Obama starts slashing

[audtatious]

Not going to happen without the economy crashing which would completely wipe out SS and welfare spending because our politicians are not going to do it. We can only "hope" for enough "change" in the system to get us over the baby boomer hump without crushing us while weaning future generations off it (along with weaning off taxation for it).

[stebo0728]

I agree, thats what I indicated making it a sliding scale. Theres no way to just drop it like a hot tater. And that wouldnt be fair to the people who have poured money into the fund through the years thinking that they would be taken care of.

[audtatious]

It would be nice to penalize our past representatives who supported this bloated measure and continually took the money out. We should strip all their benefits packages, take away their big houses (giving them a base home to live in mind you...I'm not THAT mean), take their over-bloated savings and investment accounts, then let them live on the SS amount that others have to deal with. The sale of their home and the money taken from them would be used to help pay SS.

Future politicians would be a tad more careful if they knew they would be help accountable for their actions while in office.

[96Qowner]

It would be nice to penalize our past representatives who supported this bloated measure and continually took the money out. We should strip all their benefits packages, take away their big houses (giving them a base home to live in mind you...I'm not THAT mean), take their over-bloated savings and investment accounts, then let them live on the SS amount that others have to deal with. The sale of their home and the money taken from them would be used to help pay SS.

Future politicians would be a tad more careful if they knew they would be help accountable for their actions while in office.

Or the people who are truly responsible - we, the voters - could man up and stop supporting the shysters. Seems unlikely, so grandstanding fools will continue to get elected. But who knows, maybe 1012 will be a watershed year.

[audtatious]

Somewhat true, or the Dems get more of their people in office and give poor people everything while stripping everything away from the "rich and working classes" as a means to level the bar.

[smockers83]

I expect it to happen, too, Aud. My point is that SS isn't about greedy old people, it's about society choosing not to have starving old people.

Surprisingly while that may be true in some manner, it's a pretty regressive system. It actually distributes wealth from bottom to top.

[IBCoupe]

That doesn't surprise me when there's a cap on when SS can tax your income.

[audtatious]

What problem do you have with the cap as those who make more than the cap are calculated to never receive that money back via SS when they retire. At least that's what it's supposed to be there for, limit the amount paid in to the maximum paid out per person (to some set life expectancy).

Realize, when SS was created participation in the Program was to be completely voluntary. It was not intended to cover full retirement. I was not intended to have the taxes used with the general budget. All of this came later as social reconstruction (over time). We are now all paying for the short sightedness of those who changed it into what it is today, an underfunded Gov slush fund which cares little about responsibility.

Looks like history may end up repeating itself with healthcare.

[IBCoupe]

You're not going to get any disagreement from me about dipping into Social Security like a credit card. My comment about the cap was in response to what smockers wrote about the system being regressive.

If it's true that SS moves money from poor people to wealthy people (outside of the logical fact that the young tend not to have as much money as the old, because they haven't been at the endeavor as long), then it seems to me entirely probable that the cap has something to do with it. Maybe the cap's a good thing, but that doesn't prevent us from recognizing that it may have some negative effects, too.

[audtatious]

I think there are positive and negative aspects to moving the cap. There is also fairness and unfairness aspects too. I don't know the answer but won't jump on the "remove the cap because rich people can afford the extra taxes" band wagon just because it effects more rich people.

We also need to start weening people off SS as a retirement plan. The problem is, every time it's brought up it's kicked to the curb.