If you were running for President what would be your solution for Social Security?

Question

A few of you failed to read the question. The question is about Social Security or about the mid-term election. I am looking for Ideas.

Answer 1

No more social security - pay off people already with demands, then stop it altogether. Allow welfare only.

Boo to socialism.

Social security was only created as a way to raise money after WWII. It forced everyone who worked to pay into a huge fund, but only retirees got benefits. That was a great loan for the government - it got to keep and use all that money for a long time - but now it has more to pay back than it's receiving. That's what happens when you get loans - you pay back with interest.

In my opinion, all social security is just part of the national debt and should be paid down as such, and we should no longer make promises to pay social security benefits.

Answer 2

Social Security was established to provide for people beyond their working years so that they did not become simply a government burden. It has worked well for that purpose until recently when the Baby Boomers began. and will continue to, retire over the next several years. As this takes place two things happen. First, it puts an ever greater strain on the monies accumulating in the SS fund, and second, it depletes the labor force so that collective contributions to the fund diminish substantially. Projections are that the plan will only stay afloat for the next 20 years or so. The remedy is to continue taxing both employees and employers as always, but mandate that an individuals accumulated monies be invested, at the individuals discretion, in a secure savings plan that cannot be touched until he/she reaches the age established for eligibility, as is set by the SS administration. The idea is that, under such a program, a person is ensured of having at least some money for retirement, and no individuals contributions are threatened.

Answer 3

Allow an 'opt out' clause. Create a set amount that a person could pay to not have to pay any social security anymore. A person exercising this option would never receive any benefits from social security, and they would never again be expected to pay for it.

I would pay a lot to have government stop stealing me blind and telling me they know what is 'best' for me. The person who knows how best to spend my hard-earned cash is me. Period.

Oh, and by the way, if social security can't survive without the younger generation paying into it, then isn't the whole thing just a fiction? Isn't the whole idea supposed to be that you put money in and then take that money back out? If that isn't what's happening, maybe you should go after whoever stole money from your retirement instead of stealing from the younger generation instead.

Answer 4

Wow, thats a tough question. Not really sure....but I have always wished that seniors that have been hard working, tax-paying, law-abidding citizens to receive "free" "top-notch" medical care at no expense to them. I would contribute more in Social Security to make this happen for all the honest hard working Americans out there. But honestly, I don't have a solution for Social Security.

P.S. Ethan- Thanks for the "Best Answer" you smart-***...LMAO. Big hug out to ya man.

Answer 5

Those who want to destroy Social Security will do so by "privatizing" it. If anything, the greatest danger to Social Security is the Republican right and George W. Bush.

First of all, Social Security is not in collapse and the word "downfall" is entirely inaccurate. It is well over 30 years in the future before any basic differences in income and payments will reach a negative balance, and much longer after that before the Trust Fund would be in trouble.

The Social Security Trust Fund has been used to falsify reports of government debt for decades. Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson borrowed from the fund to finance his ill-founded "guns and butter" program for both war and expanded welfare programs (yet ANOTHER reason protests against the Vietnam War were RIGHT).

However, that generated a debt to Social Security owed by the Federal Government's general fund. It is still outstanding - something that critics of the program today attempt to conveniently ignore.

This practice was followed enthusiastically by Nixon. Ford also engaged in it but to a very minimal extent. Carter took practically nothing from the fund.

But the BIG boodler of all time, before George W. Bush, was Ronald Reagan. It was under his Administration that the smoke-and-mirrors game was perfected to mask the true condition of the country's finances, by counting the trust fund as part of the national bank account. This, of course, was a deception. On top of that, to fund his outrageous (until now, anyhow) defecit spending, Reagan also looted the fund. Part of the money ironically went to pay off seniors ruined by the scandalous savings and loan collapses that followed Reagan's deregulation of financial institutions and his lax enforcement of the remaining laws governing those institutions.

The elder Bush might have made more raids on the fund but fortunately lost his re-election bid.

Clinton was no angel in this matter either. A chunk of the "surplus" he claimed in his Administration really belonged to Social Security. But he did manage to make an attempt to deal with the looming "unfunded liability" resulting from government borrowing from the fund, ill-advised Social Security contributions tax cuts, and changing demographics.

Geroge W. Bush has simply been making a meal of that money, all the while crying crocodile tears over the "need to reform" Social Security. And he too is padding his reports on government finances by improperly counting money in the trust fund.

The City of New York decades ago was bankrupted by pension fund liabilities the city never even bothered to prepare to pay. The City of Los Angeles several years later came close to the same problem.

Private companies with big pension programs have turned out to be fakes, for the most part - either through mal-administration of the funds, or consequent to mergers and acquisitions, many major pension plans have become costly failures damaging the lives of the people who earned their right to pensions. It turns out that Reagan pulled a cute trick with some of his measures encouraging mergers and acquisitions - pension funds after an acquisition were no longer protected from use. They were considered a disposable cash asset of the acquiring company. Well, THAT money sure wasn't allowed to sit around waiting for some useless retirees to get!

Whether private pension programs, or Social Security, the "reforms" needed are to protect the funds from the grasping greed of politicians and corporate executives. The LAST place Social Security funds should be spent is in the Wild West of the stock market.

If you worry about Social Security, exact a pledge from the person running for Congress in your district to begin a structured, steady program to repay all the "government loans" taken out of the Trust Fund and keep Social Security out of the hands of the public and private boodlers!

Answer 6

Scrap it, its a ponzi scheme and patently illegal. In fact the money for Social Secutrity comes out of the general fund, not a special Social Security investment account.

Answer 7

just print up some money to give them and quit sweating it but be quite about it .
EVERYone likes a good story so start telling people it is fine and we have so much in there that we are going to increase payments .tell them an accountant screwed up 20 years ago and misplaced a decimal and we have been off for years and now have a huge surplus enough to give everyone an increase and still have plenty to meet our future needs .
1/3 of americans are functionaly illeterate ,and 20% more have'nt got a clue but can still show up to work each day on time ,30%work for uncle sam and are such blittering idiots they will believe anything in a memo that sounds good .SO the 17% of us who are taking care of you just want a break .make up a story and tell everone its fine .PRINT whatever we need and just go along with it .
the entire economy is based on a lie anyhow lol .IN GOD we trust , everyone else pays in cash lol.

Answer 8

Besides Bush taking billions from it for his plan, not much of a problem just a bump in the snake of Social Security from the baby boomers.

Answer 9

There's a simple way to solve it, if the government stopped taking social security money to fund war, we'd have no problem, leave it where it is and start repaying what they've already stolen since it was started.

Answer 10

SS is the largest Ponzi Scheme * in the history of the world. It's too late to fix it. If it were a private corporation, the officers would all be in jail. It would make Enron seem penny-ante by comparison.

The BEST we can do is put aside enough of our own savings and hope we die before the bubble bursts.