“We paid our Social Security and Medicare
taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that
President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he
claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of
takers.”
If Social
Security and Medicare both involved people voluntarily financing their own
benefits, an argument could be made for seniors’ “earned benefits” view. But
they have not. They have redistributed tens of trillions of dollars of wealth
to themselves from those younger.
Social
Security and Medicare have transferred those trillions because they have been
partial Ponzi schemes.
After Social
Security’s creation, those in or near retirement got benefits far exceeding
their costs (Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times
what she and her employer together paid in “contributions”). Those benefits in
excess of their taxes paid inherently forced future Americans to pick up the
tab for the difference. And the program’s almost unthinkable unfunded
liabilities are no less a burden on later generations because earlier
generations financed some of their own benefits, or because the
government has consistently lied that they have paid their own way......To ReadMore....
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