politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Hypothetically, let’s say the administration cancels social security. What happens to all of my money I’ve already paid into the system? I’m not at retirement age yet. Are they just going to steal my investment?
You think?.......of course it's stolen
That's the great misconception and lie of Social Security. People think it's like a government run 401k, that you're "investing' in some retirement account every paycheck. That's not at all how it actually functions though. Social Security is two entirely independent things. First it's a benefits program like SNAPP or Medicaid. In that regard Congress votes every year on how much budget they're going to allocate towards paying people Social Security. Literally everyone receiving Social Security cheques in the following year are reliant on Congress deciding to allocate enough money to make sure those cheques don't bounce. Secondly it's an income tax. The two are not connected in any way. The amount of Social Security income tax that the federal government collects each year has absolutely no bearing on the amount of funding that Congress allocates for Social Security in the coming year.
Let that sink in.
Social Security is the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. Always has been. That's a huge part of why a lot of Republicans, particularly older ones (like ones around retirement age) are hand wringing about falling birth rates. Social Security always counted on the idea that there would be more people working and paying into Social Security than the number of people currently collecting Social Security. In a country with a positive population growth that would always be true. It ceases to be true the moment you have a negative population growth rate though.
No, it's a big insurance scheme, but its finances have been fucked with. The original intent was that the money went into a trust fund isolated from other government finances. It didn't take long for some scumbag to realize that the trust fund could be used as collateral for loans, or "lent" directly from the trust fund to other government activities.
Also, even if it's funded year-to-year, if the cap on contributions were lifted, the system could be self-funding, or nearly so. But the Republicans (and some conservative Democrats) have been trying to kill it since FDR started it, and the specious argument is always that it's not affordable.
The US in 1935 could afford it. The only difference now is a matter of priorities and who's in charge.
They cap it at 160k a year. So if you make 3m a year, you'll only pay on what is due on the 160k.
Getting rid of that, along with taxing the rich, would fix that problem. If 8 people have more wealth than like 4 billion people, it's really not a "we need more people to keep this ponzi scheme" problem, it's more of a France in the 1790s problem.
This comment is so stupid I wouldn't know where to start to unpack it. This is such a bad take on so many levels it makes Sovereign citizens sound like supreme court justices.
Social Security is not part of the normal budget. It and the social security tax are kept separate from everything else. Congress is not having to decide how much to find it with every year because it's cordoned off, and directly funded by it's relevant income tax. It has been pulling in a surplus, and has funds in reserve. The point where we begin drawing down that reserve is coming soon though, which is why it keeps making news.
I love when nonamericans storm in here acting like authorities on American things they very clearly aren't.
collapsed inline media
Listen to this folks, he's right. Even when the reserve runs out of money in about 10 years under the current structure, tax revenues will fund about 80% of benefits on an ongoing basis.
To everyone who says Social Security isn't sustainable: it's very sustainable. Just at around 80%.
To fund it at 100% long into the future they just need to raise the cap on taxable income.
The solution is so simple and painless that every American should be furious that SS is EVER used as a political football. Fuck the rich, raise the cap, from the bottom to the top.
Yes. Or just remove the cap entirely.
Also! If it wages weren't so dismal, for so long, social security would not be having this issue at all.
We could fix social security by increasing the minimum wage to something that want an absolute joke without ever touching the Social Security laws directly.
Although the cap should be raised, too. It is laughably low.
Lol, I'm American, you just can't spell. Cheque is the correct way to spell it, check is incorrect. You also don't know how SS actually functions. Congress has treated it like a slush fund for decades and constantly steals money from it. And yes it is a budget item that gets voted on like anything else. You might think it's an independent account, but that's just the way it's reported on the accounting forms, absolutely nothing is stopping Congress from taking those funds and spending them on whatever they want and in fact on many many occasions they've done exactly that.
Congress doesn't even need the revenue from any taxes to just spend whatever it wants. The US has been borrowing money to cover its budget for all but like 3 years of my life.
The few times they did explicitly borrow that money from the social security fund, they replaced it with Treasury bonds, which is a certified debt and accrue interest and not paying those back would remove Congress' ability to borrow any more money for probably decades. So no, they're not stealing that money - that has been a long time conspiracy theory that people who want to kill Soc Sec like to spread.
And no one in the US spells it like that, no.
The US doesn't need to borrow money as long as the USD remains the world's reserve currency.
Which is why we are completely fucking ourselves by burning all of the good will we've built up since WW2.
No, it DOES need to borrow money. Being the world reserve currency just let's it do so to an exceptional degree. It does this by selling Treasury bonds.
Read about Modern Monterey Theory.
It's all made up, and we print it. We can do whatever we want with it.
Or we could, before our own government started sabotaging our standing in the world.
Issuing bonds is the mechanism by which they do what you're saying. The US, by law, currently cannot just print more money to pay off it's debts. It can print money to buy bonds through the market in some convoluted nonsense, but that direct print to debt that your saying isn't a thing.
Cheque and check are two different things you're just uneducated. A check is the mark you make to select a box, while a cheque is the thing you write to transfer money from one bank account to another. They're different and yes people all over the US know the difference between the two.
I'm aware of what those using British English would argue. But no official documents (laws, forms, government regulations) in the US use that spelling. It's check here.
Claiming someone else is uneducated because they're not being an uppity contrarian to how every single official source in the entire country spells something...is just stupid.
It's been this way since Webster out out his 1806 dictionary. Go argue with him about it.
Pot, meet kettle.
It's not like it's sitting there waiting for you to use. Every dollar you pay into SS just goes into the pocket of someone drawing SS. It's a good system but not good if you plan to cut the program. Meaning millions will have paid in for nothing.
It will also destroy old people, since most need it to survive.
We didn't "pay for nothing," we contributed toward the well being of people in our communities that cannot work.
Jesus Christ people, it's not always about you.
With the promise that we would be given the same benefit. We paid in Money most of us would need to invest in our own retirement had it not been going into that system.
People are allowed to feel cheated when they get cheated.
We did pay for nothing if the program gets cut. Sure we took care of old people, now what? I could have used that money for my own retirement. If the system is still in place then it wasn't for nothing and you'll be using the younger generations tax dollars for your retirement. So it's not all about me, but if I don't get the same benefit why pay in?
That's the whole point of social security. Not social security for a certain generation tax
You paid for "social security". It's literally just right there in the name.
Yeah someone else's. If the program gets cut then who is paying my social security? Oh yeah. No one. So it's social security for a certain generation. I could have used that money for my own retirement, but if the programs cut it was social security for boomers and then alone lol.
It's not "someone else's," it's social security. It's for the entire society.
Like you realize that the old lady down the road isn't literally getting the exact same money that you put in, right? They are just numbers on paper. You pay into a fund that is used to benefit all of society. And it does.
Stop looking at it so selfishly and read about why FDR introduced it in the first place.
I wonder if this is partly why I see so much efforts whipping up one generation against the other. If you get zoomers all pissed off at some caricature of the boomers, they just might cheer at fucking over the old people (and their own future selves, too, but the anger will override the cognitive functions).