"Lord Karth" thus spake: "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are nothing short of intergenerational acts of war. The ONLY moral solution is to eradicate them, root and branch. Now"

Oh yeah, that's really a primo, brilliant plan.

Here's a clue, Sherlock: you eliminate those programs (which provide a solid basis for independence) and you are looking at 40-odd million oldsters moving in with their offspring.

That what you want, genius? Because that is exactly what will happen.

With no minimal support income and no access to affordable medical care they will have to choice but to impose on the young turks they raised.

Just like those young turks (under 30s) are moving back in with the old folks now, by the millions. Since they can't find the jobs they want.

In the end killing SS and Medicare is the best way to launch a real inter-generational war. And it won't be pretty, not one bit.

I wrote on Michael Lind's original piece here (http://www.american.com/archive/2009/may-2009/the-straw-men-of-social-security) and blogged on his current piece here here (http://andrewgbiggs.blogspot.com/2009/05/michael-lind-weighs-in-again-on-social.html). The short story is that in too many cases he really doesn't have his facts straight.

All this talk about whose numbers are right draws attention away from the real problem: the existence of these immoral and utterly barbaric acts of theft-at-gunpoint. Since when is it MY responsibility to deprive my family of resources to provide for some gray-haired improvident who fell for the government's sucker line ? If a common (non-governmental) thief held me up and stole my wallet, the fact that he was doing it to give to his old neighbor down the street would in NO way negate the fact that what he was doing was robbery.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are nothing short of intergenerational acts of war. The ONLY moral solution is to eradicate them, root and branch. Now.

If the "beneficiaries" don't like it, tough. If they bought into the garbage they were fed by FDR, Johnson, Reagan and the rest about how they "deserved" what they were getting, and didn't make plans for themselves, TOO BAD. Let them hit up their families, let them eat dog food, or give them the Soylent Green treatment.

End Entitlements Now ! Stop the War against Generation X !

Eradication: The Only Moral Solution.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

And worse yet, pretending that the US government is immortal and that the dollar is invincible is probably a really bad idea.

Finally some sense. Japan, China, investors WILL get paid back. SS will pay benefits. It is just that the value of the benefits and bond payments will be cut heavily when the dollar becomes even less valuable than it is now. In other words, SS recips will get their benefits, they just won't buy as many loaves of bread as they do now.

darvader wrote:

If the IOU's from the US treasury bought by Social Security are not realy, then why have working people been paying all this extra money into the system for 25 years?

Well, because it's a Ponzi scheme! At least that is what they'd tell you. But the key think they always omit, or re-frame, is the nature of the IOUs. Which is while, technically, they are IOUs, they are also bonds! And those bonds must be honored. It isn't a matter of tossing them in the nearest dumpster because they are also "IOUs".

Congress has NO choice other than to approve the obligations, by law. There is no such finance critter as a "non-redeemable" bond. (There are non-negotiable bonds, but that doesn't mean the same thing).

Once a bond is issued, it has to be redeemed at some future date, in order for the bond issuer to sustain credibility - particularly in the financial markets, and especially with overseas holders of its other bonds!

If SS bonds were truly "non-redeemable" then its issuer (U.S. Gov't) would have to be insolvent. That means all its other bond issues, say to foreign investors, would have to be "non-redeemable" too. If that were true, the implications would be horrendous.

Splitting hairs about bond definitions by playing verbal parlor games is a fool's errand, because in the end, no foreign investor, finance-business type buys it. At least those with whom I'm acquainted(in the UK, Germany and Switzerland). To them, a bond is a bond is a bond. Whether an IOU from the U.S. gov't to its own people, or an IOU to a foreign investor, interest. Default on one type, then you can't be trusted for any!

As Mark Weisbrot (The Denver Post, March 5, 2003, p. 1B) noted:

"The bonds held by the Social security Trust Fund are dismissed as 'IOUs' or 'pieces of paper', as if the credit of the U.S. Treasury- which has never defaulted in the history of this country - is something rather shaky.'The Trust Fund's money's been spent!' they exclaim, as if exposing some kind of scam.

Guess what? So has the $720 billion that Japan loaned the U.S. Treasury. The Japanese government will be repaid, however, interest and principal and so will Social Security"

In the end, Weisbrot accurately observes that blaming Social security for future debt problems is like blaming your credit card company for your own over-sized spending habits. By analogy, just as the credit card company is the lender to you - even while you spend recklessly - so Social Security is the lender of note to the U.S. government - not the spender.

In order for the Rightist-Libertarian disinfo campaign to work, however, they know they must succeed in painting Social Security as the "debtor" - and hence "bankrupt" (despite the fact it has NO creditors) to make their bogus case.

We need to get as many people as we can not to drink the kool aid and buy into that. Again, Michael Hiltzik's book is an eye opener here: The Plot Against Social Security.

If the IOU's from the US treasury bought by Social Security are not realy, then why have working people been paying all this extra money into the system for 25 years?

Ted Kennedey and Ronald Reagan raised the regressive payroll tax in the early 80's as a way to set aside money to fund social security when the baby boomers retired. If the republicans now tell us that they just spent that money on cutting marginal income taxes for the rich, then give me my f-ing money back.