Re: Social Security is Evil and Must Be Eradicated

[J. van Baardwijk]

At 12:02 27-11-2002 -0500, William Taylor wrote:

> > Governments do not generate income.
>
>  Actually, they do. It is called "taxes". (My apology for using a dirty
>  word.)
>

Agreed. But the taxes have to come from people who have incomes. Governments
do not generate people's incomes.

True; people generate their own income by working for it. Of course, it might be argued that the income of people in the Civil Service is generated by most of the population, as these people are paid with taxpayers' money.

Allow me to use this opportunity to send a big "Thanks!" to Ticia for her contributions to my paycheck! :-)

At some point, the taxes become high enough that more lower income people
give up and become sucklers instead of sows.

Sucklers? Sows? What are those?

>  > They can't pull money for entitlements out of thin air.
>
>  Correct -- that is why we pay taxes.

And if the tax base decreases but expenditures remain constant?

Then the government will have to commit the mother of all cruel acts: raise taxes. <EVIL GRIN>

> > I think the disaster point is when it'll take three workers to pay for
> > one retired person.
>
> That is not so much a disaster but a case of real lousy long-term planning.

Long term planning unfortunately means almost nothing but looking towrds
one's re-election.

That is a politician's viewpoint; when I say "long-term planning" I am thinking more along the lines of planning ahead for the several decades.

If Social Security today was the same as when it was started, it would work.

Social Security over here has not changed all that much over time, it is the age distribution of the population that has changed. Our biggest problem with Social Security right now is State Pensions. When it was first set up (1950's IIRC) there were many young people and relatively few old people, so paying for it was not a problem. However, the guy who set it up did not think of the fact that those young people would some day be old enough to apply for a State Pension, and that there might not be enough younger people then to pay for it. He also did not (but probably could not) foresee that old people would live longer, and thus would be receiving a State Pension longer.


Jeroen

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