Intergenerational Slavery: Young Generation Being Robbed Blind
Submitted by Michael Nystrom on Tue, 12/08/2009 - 12:16Watching Social Security Eat the Young Alive
By Bill Frezza | Real Clear Markets | December 7, 2009
My 26 year old son got the most extraordinary letter from the Social Security Administration last week. In plain English it admitted that the system was a Ponzi scheme destined for bankruptcy more than a decade before he reaches retirement age. It warned that if he is to have any hope of retiring he'd better start saving on his own. Anyone who wasn't personally hypnotized by FDR knows this to be true. Yet I was still surprised that such a frank government confession didn't make national news.
The two-page pamphlet entitled "What young workers should know about Social Security and saving" reminds us that 50 million, or one in six, Americans will collect more than $614 Billion dollars in Social Security benefits this year. It informs young people that the Security Taxes they now pay go into a "Trust Fund" that is used to pay current beneficiaries. Paying off early investors with funds taken from later investors is precisely how Wikipedia defines a Ponzi scheme. The pamphlet advises that the Social Security Board of Trustees estimates that the "Trust Fund" will be depleted before my son's 54th birthday. Because people are living longer and the birth rate is low, it goes on, taxes paid by workers in the future will not be enough to pay the benefits promised in his personalized retirement account statement enclosed with the pamphlet. Imagine what hell would break loose if Schwab or Fidelity Investments enclosed a confession like this when they mailed investors their 401(k) statements.
On top of the negative rate of return young people paying into Social Security are expected to suffer, the pamphlet concludes that my son should plan on taking an additional 24% haircut on the benefits promised in his statement. This is the same healthy young kid being told that he will soon have to buy an artificially overpriced health insurance policy so his premiums can be redistributed to aging Baby Boomers lobbying Congress for free stuff.
Unfortunately
it seems the young have always been the prey just look at the military getting young 18 year olds. Get some slick advertising they're hooked.
Prepare & Share the Message of Freedom through Positive-Peaceful-Activism.
I criticize the transfer of wealth from young to old
I criticize the transfer of wealth from young to old in my book (1999, p. 163):
Today, ten years later, it has gotten worse.
________________________________________
Shaka, you so crazy! www.sniperflashcards.com
____________________________________
Shaka, you so crazy! www.axiomaticeconomics.com
The government steals. The
The government steals. The article presents the situation as the old stealing from the young. I am a boomer. I paid income taxes and SS taxes all my working life. My employers matched the SS payments, of course. It's not old vs. young; it's tax-feeders vs. tax-payers.
By the way, SS will go broke long before the young man is 54 - like next year! The division between SS money and Treasury money is a bookkeeping trick. In effect they are co-mingled. The SS fund's assets are nothing more than IOU's from the government for the money it's stolen. Not only that, but the SS fund cannot sell the bonds to any person other than the Treasury. So as soon as the SS starts drawing down their phantom "reserves," the Treasury has to come up with the money. To come up with the money, the government will simply issue more US bonds and try to sell them in the open market. If and when that does not work, the Fed will print the money. In either case, the payoff will be charged directly the the Federal balance sheet, ballooning the deficit even more.
The taxes you paid each year
The taxes you paid each year do not cover even a single month of the benefits you receive today.
________________________________________
Shaka, you so crazy! www.sniperflashcards.com
____________________________________
Shaka, you so crazy! www.axiomaticeconomics.com
I couldnt agree more with
I couldnt agree more with the article, I think its time the young people stand up for themselves and stop govt pick pocketing. Also the the emotional commercials we see everytime Medicare is debates just makes me sick, it just shows those selfish medicare people who are enjoying the early retuns of the socialistic ponzi scheme ask US not to cut their medicare benefits.
I dont blame em for asking, but medicare needs to be slowly phased out because it cost the rest of us our future.
Bump for an eye opener
A fresh read.
Colchester, New London County, Connecticut
The sleeping generation
Young generation has no one to blame other than themselves. I, myself, am part of that young generation. Young people do not vote as much as old people. We have all kinds of excuse. "Old people don't work and they have all the time in the world to write their Congressmen." "Young people must work, and no time for politics, yadda yadda yadda." My classmate once said "I hate politics." My co-worker complained about sales tax, but yet when I asked her if she voted last election (which raised the sales tax %) she said no. American Idol and Jessica Simpson's boyfriend/husband/ex are more important than Social Security going broke.
That's why young people will always subsidize old people. And they have no one to blame but themselves.
The young people don't know the game
Which makes them easy to exploit by those who do.
It takes time just to figure out what the hell is going on in this place. I'm still trying to figure it out. Eventually, as they get old, they learn the game and learn to exploit the next generation.
So I wholly disagree with your analysis.
'Always be yourself. Everyone else is taken.' - Oscar Wilde
your excluding those 30 and
your excluding those 30 and younger right? the system was already way past screwed when we got old enough to vote! it was our grandparents and later generations fault.
Come out from your
Come out from your bondage.
See the Path to freedom
and particularly:
Resignation of Compelled Social Security Trustee
republic
All perfectly said.
Very succinct and accurate. Except maybe for the rate of inflation being 1 or 2 percent. I doubt it's ever been that, during my lifetime at least.
_________________________
Moobi
"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson
That is an excellent artice.
This would be a good one to share, it is written so clearly and could capture the attention of many who avoid economic subjects.
wow . . .
it's hard to be awake; it's easier to dream--
my plan: not to use SS--
what a hateful program--
it's hard to be awake; it's easier to dream--