Re: OT: Social Security

The Social Security money is a tax because it is a mandatory payment of mone
y
from us to the government.   That is not sufficient reason for it not to als
o be
an insurance payment.

Politically, its design was for it to be an insurance program, and that's ho
w it
was sold.    You can be currently insured if you are paying in now, or fully
insured if you have paid 40 quarters.

One big difference between Social Security and a mandatory private insurance
program is that private companies have more stringent fiduciary requirements
.
Another big difference is that the politicians set the rates, not businessme
n.
The third big difference is that the money taken in by SS taxes is spent by 
the
federal government.   If there is a surplus, more tanks can be purchased.
There is some accounting going back and forth, but that surplus is taken int
o
account when determining our deficit.    The line between Social Security an
d
the rest of the Federal government has been getting more and more blurry ove
r
the decades.   Nobody talks about the military going bankrupt.   The Militar
y,
social security, Medicare, etc.  are all federal expenditures that are paid 
for
by taxes.

With the sales job that social security is an investment, there should never
have been people complaining about double dipping.   So what if we have a
government job or a military job that invests in a separate retirement plan?
What we pay for should be what we get.    It is interesting that illegal ali
ens
pay social security into fake accounts, but are unlikely to get that money b
ack.
If it were a retirement plan, they should get what they paid for.

The "what we pay is what we get" doesn't mean that married people should get
more than non married people get.    Self employed people appear to pay more
than employed people do - but this is a fiction.   When your company pays ha
lf
of your social security, it is really paying all of it as part of the cost o
f
hiring you - and mentioning half of it on your paycheck.    But people belie
ve
that they are only paying half of this tax.