The federal reserve sets interest rates, not ss.

SS is responsible for the misinformation that has cursed the nation since its fraudulent inception.  As a direct result of the existance of SS, people stopped saving and planning for their retirement.

It is, I suggest, one of the most obscene things done to us by the federal government.

You might consider listening to someone who knows:

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/videos/297114260961710?sfns=mo

Republican Presidential Administrations pretending to be conservative, have dramatically increased our debt through tax cuts for the wealthy, then blame liberal programs to side step responsibility.

Obscene is how some few ignore the widespread ss benefits, the solutions of identified flaws, and the realities of age, savings interest rates, and market investment dividends for those struggling to prepare a future even with social security.

I'm not 'ignoring the widespread ss benefits'.  I am saying the program is immoral and has caused the elderly to be parasites upon the young, cause entire generations to fail to plan for their own futures and eventually caused the majority of this population to stop saving money at all.

What I am not saying is, 'this is your fault, Nickel.  What I am not saying is, "you knew what it was all along'.  What I am not saying is there should be no 'safety net' whatsoever.  What I am not saying is no form of federal pension system is viable.

I am saying that SS was deliberately disigned not to keep 'grandma out of the gutter' but as a trogan horse in which to impose direct withholding of taxes by the nations employers.  FDR did not give one flying fuck about old people.  He did not give one flying fuck whether or not his vicious program was moral, ethical or even viable.  All he cared about was slipping direct withholding of taxes into law.  That was his one and only purpose.  He said as much.

Supplement health insurance and retirement funds drain whatever scaredy-cats have. 

I'm not following you here.

What good has that done them or the country? Stop spending or raise taxes; it’s so simple obfuscating Congress must chuckle every time a taxpayer tells them, as if they didn’t know.

Yes.  SS/Medicare and other welfare programs consume the bulk of federal spending.  You see the problem.

Tax cuts for the rich who support campaigns for Congress......such a mystery.........

Since only the upper middle class and wealthy pay federal income taxes, it's no mystery that any reduction in taxation will effect them rather than those who do not pay taxes.at all or actually receive money from the federal government.

Can’t imagine how ending social security does anything more than release more money for the rich folks pushing it who are threatened with having to pay their fair share like the rest of us who work for incomes instead of collecting dividend incomes.

Good lord.  Nobody owes you shit.  Nobody owes me shit.

I've told you that before, albiet less forthrightly.  I've provided you in the past with the United States Supreme Court ruling that said, outright, money that was taken from you allegedly for SS was, in fact, taxes and as taxes went directly into the general fund and were spent.  I provided you, in the past, the United States Supreme Court ruling that said, outright, there is no contractual obligation on the part of the US fucking federal government to pay you shit.

Taxes and welfare.  That's what SS is.  It's a shit program based on a shit lie that has resulted in a massive shitstorm that is still growing.

But because I observe and describe the reality of this shit program, you infer that I think the alleged purpose of the shit program is unworthy?  How in the fuck do you arrive at that conclusion?  Why in the fuck are you so eager to arrive at that conclusion?

SS needs to be shitcanned.  There is no reasonable, sane person who can deny that.  You cannot force the elderly into the position of having to eat their own children.  It is not necessary, it is not moral and it is not ethical.  It is not necessary to design a system like that and only the most vile, evil fucked up sonovabitch would do such a thing to an entire country. 

Yet your hero, fdr, did it.  Fuck him.  Turn the ground he's buried in into a septic pond.

No.  SS needs to be replaced with something viable, something that has property rights, something that does not take money directly out of the wages of young people to line the pockets of old people.

Singapore did it.  So can we.

https://www.ac2news.com/2019/03/federal-agencies-admit-to-1-2-trillion-in-improper-payments-since-2004/?fbclid=IwAR18LhlczyKzayfZC2M0AxvGu9Wt0kk9n-6h3-SQG19Wi4WBtHZcqv9ThB4

Any predictions about what's going to happen?

$30 trillion of debt, probably, by the end of the year.  Default, inflation, a combination of the two?

Why Critics of a More Relaxed Attitude on Public Debt Are Wrong

https://medium.com/economic-watch/is-the-us-debt-sustainable-d32f92e41ba6

The low interest rate makes it possible.  Nonetheless, at some point debt will no longer be practically interest free and measures to reduce the debt should be implemented.

So what if the Supreme Court sees the payroll deduction as taxes.  Doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s working for those who contributed.
It kind of does matter.  "Taxes", means no one has any contractual claim upon funds taken from them.  While it is 'working' for those who contributed, taxes are a burden upon those who are contributing.

It works for those who can’t get a job.  Retirement sucks. It works for those who have children raising children of their own who can’t afford to take care of parents, too. It works for me who absolutely does not want to live with any of my children, forget the burden I’d be to them.
It isn't the purpose (alleged) of SS that I object to.  It's the form and implementation.

I’m eligible, entitled, and helped pay into SS.  I was cheated out of a year    when Congress changed eligibility from 65 when I started paying, to 66. So I’m well aware that they don’t owe me and can alter benefits to keep it solvent.
Indeed, that is one of my chief objections to social security;  it's a fraud and people plan their lives based upon those lies.

You don’t seem to be aware that Congress altered social security, placing it in the general fund so they could borrow from it at a lower interest rate and pay back the loans at an interest rate higher than what the fund was receiving.

It is my understanding that Congress didn't alter SS by placing it into the general fund;  it was always taxes and the tax revenue always placed into the general fund.  My source material for that is Professor Charlotte Twight in her book, 'Dependant upon D.C.'

Also, it’s social security that allows the country to borrow from others at lower interest rates.

Can you elaborate?

Most importantly, it’s social security that still owns the country.....not China or others from whom we’ve borrowed.
I'm not sure I understand that claim.  As you have said, SS is paid for out of the general fund.  The tax revenue allegedly collected for SS is deposited into the general fund and is immediately spent... well, squandered.  How does it 'own' anything?

I really hate debt, and especially paying interest on it.
We agree!

We can always nationalize everything like China did and erase our debts. Don’t think that would play well with other countries, but it’s an option.
Nor would it play well with Americans.  The majority of US debt, last I looked, was held by Americans in their 401K's, IRA's, etc.

We could end social security, burden families, rock the stability of communities across the country and piss off a senior population that votes.......a perilous option for Congress.
I, certainly, could not support pulling the rug out from under you or anyone else yet this cannot continue.  Personally, I favor something like what Singapore has in place.


Because of the cap, millionaires and billionaires don’t pay the same percentage of their income that the bulk of people contributing pay.
Nor should they have to unless we are going to abandon all pretense that SS is anything but a tax scheme... which I think we should.

It was set up to fail when a smaller generation of workers had to pay for a larger generation of recipients.  Not a problem for the boomers, but as they become eligible for benefits, it’s a problem for the next generation.
That is part of what I object to when I say I have issue with it's form;  it's a pyramid scheme.

Fortunately if we can hobble along to the generation following them which is even larger than the boomers, perhaps we can make that generation and every one after it pay their own way. The solutions for social security are simple and there’s no need to come up with a better program.  Medicare for all might be nice, but given the rampant fraud that permeates the Medical professions, not likely that it would result in a healthier population.
I don't think we should continue on this course.  It is morally repugnant, ethically bankrupt and there are much better alternatives already working so we need not start from scratch but instead adapt what works for Singapore, let's say, to work for the US.

Health insurance is a hoax.
No, it's just insurance.  It's not suited to be a health care system, it's purpose is the same as any other type of insurance...

Took me a while to get past your word choices.
This is a clumsy medium of communication, to be sure.  I apologize if I was unnecessarily disagreeable.

I’m also frustrated by your cold libertarian heart.
I'm not a Libertarian but I get your meaning.  It's just that I have found that peoples motivation to look after themselves is far superior than the motivation of a bureaucracy.  Therefore, any attempt to take away peoples agency and responsibility for themselves is doomed to grubby and expensive failure.  I offer the War On Poverty as proof.

Seniors are involuntarily retired from jobs so companies can hire young people at lower wages.  Seniors can’t get another job because they’re over qualified and pose a threat to owners.  It doesn’t matter that they’re willing to accept less money.
I don't doubt that is true in far too many cases.

They lose their land and then their home and then move in with children if they have them, or friends they can share expenses with like the Golden Girls.
I've been mulling over an idea, perhaps you would poke holes in it?   My idea is a tax holiday for parents raising children (to 18 years old) and/or children caring for their parent(s) after the age of 65, let's say.  What do you think?

Nothing sweet about being homeless at that age, or any other age, since poor houses and farms are a thing of the past.   Cities are giving their homeless one way tickets to other places.  New York sent one to Hawaii and Hawaii started sending homeless to the mainland.  The 14 day quarantine because of COVID is creating some funny situations unless you live there, then it has to exasperating.
I grow more and more certain that the actions of an alarming number of Democrats are meant to cause chaos, drive businesses out of business, and start a race war.

Well, I've missed talking with you and everyone else about these types of topics.  I'm grieved that our little group has fallen apart... and embarrassed at my part in that.

Hope you're well, take good care of yourself.

Rightly or wrongly, a little experiment was performed a few months ago and everyone got $1,200 of magic money.  Similarly, the federal reserve has been, via a corporation called Blackrock (I believe), buying junk bonds.  Maybe even been buying stocks.  They have done this, allegedly, to keep the stock market bubble inflating or maybe just from collapsing.

More recently, the fed has announced they're no longer following any rules or guiding principles and that they intend to ramp up inflation. 

Well, I owe $193k on my house and $18k on my truck so assuming my wages keep up with inflation (it won't), inflation will theoretically benefit me.  On the flip side, I've a wife and 2 kids to feed and keep in necessities so more inflation will suck on that front, too.

All of those things, based upon my admittedly superficial understanding of macro-economics, should cause the entire economy to collapse.  Given what the democrats and other leftists have been doing recently, it isn't hard for me to believe that collapse might be the clandestine goal of the federal reserve.  They are, after all, the fed is a collection of private banks and their purposes may not align with what is best for the nation as a whole.

I don't see how an economic and social collapse would benefit them.  Perhaps they're afraid of trump auditing their activities as Ron and Rand Paul have been advocating for?

I have no idea.

What has been going on with our economy reminds me of a thing that happens in aviation, particularly in light aircraft being flown by inexperienced or heavy handed pilots.  All aircraft, unless specifically designed otherwise, are dynamically stable.  This means they tend to want to fly straight and level... more or less. 

During turbulent atmospheric conditions, planes bounce around a bit.   Inexperienced or heavy handed pilots will try to react to the bumps by issuing commands via the yoke;  plane bounces up, they push the nose down.  Plane drops, they pull the nose up.  Problem is, the inputs are slow and by the time the aircraft can impliment the command, conditions have changed and the pilot has issued another command.  The result is increasingly severe oscillations.  You can keep doing this until you literally rip the wings off of the airplane and it falls out of the sky.

Throughout that entire process, there is an action which will keep it from happening;  inaction.  Let the bumps happen.  If it gets too violent, reduce power to slow your airspeed and make the bumps 'smoother'.

What the federal reserve appears to do is attempt to over-control the economy... issuing too strong commands, too slowly to a machine that cannot react quickly enough to the inputs.  Thus;  increasingly severe oscillations until the wings come off.

I paid into the Ponzi scheme of SS for more than 50 years. It is owed to me. I would lose 30 % of my retirement income should that go away.

I agree.

I don't advocate pulling the carpet out from under those who have been lied to and bought into the lies for decades.  I wish to adopt a system that offers property rights, that does not create moral hazard and that does not cause one group of people to become parasites upon another.

It is possible to do this.  It has been done in other nations, Singapore is a good example.