precedent in this country. IF THAT IS THE INTENT IT MUST BE STOPPED. Second, There are a lot of prophets of gloom and doom running around who tell us that the Euro is about to collapse, and with it every economy in Europe, and following that the currency and economy of the United States, and for all I know that may be true. I'm not an economist. To conclude that they are all nuts, however, before you have even heard their arguments is unreasonable because there are some smart people in that group and their arguments do not sound irrational, at least not to me. If they are right then everything will collapse at once and why worry about Social Security? You may as well try to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos, go hang out with Glenn Beck or bang your head against a wall because who cares?
(4) "But the system is out of money". No, it isn't unless, as discussed at paragraph (3) above, Congress defaults on its bonded debt. If someone has a $2.5 trillion surplus, which Social Security does have, he is not "out of money". Then where is the money? It is invested in non-negotiable government bonds and those bonds are real paper bonds contained in physical boxes in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They are not just electronic blips in a computer. "But the government might default". Yes, and the Chinese could say the same thing about their U.S. bonds. "But the bonds held by Social Security are non-negotiable". Yes, because Social Security isn't allowed to make private investments by law and because the government does not want a secondary bond market competing with its own. Anyway, we have always been told that the safest investment is U.S. bonds. In other words the federal government borrowed the money which America's working people, and their employers, contributed and now the far left and the far right do not want the Treasury to pay it back, or so it seems. In fact, as discussed, the government would actually be stealing this money. We should always return to the point that Social Security is sound in and of itself and that the critical problem is the debt to Social Security by the Treasury. In other words, the problem is external, not internal.
This is really as much about truth and accuracy as it is about Social Security. No one is relieved of the moral and ethical responsibility to be honest with others even when it may not support his or her own ideology. When anyone, conservative, liberal or otherwise, ignores or deliberately obscures the truth because to do so would be idealogically inconvenient it undermines his credibility on everything --- on Social Security and everything else.
(5) "Contributions are mandatory". That is true. Any large developed country like the United States faces the problem of retirement and how to avoid retired people being indigent. Perhaps no answer to that is completely satisfactory. Given the temperament of the American people the prospect of millions of people with no means of sustenance is unrealistic. So what can be done? People can be urged to save on their own but many will not, and if they do not they will be a burden on their children or society in general. They can have their own private fund to be managed but not touched, an approach favored by President George W. Bush, but what if the market goes into a drastic decline and the savings evaporate? Social Security is a trade-off. You pay the tax and acquire a guarenteed annuity which is not dependent on the vicissitudes of the market. There are many approaches to this, but it is hard to deny that the problem of safety in retirement is not just an individual problem. It is a social problem.
(6) "Social Security contributes to the deficit". No, Social Security has never contributed a dime to the deficit. Quite the opposite, the Treasury has been borrowing from Social Security to finance its general operations, as a result of which Social Security has $2.5 trillion worth of bonds. The false claim that the general taxpayers will have to begin financing Social Security is intended to hide the fact that Social Security has been financing the government, not the other way around, and that includes hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted money. The nonsense has gone so far that some have claimed that the government can reduce "government spending" on Social Security by cutting benefits in various ways. Here is what A. P. Martin of Fort Myers, Florida wrote the News-Press, March 10, 3013: " [C]utting benefits would do nothing to change the interest payment, which is mandated by law, and threfore would do nothing at all to reduce the national debt". The government "spends" nothing at all. It pays what it owes by law to those who have lent it huge sums of money, the annuitants who have paid the tax.
(7) "The bill for today's pensions will be paid by the next generation." The truth is that today's benefits will be paid for by everyone who pays into the system and to what generation a contributor belongs is irrelevant. That includes people now deceased who did pay but either received no benfit or relatively little benefit because they did not live long enough. Where did today's $2.5 trillion surpulus come from? It certainly did not come entirely from the next generation of working people. Some of it did, just as some people in the next generation --- those who live a long time --- will benefit from the payments of those in this and the previous generation who died or will die early. The point is that everyone in the system pays into it, but they receive benefits only if, and to the extent that, they meet longevity requirements. and it is more likely that persons of relatively early generations will receive no benefits, but will have paid into the system, than it is for persons of later generations who will live longer. Is everyone benefitted or burdened equally? Of course not. Social Security was never designed for that. Someone buys a million dollar life insurance policy and dies the next day. He (his estate) recieves a million dollars after paying one premium, perhaps only a few hundred dollars. Someone else has lived to age one hundred after having paid much more than he or his estate will receive in benefits. That's what insurance is. That's life.
We could have individually managed accounts. We could do a lot of things. But non-risk annuities paid for with a payroll tax is the choice that was made and it has worked well.
(8) "Social Security is in crisis and must be abandoned, at least as to those under fifty or some such age".
No, it is not in crisis. It is true that demographic patterns have changed with longer life spans and otherwise and that the system is expected to run into problems in about 2035 even if the treasury pays its debts, as it must. Here are some possible approaches for the future, without implying that they are all desirable or necessarily fair. They are possible. (A) Raise the ceiling on income subject to the FICA tax. (B) Raise the tax rate. (C) Raise the retirement age from 67 to 70. (D) Change the formula for the annual cost-of-living adjustment. More than 75% of the shortfall would vanish if Congrress reduced annual cost-of-living increases by 1 percentage point every year. (E) According to the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida the entire $5.3 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years could be eliminated if payroll taxes were increased 1.1 percentage points for workers and employers. (G) Allow the non-negotiable bonds to be converted to negotiable bonds as that becomes necessary to meet current obligations. Bear in mind that no one argues that the entire treasury debt must be paid immediately. There will continue to be a FICA tax which will continue to fund the system. The bonded surplus exists to provide against shortages of cash as benefits become due.
Whatever else is done, Congress should be prohibited from using Social Security as a slush fund, and because experience shows that Congress can never be trusted to be ethical or responsible this result should be obtained by Constitutional Amendment.
(9) "We should abandon Social Security except for paying promised benefits to senrior citizens who paid into it and have relied on it". The last part is certainly true. Promises should be kept. But we should not abandon Social Security at all. The danger is that neither the right nor the left have any interest in maintaining it as to younger working people. It can be maintained, permanently. Its a question only of will. But conservatives have never liked it because they think of it as welfare. It is no such thing and never was, but curing so massive a misconception is almost beyond difficult because those on the right simply have no personal stake in it. Those on the left cannot claim credit for it so they aren't trying to protect it either. They would rather invent new schemes for wasting money, and buying votes with higher taxes, and blaming the decline of Social Security on the right.
Now Congress and the Administration have gotten into the habit of extending what was to be a "temporary" cut in the Social Security tax. That is simply another way of stealing from annuitant-beneficiaries. With cuts in the tax, the current $2.5 Trillion surplus will be depleted sooner than it would otherwise. The Democrats propose making up the deficiency caused thereby by taxing 'millionaires and billionaires'; in other words, soaking the rich. This is just more demogoguery by politicians who swim in the waters of demogoguery.
(10) "We can help to balance the budget by spending less on Social Security". This one is absolutley ridiculous. To illustrate: Suppose I owe you $120,000 payable in monthly installments of $10,000 and I decide that I need to cut my "expenses". My accountant tells me that I can do that by reducing my monthly payments to you by cutting them in half; in other words, paying you only $5,000 a month. That would certainly "cut my expenses", but only by breaching our contract. Sure, Congress can breach the governments' agreement by unilaterally reducing its bonded debt or, same thing, stretching out the payments. As long as we are at it, why doesn't the government simply cancel the debt altogether and declare Social Security a thing of the past? They would have to think about the consequences at the next election, of course, but since they don't have any integrity anyway why not defer that concern until later? [NOTE] The following is an unsigned article sent to me by a friend. I'm sorry that I can't offer and attribution. I hope that friends of Soc. Sec will saturate the internet with this sort of thing].
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!
WHERE DID THATMONEY GO?
Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd
have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn.
I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security).
Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We're "broke" and we can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless.
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn't it.
99% of people won't have the guts to forward this.I'm in the 1% -- I just did.
=
(1) "Contrary to what you are told, there is no Social Security account with your name on it". That is not true. There is an account with your name on it, identical in kind to accounts maintained by private insurance companies for people who purchase commercial annuities. The difference between Social Security and a "managing agency", which a ponzi scheme purports to be but is not, is that Social Security does not hold, or claim to hold, a lump sum for the client which he originally contributed to his account, plus interest accruing over time, and which he can demand and receive any time, or on specified withdrawal dates during the year. This is what a "managing agency" is. Social Security is a "pension program". There is no "lump sum" belonging to you because you never contributed a "lump sum" in the first place. A sum of money cannot accrue interest if there simply is no sum of money to accrue. WHEN CONSIDERING SOCIAL SECURITY, "RETURN ON INVESTMENT" IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE INDIVIDUAL ANNUITANT BECAUSE THERE SIMPLY IS NO MANAGED "INVESTMENT" OF PRINCIPAL. Or here is another way of thinking about the matter. Suppose that Joe Shmo buys a five dollar lottery ticket and wins a million dollars while at the same time Doris Doe also buys a five dollar ticket but wins nothing. Does Doris have a right to complain that Joe won an amount which was enormously in excess of what he paid in while she lost her whole payment? No. Each one paid five dollars and each received what he and she paid for, a chance to win a large sum of money --- not the same dollars used to buy the tickets, or those same dollars enchanced through wise investments and prudent savings. Each purchaser wanted a windfall, but Joe Shmo won and Doris Doe lost. I may pay into Social Security all my life and die too early to receive any benefit while someone else receives benefits for many years. That's the system. Those are the breaks of the game, and that's the way all insurance works.
(2) "When you die your heirs will get nothing from Social Security". True, but irrelevant. Social Security was never represented as a way of building a transferable estate. If you want that, you will have to do it on your own or persuade the government to convert Social Security to something else. It is a pension annuity program and like all pension programs its benefits expire with your death or the death of you and your spouse. If you buy a commercial annuity from an insurance company your annuity will also expire with your death unless you take a reduced monthly amount with a joint-and-survivor feature.
(3) "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme". That is simply untrue all the way through. The name "Ponzi" came from the name Charles Ponzi, a Boston swindler who operated a pyramid whereby a small number of investors were paid from the contributions of a larger number of more recently enrolled investors. The scheme required an ever-increasing pool of "investors" whose contributions were used to pay earlier "investors". Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist, in citing a writer named Mitchell Zukov, wrote in a September 6, 2011 column; "Ponzi's scheme was a deliberate swindle that lured its victims with bald lies and get-rich-quick promises, . . . . whereas Social Security fully discloses its operations and makes no promise of huge returns. Ponzi schemes are intended to defraud; Social Security was designed to be a social safety net for the old". IN SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS, IT HAS NEVER MISSED A PAYMENT. Social Security is not only not a "Ponzi Scheme", it is not in any way a fraudulent enterprise, as every aspect of it is out in the open. Fraudulent schemes and embezzlement do not result in $2.5 trillion surpluses, which is the surplus now managed by the Social Security Administration, estimated to rise to $3.7 trillion by 2022 after a near-term PLANNED fall due to the influx of Boomers. In any case, while some adjustments will have to be made to preserve Social Security even on the assumption that the Treasury pays its debt to Social Security (see paragraph(4) below), I am quite sure that Bernie Madoff's clients wish that his scheme had performed as well and reliably for them as Social Security has.
There are two necessary caveats, however. First, If Congress never intended to pay its debt to Social Security's beneficiaries, incurred by means of bonds as discussed at paragraph (4) below, but instead intended and intends to devise some scheme for defaulting on that debt and blaming Social Security itself for running out of money it will be the greatest case of grand larceny in the nation's history, a monstrous crime with no historical precedent in this country. IF THAT IS THE INTENT IT MUST BE STOPPED. Second, There are a lot of prophets of gloom and doom running around who tell us that the Euro is about to collapse, and with it every economy in Europe, and following that the currency and economy of the United States, and for all I know that may be true. I'm not an economist. To conclude that they are all nuts, however, before you have even heard their arguments is unreasonable because there are some smart people in that group and their arguments do not sound irrational, at least not to me. If they are right then everything will collapse at once and why worry about Social Security? You may as well try to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos, go hang out with Glenn Beck or bang your head against a wall because who cares?
(4) "But the system is out of money". No, it isn't unless, as discussed at paragraph (3) above, Congress defaults on its bonded debt. If someone has a $2.5 trillion surplus, which Social Security does have, he is not "out of money". Then where is the money? It is invested in non-negotiable government bonds and those bonds are real paper bonds contained in physical boxes in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They are not just electronic blips in a computer. "But the government might default". Yes, and the Chinese could say the same thing about their U.S. bonds. "But the bonds held by Social Security are non-negotiable". Yes, because Social Security isn't allowed to make private investments by law and because the government does not want a secondary bond market competing with its own. Anyway, we have always been told that the safest investment is U.S. bonds. In other words the federal government borrowed the money which America's working people, and their employers, contributed and now the far left and the far right do not want the Treasury to pay it back, or so it seems. In fact, as discussed, the government would actually be stealing this money. We should always return to the point that Social Security is sound in and of itself and that the critical problem is the debt to Social Security by the Treasury. In other words, the problem is external, not internal.
This is really as much about truth and accuracy as it is about Social Security. No one is relieved of the moral and ethical responsibility to be honest with others even when it may not support his or her own ideology. When anyone, conservative, liberal or otherwise, ignores or deliberately obscures the truth because to do so would be idealogically inconvenient it undermines his credibility on everything --- on Social Security and everything else.
(5) "Contributions are mandatory". That is true. Any large developed country like the United States faces the problem of retirement and how to avoid retired people being indigent. Perhaps no answer to that is completely satisfactory. Given the temperament of the American people the prospect of millions of people with no means of sustenance is unrealistic. So what can be done? People can be urged to save on their own but many will not, and if they do not they will be a burden on their children or society in general. They can have their own private fund to be managed but not touched, an approach favored by President George W. Bush, but what if the market goes into a drastic decline and the savings evaporate? Social Security is a trade-off. You pay the tax and acquire a guarenteed annuity which is not dependent on the vicissitudes of the market. There are many approaches to this, but it is hard to deny that the problem of safety in retirement is not just an individual problem. It is a social problem.
(6) "Social Security contributes to the deficit". No, Social Security has never contributed a dime to the deficit. Quite the opposite, the Treasury has been borrowing from Social Security to finance its general operations, as a result of which Social Security has $2.5 trillion worth of bonds. The false claim that the general taxpayers will have to begin financing Social Security is intended to hide the fact that Social Security has been financing the government, not the other way around, and that includes hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted money. The nonsense has gone so far that some have claimed that the government can reduce "government spending" on Social Security by cutting benefits in various ways. Here is what A. P. Martin of Fort Myers, Florida wrote the News-Press, March 10, 3013: " [C]utting benefits would do nothing to change the interest payment, which is mandated by law, and threfore would do nothing at all to reduce the national debt". The government "spends" nothing at all. It pays what it owes by law to those who have lent it huge sums of money, the annuitants who have paid the tax.
(7) "The bill for today's pensions will be paid by the next generation." The truth is that today's benefits will be paid for by everyone who pays into the system and to what generation a contributor belongs is irrelevant. That includes people now deceased who did pay but either received no benfit or relatively little benefit because they did not live long enough. Where did today's $2.5 trillion surpulus come from? It certainly did not come entirely from the next generation of working people. Some of it did, just as some people in the next generation --- those who live a long time --- will benefit from the payments of those in this and the previous generation who died or will die early. The point is that everyone in the system pays into it, but they receive benefits only if, and to the extent that, they meet longevity requirements. and it is more likely that persons of relatively early generations will receive no benefits, but will have paid into the system, than it is for persons of later generations who will live longer. Is everyone benefitted or burdened equally? Of course not. Social Security was never designed for that. Someone buys a million dollar life insurance policy and dies the next day. He (his estate) recieves a million dollars after paying one premium, perhaps only a few hundred dollars. Someone else has lived to age one hundred after having paid much more than he or his estate will receive in benefits. That's what insurance is. That's life.
We could have individually managed accounts. We could do a lot of things. But non-risk annuities paid for with a payroll tax is the choice that was made and it has worked well.
(8) "Social Security is in crisis and must be abandoned, at least as to those under fifty or some such age".
No, it is not in crisis. It is true that demographic patterns have changed with longer life spans and otherwise and that the system is expected to run into problems in about 2035 even if the treasury pays its debts, as it must. Here are some possible approaches for the future, without implying that they are all desirable or necessarily fair. They are possible. (A) Raise the ceiling on income subject to the FICA tax. (B) Raise the tax rate. (C) Raise the retirement age from 67 to 70. (D) Change the formula for the annual cost-of-living adjustment. More than 75% of the shortfall would vanish if Congrress reduced annual cost-of-living increases by 1 percentage point every year. (E) According to the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida the entire $5.3 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years could be eliminated if payroll taxes were increased 1.1 percentage points for workers and employers. (G) Allow the non-negotiable bonds to be converted to negotiable bonds as that becomes necessary to meet current obligations. Bear in mind that no one argues that the entire treasury debt must be paid immediately. There will continue to be a FICA tax which will continue to fund the system. The bonded surplus exists to provide against shortages of cash as benefits become due.
Whatever else is done, Congress should be prohibited from using Social Security as a slush fund, and because experience shows that Congress can never be trusted to be ethical or responsible this result should be obtained by Constitutional Amendment.
(9) "We should abandon Social Security except for paying promised benefits to senrior citizens who paid into it and have relied on it". The last part is certainly true. Promises should be kept. But we should not abandon Social Security at all. The danger is that neither the right nor the left have any interest in maintaining it as to younger working people. It can be maintained, permanently. Its a question only of will. But conservatives have never liked it because they think of it as welfare. It is no such thing and never was, but curing so massive a misconception is almost beyond difficult because those on the right simply have no personal stake in it. Those on the left cannot claim credit for it so they aren't trying to protect it either. They would rather invent new schemes for wasting money, and buying votes with higher taxes, and blaming the decline of Social Security on the right.
Now Congress and the Administration have gotten into the habit of extending what was to be a "temporary" cut in the Social Security tax. That is simply another way of stealing from annuitant-beneficiaries. With cuts in the tax, the current $2.5 Trillion surplus will be depleted sooner than it would otherwise. The Democrats propose making up the deficiency caused thereby by taxing 'millionaires and billionaires'; in other words, soaking the rich. This is just more demogoguery by politicians who swim in the waters of demogoguery.
(10) "We can help to balance the budget by spending less on Social Security". This one is absolutley ridiculous. To illustrate: Suppose I owe you $120,000 payable in monthly installments of $10,000 and I decide that I need to cut my "expenses". My accountant tells me that I can do that by reducing my monthly payments to you by cutting them in half; in other words, paying you only $5,000 a month. That would certainly "cut my expenses", but only by breaching our contract. Sure, Congress can breach the governments' agreement by unilaterally reducing its bonded debt or, same thing, stretching out the payments. As long as we are at it, why doesn't the government simply cancel the debt altogether and declare Social Security a thing of the past? They would have to think about the consequences at the next election, of course, but since they don't have any integrity anyway why not defer that concern until later? [NOTE] The following is an unsigned article sent to me by a friend. I'm sorry that I can't offer and attribution. I hope that friends of Soc. Sec will saturate the internet with this sort of thing].
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!
WHERE DID THATMONEY GO?
Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd
have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn.
I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security).
Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We're "broke" and we can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless.
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn't it.
99% of people won't have the guts to forward this.I'm in the 1% -- I just did.
=
Monday, February 4, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Liberal Judges and the Constitution
Liberal judges have gone so far toward ignoring the Constitution and substituting their own preferences and ideolgical predilections for it that they are nearing the point where Congress will either have to rein in the courts or concede that America is a Platonic oligarchy of philosopher kings in the form of judges wearing black robes.
A recent judicial outrage is the decision of a federal judge that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. To reach that result the judge had to read the Constitution and find something somewhere in its wording which was intended to vindicate gay marriage against the will of the people to invalidate it. There is no such thing, not a single article, section, phrase, sentence or word. It is not there. Furthermore, the result prescribed by the judge could not possibly have been intended by the drafters or ratifyers of the Constitution or have been understood by them to be the consequence of their work. And the judge knew this, so he violated his oath of office. In over thirty states the people have rejected gay marriage. The Constitution of Massachusetts, where a right of gay marriage was decreed by judicial fiat, was drafted by John Adams, and anyone with even a passing acquaintence with the life and work of John Adams, and the times in which he lived, knows perfectly well that had the subject of gay marriage even occurred to him he would have written into that constitution a most emphatic prohibition. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that somewhere within the words of the state constitution is a validation of gay marriage. No there isn't. It was not intended by the drafters or ratifyers, or by the state legislature, or the governor, or the people of Massachusetts, who attempted to reverse the pro gay marriage ruling. Only a group of arrogant "philosopher kings" in black robes wanted it. In fact, not all gay people want it.
I am not concerned here with the merits of gay marriage, if any. I am concerned with what is happening when the majority of the people from coast to coast cannot prevail with democratic methods in the establishment of law. Here are the judges and here is the institution of gay marriage, unknown to every society, every culture, every religion, every legal system for all the thousands and thousands of years of recorded human history and disapproved by the people virtually wherever it has appeared; yet the people are said to have nothing to say about the form, character and core values of their society, not simply incidental attributes, when a handfull of judges disagree.
But isn't there some argument offered by the judges in defense of what they do? Yes, and while it takes somewhat different form with different words it can be reduced to the following views. There is contained in the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and elsewhere in the Constitution and in the various state constitutions, the requirement of equal rights and equal treatment under the laws, federal and state. No one quarrels with that. And everyone knows the purpose for which that principle became so endemic to the laws, the culture, and the sometimes turbulent history of the United States, wherein it was once disputed. It was intended to remove the disgrace of slavery from the national landscape. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery directly, de jure, but the drafters knew how cleverly an intended result can be thwarted by those who may be intent on manipulation of words and evasion of principles. Left alone, the thirteenth amendment would not have been sufficient to achieve its intended result because de facto slavery would have replaced the de jure slavery which had been abolished. To head off and prevent such evasion equal protection clauses were placed in the federal constitution and those state consitutions in states where slavery had existed or was thought still threatened.
As time went on the principle of equal protection was extended to other classes of people; women, for example, in cases of sex discrimination. It was extended in other ways, usually producing benign results generally accepted by the people. Questions of meaning do arise and some of them are complex and difficult; yet however we may resolve constitutional questions at the margins of uncertainty it is perfectly clear that while judges have some latitude in matters of interpretation, construction and application of laws and constitutions they have no moral or legal authority to transform, by judicial fiat, the fundamental nature of the society they are supposed to serve in accordance with the oath they have taken.
These liberal judges habitually find a principle to exist in the constitution which is not there and never was and is not even implied or hinted at. The judge will opine that there exists no "rational" basis for banning gay marriage and that such a ban does not promote any "compelling state interest". He or she will decide what is a "compelling state interest" and that will determine the outcome of the case even though neither the words "compelling state interest" nor the concept is contained anywhere in the constitution. Let us be clear. When the people desire some result by direct vote or through their representatives they have, by the expression of that desire in the form of legislation, themselves decided what is a sufficient state interest to warrant state action and the word "compelling" adds nothing to the matter in most cases. A "state interest" is any interest which the people wish to advance unless it is incompatible with the constitution. In a narrow range of cases it might be true that something which would ordinarily be unconstitutional may pass muster because of extreme necessity, although even that principle is not found in the Constitution except in the case of the suspension of habeus corpus. If, for the sake of argument, we posit that extreme necessity can justify going around a principle which would ordinarily be a constitutional bar to some course of action (a view which I believe is acceptable) resort to to the concept of a "compelling state interest" might make sense, though reliance on a validating exception in extremis would make more sense. But in the ordinary course of events the mere fact that the people want something to be done or not done, without anything more than that, should be enough to protect it from having to show any "compelling state interest". In other words, although perhaps the government can legitimately silence dissent during a violent revolution by a showing of a "compelling state interest" there should be no need to show it in the case of a bar against gay marriage because the courts are not in that case presented with a crisis or a measure which is clearly unconstitutional. And certainly an institution as sacrosanct as marriage over such a long period of time in so many regions, nations and cultures of the world can be protected against any charge of irrationality. Added to all the above, the liberal judge will frequently opine that gay marriage is a "fundamental" right. Really? If it is "fundamental" why did no one know about it prior to when the Supreme Court of Hawaii propounded the principle circa 1990? How can a right so "fundamental" have escaped the attention of all of the constitution's drafters and ratifyers and every recoginzed philosopher and religious leader in the history of the world from Plato and Moses to the present? When someone has to resort to such silliness to make his case, that case is not terribly solid.
You will also hear the argument that we have a "living constitution", the meaning of which will change from time to time. No, we do not, not in that sense. The application of the constitution can sometimes change through changes in circumstances but never through the mere passage of time. When each state is allocated two senators it will not become three or six senators through the passage of time. What can change is the application of certain principles, though not the spirit or intent. For example, the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. At one time confinement to bread and water might not have been considered "cruel and unusual". It has long since become at least unusual. Furthermore, someone has to decide what is "cruel". Obviously the drafters left that to the reasonable discretion of judges and legislatures. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his first inaugural address, March 4, 1865, no document of reasonable length can anticipate in detail every question which will arise under it. Judges are not encyclopedias or dictionaries. There were expected to be reasonable people who truly intended to vindicate not what they wanted to be the law, but the law as it came to them under circumstances then existing.
Why are appellate courts even permitted, ever, to invalidate a federal or state law duly enacted? There are two reasons. First, Americans do not want a temporary majority animated by mass hysteria or thoughtless excitement to trample on rights plainly protected by the constitution and intended to be protected by the drafters and ratifiers thereof. The slow and ponderous rejection of gay marriage by a majority of the people in state after state hardly amounts to the sort of mass hyesteria and overreaction which judicial revue was intended to head off and obviate. Second, there are genuine gray areas in the application of some constitutional provisions. For example, although the constitution does guarantee access to legal counsel for anyone accused of a crime, it does not expressly require government to locate and pay for counsel when the defendant can do neither. That question invited a legitimate difference of opinion which was fortunately resolved in a positive way by the Supreme Court in Gideon vs. Wainright and legal counsel are now provided gratis to those unable to afford counsel with their own resources. But it should be clearly understood that if there is ever to be gay marriage in this country there must either be a massive and radical shift in the people's core values or a constitutional amendment to achieve it. Otherwise the imposition of gay marriage on an unwilling populace represents a usurpation of power by tyrants.
A recent judicial outrage is the decision of a federal judge that California's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. To reach that result the judge had to read the Constitution and find something somewhere in its wording which was intended to vindicate gay marriage against the will of the people to invalidate it. There is no such thing, not a single article, section, phrase, sentence or word. It is not there. Furthermore, the result prescribed by the judge could not possibly have been intended by the drafters or ratifyers of the Constitution or have been understood by them to be the consequence of their work. And the judge knew this, so he violated his oath of office. In over thirty states the people have rejected gay marriage. The Constitution of Massachusetts, where a right of gay marriage was decreed by judicial fiat, was drafted by John Adams, and anyone with even a passing acquaintence with the life and work of John Adams, and the times in which he lived, knows perfectly well that had the subject of gay marriage even occurred to him he would have written into that constitution a most emphatic prohibition. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts decided that somewhere within the words of the state constitution is a validation of gay marriage. No there isn't. It was not intended by the drafters or ratifyers, or by the state legislature, or the governor, or the people of Massachusetts, who attempted to reverse the pro gay marriage ruling. Only a group of arrogant "philosopher kings" in black robes wanted it. In fact, not all gay people want it.
I am not concerned here with the merits of gay marriage, if any. I am concerned with what is happening when the majority of the people from coast to coast cannot prevail with democratic methods in the establishment of law. Here are the judges and here is the institution of gay marriage, unknown to every society, every culture, every religion, every legal system for all the thousands and thousands of years of recorded human history and disapproved by the people virtually wherever it has appeared; yet the people are said to have nothing to say about the form, character and core values of their society, not simply incidental attributes, when a handfull of judges disagree.
But isn't there some argument offered by the judges in defense of what they do? Yes, and while it takes somewhat different form with different words it can be reduced to the following views. There is contained in the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and elsewhere in the Constitution and in the various state constitutions, the requirement of equal rights and equal treatment under the laws, federal and state. No one quarrels with that. And everyone knows the purpose for which that principle became so endemic to the laws, the culture, and the sometimes turbulent history of the United States, wherein it was once disputed. It was intended to remove the disgrace of slavery from the national landscape. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery directly, de jure, but the drafters knew how cleverly an intended result can be thwarted by those who may be intent on manipulation of words and evasion of principles. Left alone, the thirteenth amendment would not have been sufficient to achieve its intended result because de facto slavery would have replaced the de jure slavery which had been abolished. To head off and prevent such evasion equal protection clauses were placed in the federal constitution and those state consitutions in states where slavery had existed or was thought still threatened.
As time went on the principle of equal protection was extended to other classes of people; women, for example, in cases of sex discrimination. It was extended in other ways, usually producing benign results generally accepted by the people. Questions of meaning do arise and some of them are complex and difficult; yet however we may resolve constitutional questions at the margins of uncertainty it is perfectly clear that while judges have some latitude in matters of interpretation, construction and application of laws and constitutions they have no moral or legal authority to transform, by judicial fiat, the fundamental nature of the society they are supposed to serve in accordance with the oath they have taken.
These liberal judges habitually find a principle to exist in the constitution which is not there and never was and is not even implied or hinted at. The judge will opine that there exists no "rational" basis for banning gay marriage and that such a ban does not promote any "compelling state interest". He or she will decide what is a "compelling state interest" and that will determine the outcome of the case even though neither the words "compelling state interest" nor the concept is contained anywhere in the constitution. Let us be clear. When the people desire some result by direct vote or through their representatives they have, by the expression of that desire in the form of legislation, themselves decided what is a sufficient state interest to warrant state action and the word "compelling" adds nothing to the matter in most cases. A "state interest" is any interest which the people wish to advance unless it is incompatible with the constitution. In a narrow range of cases it might be true that something which would ordinarily be unconstitutional may pass muster because of extreme necessity, although even that principle is not found in the Constitution except in the case of the suspension of habeus corpus. If, for the sake of argument, we posit that extreme necessity can justify going around a principle which would ordinarily be a constitutional bar to some course of action (a view which I believe is acceptable) resort to to the concept of a "compelling state interest" might make sense, though reliance on a validating exception in extremis would make more sense. But in the ordinary course of events the mere fact that the people want something to be done or not done, without anything more than that, should be enough to protect it from having to show any "compelling state interest". In other words, although perhaps the government can legitimately silence dissent during a violent revolution by a showing of a "compelling state interest" there should be no need to show it in the case of a bar against gay marriage because the courts are not in that case presented with a crisis or a measure which is clearly unconstitutional. And certainly an institution as sacrosanct as marriage over such a long period of time in so many regions, nations and cultures of the world can be protected against any charge of irrationality. Added to all the above, the liberal judge will frequently opine that gay marriage is a "fundamental" right. Really? If it is "fundamental" why did no one know about it prior to when the Supreme Court of Hawaii propounded the principle circa 1990? How can a right so "fundamental" have escaped the attention of all of the constitution's drafters and ratifyers and every recoginzed philosopher and religious leader in the history of the world from Plato and Moses to the present? When someone has to resort to such silliness to make his case, that case is not terribly solid.
You will also hear the argument that we have a "living constitution", the meaning of which will change from time to time. No, we do not, not in that sense. The application of the constitution can sometimes change through changes in circumstances but never through the mere passage of time. When each state is allocated two senators it will not become three or six senators through the passage of time. What can change is the application of certain principles, though not the spirit or intent. For example, the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. At one time confinement to bread and water might not have been considered "cruel and unusual". It has long since become at least unusual. Furthermore, someone has to decide what is "cruel". Obviously the drafters left that to the reasonable discretion of judges and legislatures. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his first inaugural address, March 4, 1865, no document of reasonable length can anticipate in detail every question which will arise under it. Judges are not encyclopedias or dictionaries. There were expected to be reasonable people who truly intended to vindicate not what they wanted to be the law, but the law as it came to them under circumstances then existing.
Why are appellate courts even permitted, ever, to invalidate a federal or state law duly enacted? There are two reasons. First, Americans do not want a temporary majority animated by mass hysteria or thoughtless excitement to trample on rights plainly protected by the constitution and intended to be protected by the drafters and ratifiers thereof. The slow and ponderous rejection of gay marriage by a majority of the people in state after state hardly amounts to the sort of mass hyesteria and overreaction which judicial revue was intended to head off and obviate. Second, there are genuine gray areas in the application of some constitutional provisions. For example, although the constitution does guarantee access to legal counsel for anyone accused of a crime, it does not expressly require government to locate and pay for counsel when the defendant can do neither. That question invited a legitimate difference of opinion which was fortunately resolved in a positive way by the Supreme Court in Gideon vs. Wainright and legal counsel are now provided gratis to those unable to afford counsel with their own resources. But it should be clearly understood that if there is ever to be gay marriage in this country there must either be a massive and radical shift in the people's core values or a constitutional amendment to achieve it. Otherwise the imposition of gay marriage on an unwilling populace represents a usurpation of power by tyrants.
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