Thread: Social Security

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

And who said Tricky Dick wasn't a great president!

He certainly was the most liberal president we've had this century: His two greatest achievements were the Federalization of welfare and the recognition of Red China. Go Dick.

...and if it really remained as 'insurance' then the rate of contributions wouldn't have to keep increasing because profitability would ensure that not everyone would have to contribute or receive.

A system of 'insurance' where everyone is potentially a recipient isn't really insurance. Insurance is designed to take in money and avoid liability to make a profit. Government mandated insurance does neither. It takes and takes and takes and spends and spends and spends because of the assumption that it's someone else's money...which is the root problem of the whole scheme.

If SS were really established only to help those who truly needed it then the payouts would be small and the taxes would be rather minor AND the law would not allow the surplus to be handed over to the general fund. 15% of a person's income (up to $97000) is unacceptable if the goals setout decades ago were still in place. Even a normal life insurance policy doesn't require a premium of nearly $15,000 per year.

Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

And who said Tricky Dick wasn't a great president!

He certainly was the most liberal president we've had this century: His two greatest achievements were the Federalization of welfare and the recognition of Red China. Go Dick.

Detente was a smart move.

^
But it was Reagen who brought down the Berlin Wall.
Both men were great presidents.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

But it was Reagen who brought down the Berlin Wall.

I don't buy that. Right man in the right place, but what brought down the Berlin wall was a failed economic system. Nixon had vision, Reagan had charm and timing.

Originally Posted by surasak

If SS were really established only to help those who truly needed

Originally, it was. There was what was called an "Annual Earnings Test". This "test" was used to determine whether or not you needed the insurance pay out. Unfortunately, Congress slowly liberalized this test and eventually eliminated it for people aged 65 and up.

I think it helps to continue to remember that both the individual and the community are the "insured". It would be great if everyone prepared for their own retirement, death and possible disability. But, they don't. Social Insurance allows the community to show its compassionate side while preserving the spending ability of its members and the viability of its businesses and economy.

..and if it were still a form of social insurance for a small group of people who really needed it then I could be onboard to continue supporting it.

However, it has become a free-for-all for the politicians to court the senior vote (the ones not paying into the system) while screwing the rest of us by allowing a flawed system to continue to spiral into bankruptcy.

The fact that entitlements are over 50% of Federal spending now is quite disturbing.

He stroller, when ya gonna start deleting these offensive posts?

I don't know nothing about social security, because our family gets its money from growing corn and putting it in a still.

But here it is Sunday night, and my wife's cousin is here (not that cousin!). Baxter works for the social security people down at the big city that I never go to, and now I will let Baxter explain,

Hi there, I'm Baxter Peurifoy, from Knoxville, and I work in the retirement benefits section of SSA. OASDI stands for old age, survivor, and disability insurance. That takes 6.2% of your wages. Medicare is the other tax, for old age medical care, not the same as welfare Medicaid for poor folks. The Medicare insurance rate is 1.45%, so you cannot ever pay more than 7.65% of your wages to SS. Self employed is different, but works out to less than 14%.

The money put in by our working grandparents and parents was put into trust funds that were all loaned to the government, who will never pay it back. Guess how they almost balanced the federal budget for all those years - yes sir, by using SS funds.

There will be enough OASDI to keep paying promised benefits until about 2045, to the wage earners who were born before about....I don't remember exactly, maybe born before 1965. You younger people are screwed. No way in Hell will your grandchildren have the money to pay for you.

Baxter Peurifoy, Benefits Examiner GS-10

PS: if you're ever up in these parts on a Sunday after church, Medallion's wife (cousin) makes the best gooseberry pie in all of Kentucky.

Originally Posted by medallion

The money put in by our working grandparents and parents was put into trust funds that were all loaned to the government, who will never pay it back. Guess how they almost balanced the federal budget for all those years - yes sir, by using SS funds.

This is completely inaccurate and the kind of stuff I'd expect from a GS-10 benefit examiner, who is basically nothing more than a clerk deemed not skilled enough to actually make benefit determinations.

Originally Posted by medallion

There will be enough OASDI to keep paying promised benefits until about 2045, to the wage earners who were born before about....I don't remember exactly, maybe born before 1965. You younger people are screwed. No way in Hell will your grandchildren have the money to pay for you.

The shortfall in 2045 will be about 1% of payroll. If the government got on it's ass now and did some minor repair to both tax rates and benefit amounts that shortfall could fade away to nothing.

Anonymous Coward, Field Office Manager, GS-13: retired and glad of it.

Is it fair to someone who's paid halfway into the scheme to suddenly change the rules in the middle of the game? That's what has many people my age steamed about the whole situation.

Originally Posted by surasak

Is it fair to someone who's paid halfway into the scheme to suddenly change the rules in the middle of the game? That's what has many people my age steamed about the whole situation.

What rules were changed in the "middle of the game"?

Supposing that retirement age/taxes/benefits change for someone like me (about halfway through the path towards retirement).

Do I get to pay higher taxes for lower benefits? Continue the same rate, but, with a higher retirement to get the same benefits as those retiring today? Continue the same tax rate, but, lower benefits? That means that from day one until retirement the rules would have changed (costing me something I was 'promised' for example).

I think the more fair thing to do is cut off those who don't need it so that those who do need it can get it. Return it to a means-tested program as it should be.

Originally Posted by surasak

I think the more fair thing to do is cut off those who don't need it so that those who do need it can get it. Return it to a means-tested program as it should be.

In the past significant adjustments to entitlement have attempted to grandfather in participants past a certain age. Of course, this has not been without controversy. There were huge protests a couple of decades ago from the so called "notch babies"; people born between 1916 and 1919. They felt that corrections to errors in legislated computational formulas were unfair to them.

I agree that some sort of means testing is appropriate. But, the government has a steep hill to climb. During the 50's and 60's, when anti-Communist and anti-Socialist fervor was at its height the government shied away from anything with "social" in the title and allowed the press and the public to create the myth that Social Security was some sort of investment program rather than social insurance. This made people believe that somewhere in the government coffers was an "account" in their name that they were irrevocably entitled to at age 62.

This entitlement myth enabled Congress to so liberalize the program that it became financially tenuous in the far term.

Part of making Social Security work is an education program to recast the program in its original light: social insurance. In its original incarnation the Social Security means test was of earned income only. Perhaps in todays world where income can take many other forms a broader definition is required. Of course, all that presupposes that in the sort of economy we have today social insurance is even a viable concept.

I think what bothered me most throughout my career was how little people understood about Social Security and the huge misconceptions they held on what is was, how it worked and how it affected them. This lack of knowledge, by both the people and their representatives in Congress, allowed the program to be altered to the point where it little resembles what was originally conceived.

I am happy with it, I paid into it for the MAX every year from 1953 to 1991 and they told me I would get it and they have kept their word. I paid $75 a year [I think it was] Medicare for 3 years after I came here, but quit as I will never go back.

Blackgang retired, was once GS-12..MACV ARVN

Originally Posted by blackgang

I paid $75 a year [I think it was] Medicare for 3 years after I came here, but quit as I will never go back.

What health insurance do you have now?

I have never had ins. except the medical full coverage from the union I happened to be working thru or the Medicare thru SSA, I now have med ins. thru my wifes job as a govt. school teacher here.
I never use it tho except for my Emphasema meds which are about 10% of the prices in the USA for the identical same meds.
I will pobly use the govt services when I die and they can do the autopsy as I won't mind waiting in line then, now if I need to see a Dr. I go to a private hospital because of the no waiting and it never costs much.

Private ins. here is impossible to get if you are over 65.

I don't plan on ever going back either, but my health insurance (as a retired Federal employee) will require me to sign up for Part B Medicare when I'm 65. If I don't, I lose the health insurance.

Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward

I don't plan on ever going back either, but my health insurance (as a retired Federal employee) will require me to sign up for Part B Medicare when I'm 65. If I don't, I lose the health insurance.

Won't do you any good if you live out your years in Thailand. And, who wants to try and get on a plane and travel >18 hours to get back to the states when your sick.

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Won't do you any good if you live out your years in Thailand.

But, if I don't sign up I lose the Federal health insurance that comes with my retirement. Since that's good for life anywhere in the world, I don't want to lose it.

Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Won't do you any good if you live out your years in Thailand.

But, if I don't sign up I lose the Federal health insurance that comes with my retirement. Since that's good for life anywhere in the world, I don't want to lose it.

kao jai...

But if it like the reg. medicare then it is no good anywhere but the USA and can not be used here,
Have you checked to see if you can use it here, but I can sign up for the medicare if I go back, but it doesn't start right then but has to wait til the next quarter or something, I don't remember what they told me, but I can get it again with restrictions as the time it restarts.

But of coarse SSA is pobly different that yours.

^ Nah, it's the same SSA and same Medicare as yours blackgang. The deal is that most health insurance companies seek to decrease their liability by requiring people who are eligible for Medicare to sign up for it. Medicare then becomes the primary payor. So, instead of having to pay the whole amount the insurance company only pays the part that Medicare doesn't cover.

Of course, Medicare won't pay anything for treatment I get here, but the rule applies to all, no matter where you are living.

If you've opted out of Medicare Part B you can only sign up again during the January through March open season and then your coverage doesn't start until the following July and you're penalized by a 10% premium increase for each year you weren't signed up.

OK, but if medicare will not pay here then why would you keep it if you are gonna check out here. Do you have asnother policy that will not pay if you drop MC?


I know about the restrictions that my friend who worked at SSA office told me about but I forgot the particulars as I will not ever go back.