Entitlements and the children
By D.J. McGuire | Thursday, February 17th, 2011 | Policy
Governor Christie dramatically added his voice to those calling for entitlement reform yesterday; his comments brought me back to some earlier thinking I had on this.
The entitlement debate (to the extent there is one) is subtely changing with the demographics. As more Americans or my age or younger (who are skeptical about Social Security’s survival) entering the voting populus, entitlements’ sacrosanct status disappears.
That said, I think there’s more to it than mere skepticism. Most of us are aware that Social Security and Medicare is not sustainably funded, i.e., we are not getting out what we pay in. Funding decisions have repeatedly been made independent of the incoming revenue, even after the 1983 rework.
Fact is, our parents are taking out what we put it, and we’re reliant upon what our children will contribute. That’s actually been the case since the beginning, when FDR first proposed Social Security to help impoverished seniors immediately. While the idea may have been to put it on a generationally sustainable footing, politics has repeatedly intervened to prevent that. Today, Social Security and Medicare remain what they always were: a government-run generational transfer.
Truth be told, I don’t mind helping my dad retire (Mom passed away four and a half years ago); I’m somewhat upset about the four or five bureaucrats that get hired along the way, but that’s a different discussion.
What I am not willing to do is force my kids to get whacked with massive tax increases to pay for my retirement. The idea that my children should have to postpone their dreams or families of their own just so I can afford to come by often enough to remind them how much better I had it at their age simply doesn’t work for me.
I expect that many more American parents my age have or will come to the same conclusion.
We hear a lot of politicians who hide behind “the children” to justify this or that vote, but in this case, entitlement reform really is about the children: it’s about making sure their American Dream isn’t crushed by taxes used to augment our retirement.
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Former candidate for Board of Supervisors in Spotsylvania, current blogger, economics teacher, and long-rumored windbag. There are two causes closest to the heart: steering the country away from the social democratic nonsense that is sinking Europe, and convincing the rest of the "rightosphere" that the NBA really is a joy to watch.
We're 75% there! Thank you to everyone who has so far contributed! Just $2000 to go!
Comments
9 Responses to "Entitlements and the children"
[...] Cross-posted to BD [...]
At this point in the game, any serious proposal to balancing the budget and bringing down our debt has to include entitlement reform.
I think those of us under 40 expect there to be no social security available to us when we retire – or at least for it to have some different form…and I don’t have a problem with that, even though I have been paying into it for more than 20 years.
While it annoys me, as you have said, that it has been a huge generational transfer, I know my parents and grandparents were sold a bill of goods and needed the money. I would have rather outright transferred the cash I pay into the system directly to my parents, or invested it on their behalf, but, alas, not to be.
Regardless, we need to look into raising the age to 70, means-testing, and further reforming the entitlement.
Social democratic nonsense????? lots of unrelated rhetoric in those 3 words………and usage of the ‘poor’ children seems to go in both directions. We dont want to harness our children (!!!!) with paying for our retirements; and oh, dont take bid bird away………would be great if we could just take them the hell out of all equations. Chris Plante, known local fascist and radio announcer commented this morning, that if he had a chance, he would put big bird in the electric chair!!
I read an article approximately 5 or 6 years ago (you know back when times were good and people had jobs and taxes were being collected) that provided a figure on future incomes of 58% for S.S. and Medicare taxes. Too many of America’s children don’t want to work now, they are too coddled and the general liberal society encourages them (and their parents) to keep them in a permanent juvenile state.
Do the people in Washington, the so called “representatives” and the bureaucrats vassals really believe that future workers will pay those sorts of tax rates and not have revolts in the streets?
The children who do have ambition, strong work ethics, desires to make actual achievement will leave the country for emerging opportunities in other countries. Reforms, in some European countries in recent years, make entertaining a move over seas desirable.
America is now rated somewhere between the 9th and 11th most economically free country in the world…. sure might be worth investigating the countries that are really dismantling the governmental economic systems that impede economic liberty and the individual’s natural right to be successful.
Must Save The Children from the SS demon.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b33869e2014e5f4025b0970c-popup
“Under CBO’s scenarios, all of the projected growth in
primary outlays as a share of GDP in coming years stems from increases in mandatory spending, particularly in spending for the government’s major health care programs: Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and insurance subsidies that will be provided through the exchanges created by the recently enacted health care legislation.”
Now pay close attention. Medicare costs are offset by individual retiree payments. The others are General Fund welfare programs that will double as a growing mass of poverty stricken people become eligible. Yet it’s all the Boomers and their SS check causing the problem.
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11579/06-30-LTBO.pdf
A health-care crime sweep Thursday morning netted 114 defendants on charges related to Medicare fraud, in what Attorney General Eric Holder called the largest such takedown in U.S. history.
240 Million, not through HMOs but through individual doctors. Now how many doctors do you think are really doing fraud? Maybe holder should expand his horizon.
I know that Social Security (SS) is not a retirement program; it is a program designed to keep elderly people out of poverty in their latter years of life…people who didn’t have the foresight to plan for their retirement. However, if you viewed SS as a retirement plan, what would be the average return-on-investment (ROI) on the amount of money you paid into SS during your 40-50 year working career? Anyone ever hear SS discussed in this perspective?? An analysis of my own SS account revealed a ROI of 3.07%…this ROI includes the so-called annual COLA that I would receive between my 62nd and 78th birthdays (I’m expected to die when I’m 78). A 3.07% ROI may not even keep pace with inflation. So, SS is a program that will return your money to you with the same purchasing power that it had when you paid it into the SS system. In other words, you get your money back if you live to age 78. If you die before 78, you and your family members lose bigtime. Your SS money doesn’t use the power of compounding interest to build a nice little nest egg for you. The average annual ROI for stock market investments is 7%. If the money in my SS account had received an annual 7% ROI, I could have retired at age 62 with a monthly benefit check that is 3 times as high ($4500) as my projected SS benefit ($1500)….and, I would have over $700K to pass on to my heirs.
Not only is SS broken; the SS program is an idiot’s ponzi scheme. If we were designing from scratch a retirement program for the masses, we surely would not devise the SS program that was devised in 1935. I’m not for SS reform; I’m for replacing SS with a real retirement plan that works for the masses…that allows the masses to benefit from the same sound investment strategies used by the wealthy.
Well Don, there’s the problem. Thinking the government can provide sound investment strategies.
Leave your response