anybody here take issue with this?

Post Reply New Topic

(clicky) social security is (or can be made) sound for the foreseeable future

well at least I am glad of this.

That's an interesting read, but here's the problem:

Worker productivity has been increasing at a good pace, but workers do not benefit. All that extra wealth gets stuck at the top for the benefit of a few parasites.

Just recently I was talking to a friend about how my mother might never be able to retire because she wouldn't get enough to live on. They said social security wouldn't be around much longer and that people need to save for their retirement. I told them, "yeah, if you make enough to save anything" and dropped it.

I know multiple people where social security is their only income and if they didn't have it they would have to either get welfare or be homeless and starving. My mother will have to work until at least 70 in order to get enough social security to pay her rent and utilities and still be able to eat. Even then she'll barely be able to live.

the people wanting to ashcan SS and medicare basically want the old codgers who weren't lucky enough to get rich, to die and get out of the way.

The right want to do away with social security. They see it as every man for themselves just like it was in nature.

I think it takes an intelligent society to overcome this "survival of the fittest" ideal and apply benefits for the group, rather than default to individualism. If social security become too expensive to keep, then that will be because the few are reaping too much of the benefit a society achieves.

Of course it can. All it takes is a government with the political will to fund it properly--and it's not that expensive.

Canada's CPP is fully funded on a going forward basis (in other words, we have to keep collecting premiums and paying out benefits). What did it take? Well, individual contributions rose from about 2% to 4.95% (and employer contributions were matched), and the maximum pensionable earnings were increased from about $32,000 to $51,100.

That is not a small increase by any stretch of the imagination, but it means that every single person currently living in Canada has a legitimate expectation of collection CPP earnings upon retirement.

Any Libertarians reading this are going to enjoy a good w*k. This is Libertarian porn at its finest.

And I know people (and have reported people) who abuse the system. Go put your head back in the sand and go lalalalalala.

thou shalt not bear false witness.

No they don't. They have a lot of stupid ideas, but forcing everyone to be hermits is not one of them. Take the time to learn your enemy's motivation or you just sound like a bigot.


"Survival of the fittest" isn't something you overcome. The concept of natural selection is essentially a probability statement: over a large enough sample, those most likely to survive will survive. This concept is not refutable.

If you want to bash individualism, please don't associate it with "survival of the fittest". They are unrelated ideas. In fact, social contract could easily be considered a form of the strong controlling the weak.