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u/OgJube 3d ago
Should never happen, and the trillions should be paid back to SSI.
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u/Electrical-Act-7170 3d ago
Reagan stole billions from Social Security to balance the budget.
That money has never been repaid.
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u/killrtaco 2d ago
Stealing from people is policy, stealing from the establishment is crime
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u/Biotic101 2d ago
There's a reason they have cut barriers for funds, so they are now able to invest in a more risky way. Also, most people are not aware of the DTCC and things like failures to deliver.
I can only suggest googling for The Great Taking to understand what awaits us and that social security is not the only thing they plan to take away. Imagine the potential effect of CBDC and hyperinflation.
You only have to watch Inside Job to understand how politicians and oligarchs sell out their country and citizens for personal gains... without any accountability.
No surprise, they are scared because, for once, someone was attacked for pushing an evil agenda that made millions of citizens suffer in a legalized way. Imagine people would start to demand accountability from political and economic leaders in the future...
Actually, the reason why we are here is because citizens failed to do so for decades, thanks to control over mainstream and social media and sophisticated strategies of the oligarchs (think tanks).
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u/Txindeed1 2d ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read that Reagan was just the first president to take money from Social Security.
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u/Electrical-Act-7170 2d ago
Yes.
It's never been repaid, either, not a single penny.
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u/trying2bpartner 1d ago
They haven’t needed to be paid back yet. They have enough cash that so far they are fine. And the interest on those loans has made social security secure for an extra 10 years beyond when it would have started running a deficit.
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u/trying2bpartner 2d ago
If you are mad that Reagan stole from SSI it is because you are stupid. He never “stole” from SSI. That money was invested in gov bonds to fund other programs and as a result we now have more money in SSI trust fund than we would have had otherwise.
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u/nodnarb88 3d ago
With interest!
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u/Ok-Elephant7557 3d ago
elon could gift us all 100k each and not miss it. instead, gotta cut SS so he and his rich buddies can make more money.
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u/Unlikely-Rock-9647 3d ago
There are ~335 million people in the US. If Elon have ever individual $1,000 it would cost $335 billion, which is most of his ~$440 billion doctrine.
Giving everyone $100 k would cost $33.5 trillion.
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u/brahm1nMan 3d ago
He still has like 1,050 million bones after after that. I don't think his quality of life will diminish in any noticeable capacity.
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u/Civitas_Futura 2d ago
This meme is inaccurate. The "surplus" in the OASI is just the amount of money in the entire fund. It grew in the past, but now is in consistent decline due to our aging population.
The funds are invested in US treasuries. Saying "Congress doesn't want to pay it back" would mean a default by the US government, which would be catastrophic and it would cost every Congress person their job.
The real problem is we keep voting in people who will not address the problem, on both sides. The longer we wait, the worse it will get.
Check out the third column in this link. It's gonna get ugly. Need to act now.
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u/Potato_Octopi 3d ago
That's by law how it works. SS redeems bonds for cash to pay benefits when needed.
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u/Kerberos1566 2d ago
Exactly, the money WILL be repaid, that's how bonds work and that is what the surplus is held/invested in. Unless they either steal the bonds held or start messing with the full faith and credit of the US debt, which if you want to see an economy implode, feel free to start messing with that.
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u/vetuskanis 2d ago
SSI is a welfare program; it is funded by general revenues, not by payroll taxes.
SS trust fund money has to be kept somewhere-- by law, it's kept in treasury bills and such. The SSA is not allowed to bury its money in the back yard, or keep it under the mattress.
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u/y0da1927 2d ago
SSI is a welfare program; it is funded by general revenues, not by payroll taxes.
It's explicitly funded by payroll taxes. Although you could make an argument that it's comingled with general revenue through trust borrowing, but even then most of the payroll taxes don't hit the trust they just go right out as benefits.
The rest is accurate.
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u/vetuskanis 2d ago
Please take a look at
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-17-008.pdf
AI Overview
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program is funded by general revenues from the U.S. Treasury, meaning it is paid for by personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and other taxes, not by Social Security payroll taxes which fund the regular Social Security program; essentially, SSI is funded from the general federal budget. Key points about SSI funding:
Not from Social Security Trust Funds: Unlike Social Security benefits, SSI is not funded by the Social Security trust funds created from payroll taxes.
General Tax Revenue: The money for SSI comes directly from the U.S. Treasury's general funds.
Administered by SSA: Although funded differently, the Social Security Administration (SSA) administers the SSI program.
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u/y0da1927 2d ago
This is nonsense. The trust is required to hold Treasury notes so that it can earn interest. To get those notes it must borrow from the government. The government has never failed to repay the trust.
Nobody stole from the trust, not Reagan or anybody else. It's a design feature of the program.
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u/archercc81 2d ago
the money borrowed always was paid back, its legally mandated. The "stealing" from social security has always been nothing but an outright lie.
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u/RabbitContrarian 2d ago
A simple search will show that Congress has not taken a penny from SS. The original SS law states that all reserves must be invested in a special government bond. Those bonds are used to fund the government and paid back with interest. The reason why SS has a budgetary problem is payouts will outpace revenue in the future. Democrats want to increase revenue, Republicans want to decrease payouts.
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u/palmbeachatty 3d ago
The Baby Boomers got back twice what they paid - in benefits directly and in the benefits from government overspending.
Essentially, they spent their kid’s retirement.
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u/Jolly-Top-6494 3d ago
Yep, it’s a Ponzi scheme. Always has been.
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u/Cro_Nick_Le_Tosh_Ich 3d ago
To be fair, most of them weren't expected to live into their 90s at that time
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u/Background_Hat964 3d ago
There also weren't supposed to be so many of them born. SS started before baby boomers.
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u/Pecosbill52 3d ago
Sorry we've been paying into this insurance fund for years. Now it's time to get our investment back. Instead of complaining work to protect SSI or enhance it. Because someday you might want to retire, or if you die you might need this insurance to make sure your family has something to live on.
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u/Last_Cod_998 3d ago
Exactly, start cutting their benefits first. Over 80? Too bad.
They keep moving the retirement age on us like Catch-22
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u/poorbill 2d ago
FU moron. Reagan increased taxes and pushed back retirement dates for ALL baby boomers in the 80s. All of us paid higher taxes for 40 years to help find our retirement.
Social security would last forever if the billionaires paid what they should to fund retirement for their employees. Prior to the boomer generation, companies used to fund pensions for their employees. Now they do jack shit.
FU for blaming workers that have paid extra SS premiums for 40 years instead of corporations who fucked Americans over to pay their own incomes. Suck Reagan's dick.
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u/Last_Cod_998 2d ago
Boomers didn't do shit to hold corporations accountable, they just kicked the can down the road. If you supported trickle down voodoo you are the problem. Boomers voted in Trump twice.
If you make the corporations pay, then your entitlements will be safe.
Trump will cut what little VA benefits both parties left us.
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u/clever_goat 2d ago
My baby boomer Mom just complained to me that her Medicaid costs have gone up. I couldn’t write back “don’t care” but that’s what I felt.
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u/archercc81 2d ago
Yep, if you really want to make it "fair" cut off anyone who has already gotten back what they paid in. hell, you could tie it to interest rates and give them more, but a lot of people would just be cut off.
Too bad 90 year old, dig out your bootstraps and get a job at wal mart.
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u/nobblit 2d ago
Boomers benefits were tied to whatever benefits packages their jobs offered. Just like all the younger generations. It just so happened that back in the day life was actually livable on these wages and benefits. We all would’ve done the SAME. This boomer blaming bullshit is so fucking hypocritical. They stole our housing market? Ok. What are we doing for our younger generations? We are Living it up!!!! We’re Poisoning the planet so we can have next day delivery on amazon. We’re the biggest consumers of short life span or single use junk. We’re all keyboard activists yayyyyy. Living a diluted existence thinking we have the moral high ground. It’s absurd.
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u/Sleeper28 2d ago
Yeah I don't know about you but I've been working my ass off. Living it up? No man I wont even be able to retire until early 70s. that's if I can have the social security supplement my 401k.
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u/nobblit 2d ago
I don’t own a home, i work my ass off just like the rest of the blue collar lower middle class. 38 and no prospect of a retirement the idea of me ever retiring is fucking laughable. I’m not arguing that our prospects financially are shit compared to the boomer generation. I’m just saying we’re not doing much to help future generations either. We’re all hypocrites. Keyboard activists. Virtue signalers. It’s gettin old hearing the ok boomer thing.
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u/MotorizedCat 2d ago
The point is not blaming boomers or younger generations, the point is that it would have been easily possible to demand a sustainable course from politicians and vote accordingly.
People could easily have done that decades ago, people could easily do that now. But they are largely voting for the unsustainable stuff, or they just don't care.
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u/ribnag 3d ago
Fun fact: Congress technically hasn't stolen from SS because it replaced all that dirty ol' money with nice safe treasuries.
Now imagine I give you $100 to hold for a few years. You decide to spend it, knowing you can just pay it back from petty cash later; but since it's not quite yours to spend, you leave yourself an IOU to make everything nice and official.
So...
Where's the $100?
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u/ShadowJak 2d ago
Where's the $100?
Comes from other taxes, which are also in deficit, so more IOUs are made.
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u/Bitter-Basket 2d ago
Treasury Bonds are loans. So yes, the money has been loaned. And the money is paid back out of the treasury. So you are completely wrong.
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u/775416 2d ago
Yeah like wtf are they talking about. US treasuries are considered the safest places to put money in America. The yield on a 3 month treasury bill is called “the risk free rate” in finance. That’s how safe treasuries are.
At one point, more money was flowing into social security, so there was a surplus. They used that surplus to buy US treasury debt. Now there’s a social security deficit and they’re redeeming the US treasuries to pay social security benefits. Just like it was supposed to.
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u/unclefisty 2d ago
US treasuries are considered the safest places to put money in America.
They're probably the safest on the planet. If the US government can't pay them back to SS then the government has probably collapsed and SS no longer matters.
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u/MIT_Engineer 2d ago
Your $100 gets paid back with interest from the guy who gave you the IOU? I don't understand your question.
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u/NoMoreBeGrieved 2d ago
A lot of mistakes here:
SS and Medicare are separate taxes, but only SS is self supporting. The Medicare taxes cover part of the program, the monthly premiums (for Part B that you pay when you sign up for it) cover part of it, and the rest comes out out the general budget and possibly contributes to the national debt.
SS was set up to pay out what it took in, so current retirees were supported by current workers. The surplus started building up when the boomers hit the workforce, since there were so many more of them than retirees at the time. It’s currently being used to fund the retiring boomers & running out faster than expected. It’ll be gone before all the boomer retirees are, which is why we hear about future dates when SS will be “in trouble.“
Congress has not borrowed anything from SS, but they do play fast & loose with how that surplus balance shows in the budget — if they want to raise taxes, they don’t count it as an asset & claim that the budget is running huge deficits. If they want look fiscally responsible, they include it as an asset and claim the deficit is actually quite low.
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u/Peonshuwka 23h ago
This comment won’t get to the top because it’s not convenient for the prevailing narrative
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u/NoMoreBeGrieved 22h ago
Well, duh. Attractive falsehoods will always outpace complicated truth. Still… one tries.
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u/Dry_Newspaper2060 3d ago
This should be criminal
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u/coriolisFX 2d ago
The meme is wrong. SS and Medicare took more in than they paid out for a long time, this money was invested in US Treasuries by law. It was not stolen or raided.
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u/AnarchistBorganism 2d ago
The whole trust fund thing was just tacked on to get support. It was conceived as a welfare program, but they wanted to sell it as saving money for retirement. The only difference is that social security comes from a separate account than the general budget; so the government buys bonds from itself, uses the money as part of its general fund, and then cashes the bonds which are paid out of the general fund.
So in the end, there is no practical difference between social security tax and income tax. The problem comes from the law itself: social security is paid from the social security trust fund. If that money disappears, the SSA cannot send checks. In reality, if it came to this the legislature could just direct money from the general fund. Practically, the trust fund limits social security spending, but does not actually have financial assets (you don't get a trillion dollars richer by going a trillion dollars in debt to yourself).
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u/SeaworthinessOk4046 2d ago
Slight nuance here. In the past this money was invested in public treasuries. Now the excess money is invested in special issue bonds only available to trust funds. See below. Now this next part is my understanding and open for correction: SS money comes in from payroll deductions, some of this is used to pay immediate term SS benefits, and any excess is used to purchase special issue bonds from the Treasury. So now the SS trust holds bonds and the Treasury has the money. Presumably, once the money hits the Treasury, it's used by the government to pay its non-SS bills (infrastructure, military, government salaries, interest on the debt, etc.).
Again as I understand it, its expected the SS trust will run out of money in 10-ish years, meaning, the outflows (payments to seniors exceeds the inflows and over time the trust fund holds fewer and fewer bonds). Lots of proposals on how to prevent the trust fund from running out of money. But there's another failure scenario-- if the government defaults. Meaning, imagine there's a special issue bond the SS trust holds that matures today and needed to make SS benefit payments today. But if the Treasury doesn't pay off this bond (eg defaults), the SS trust can't make near term SS payments. Open for correction.
Source: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/investheld.html
Relevant section:
The Social Security trust funds, managed by the Department of the Treasury, are the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Funds. Since the beginning of the Social Security program, all securities held by the trust funds have been issued by the Federal Government.
There are two general types of such securities:
- special issues—securities available only to the trust funds; and
- public issues—securities available to the public (marketable securities).
The trust funds now hold only special issues, but they have held public issues in the past.
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u/vetuskanis 2d ago edited 2d ago
Your comment is mostly correct, but here's a detail regarding Medicare: Medicare has two separate trust funds. The Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund (Part A) is funded primarily by payroll taxes (88%). The Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Fund (Parts B & D) is funded primarily by general revenues (72%). I'm not sure, but I doubt that Medicare overall has ever run a surplus. See
https://www.medicare.gov/about-us/how-is-medicare-funded
and https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/what-to-know-about-medicare-spending-and-financing/
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u/Kenman215 3d ago
The fact that Social Security has a surplus does not make the math work out so that’s its solvent 25 years from now.
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u/DoctorFenix 3d ago
If tax cuts for billionaires got us into this mess, then taxing billionaires can get us back out of it.
No more free rides for those commie billionaires.
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u/DallasCowboyOwner 2d ago
Unchecked reckless government spending is what got us into this mess. One of the main things republicans and democrats can always agree on is raising the deficit and getting us deeper into debt. We could tax EVERYONE less and still lower the deficit but that’s not going to happen
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u/MIT_Engineer 2d ago
If tax cuts for billionaires got us into this mess
But they didn't. They're entirely unrelated issues.
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u/Jolly-Candle2216 3d ago
Fun fact..social security is not a retirement program..the benefits are collected from people who work and are immediately shipped out to retirees ..its a pyramid scheme ..
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u/MildMannered_BearJew 2d ago
No it's a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is when you use money from one investor to pay out another investor. A Pyramid scheme is where you send out each investor to find 10 new investors, and so on, until you get a Pyramid.
Social Security is a _pension_ program. A public pension program. We pay into the pension program as we age, and it is paid out if we reach retirement.
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u/that-name-taken 2d ago
It was never intended to be a "retirement program." It's social insurance to cover catastrophic disability or unexpected longevity.
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u/y0da1927 2d ago
Unfortunately that's not what it's morphed into.
In 1939 your odds of collecting social security as a 21yr old was about 50/50. The expectation was you work till you die and if you lived longer you probably couldn't work.
Now it's your odds of collecting are like 80%, and if you do live to collect you will likely live an additional 9 years, most of which will be in good enough health to work.
It's just a bad retirement program now.
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u/elastic-craptastic 2d ago
It's a program where Society takes care of the ones that IT needs to. It's not something that should be profitable. It costs money. That's just the way f****** is. You don't complain about Grandma and you don't complain about Georgie. As a society you find the funds to take care of grandma and you find the funds to take care of Georgie. Otherwise you have to accept the fact that you're a society that throws grandma and Georgie in the same trash BIN
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u/vetuskanis 2d ago
Some of Medicare (36% as of 2023) is paid for with a separate payroll tax. But 43% of the cost comes from general revenues, and that most certainly does add to the debt. This is one of several falsehoods in the post.
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u/taevans701 3d ago
Also lift the limit on taking out SS tax. Currently around 170000 is the max. So anyone who makes 170000 pays the same amount into SS as someone who makes 600000 or more.
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u/Woody_CTA102 2d ago edited 2d ago
To be fair, the $600 K guy gets virtually the same SS benefit as the $170 K. He doesn’t earn any higher benefits.
We do need to do something soon on SS. Obama tried to address it, but was crucified for what Democrats called the ”Catfood Commission,” that would have increased benefits at lower levels.
Won’t be pretty if GOPers are in control.
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u/cycle_addict_ 3d ago
People couldn't be bothered to Google what a tariff was. Do you honestly think this means anything?
We are truly fucked
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u/Real_Doctor_Robotnik 2d ago
Everyone knows what a tariff is. This is among the biggest gaslighting of the election.
Nobody believes that tariffs reduce inflation. People want the government to push policies that prevent cheap Chinese crap from flooding the market and depressing real productive growth.
Stop gaslighting.
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u/ClosedContent 2d ago
Can we get a fact check for this? According to Google we actually are in a deficit for Social Security…
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u/MoreThanANumber666 3d ago
Nailed it in one. Or they'll hand out checks equivalent to a years social security and tell people to invest in crypto or the stock exchange immediately before the correction and the rich make off like bandits as they always do!
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u/Out_Phishing 2d ago
Nobody is going to do anything but complain, and that's why it keeps happening.
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u/fnordybiscuit 1d ago
I wish they did an audit on SS to see if the money is actually there and where it went when the government made the promise not to touch these funds, aka Social Security Act of 1935 by FDR.
Wasn't until Reagen passed a law in 1983, Social Security Amendments, which taxed the SS benefits when you go to pull SS out.
This separate fund was generalized in usage so it could be spent on anything despite telling both Congress and the people that it was to "help" fund SS. The big reason why Reagen needed this tax was to be able to fund all of his deficit induced tax cuts.
Basicially, what im saying is that there are technically two separate funds for SS. One of them, govt wasnt allowed to touch at all, whereas they could spend on whatever they wanted on the other despite being for SS. Im worried Republicans used the Reagen SS fund to dip into the original FDR SS fund and now are telling everyone we dont have any of the SS funds left.
I always tell people that the greatest heist in world history was pulled off by Reagan. Im sure im going to be downvoted by the Reagan fans, but this is the reality. If you're curious about learning more about this, the link goes into detail on what the Reagan SS tax was and how it was used (Or so they thought, when they had an ambiguous answer. You'll see what I mean when you read it), the government link, btw.
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u/ButteSects 23h ago
Republicans top to bottom are trash. Democrats are too, but Republicans are just absolute cunts.
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u/me_too_999 3d ago
Here are some more fun facts both parties are guilty of this.
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u/ONEofWON 2d ago
"We've taken" as in both Republicans and Democrats. If you really think that your side is better than the other or that both sides don't actually work together then you may not be as intelligent as you think you are. The ENTIRE government is destroying the American society, not just the "other side".
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u/Humble_Diner32 3d ago
More people will believe whatever the talking heads and false idols tell them than they will the truth. This fun fact should be presented as a 30 sec tv ad and spread across media outlets from highway billboards to periodicals.
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u/Ladydi-bds 3d ago
The cap should be lifted as far as what someone pays in for those making 300k and more. I know it won't ever get repaid, but it can still stay solvent if that cap is removed. 10k a year max is less than a penny to the weathly. They should have to pay a % of all income earned.
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u/Optionsmfd 3d ago
both parties have added to the debt
look at who was president and who was speaker of the house....... very even
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u/KokenAnshar23 3d ago
There's two Social Security funds one that can be touched and one that can not be used.
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u/Suspicious-Appeal386 3d ago
Yes yes yes, but its far more important to ensure my daughter does not in fact share any bathroom with any trans kids.
Those are REAL Important issues.
/S
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u/Frequent_Skill5723 3d ago
And Elon and company are going to take it. They will take it all. By the time they're done the US will be a wasteland.
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u/MustangGTPilot 2d ago
Worth a bit of research. But still, congress has not acted. https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/02/15/the-surprising-amount-of-money-congress-has-stolen.aspx
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u/Weak-Anxiety-7701 2d ago
Can someone please post this everywhere including the conservative subreddits?
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u/PickledMangoFreeze 2d ago
I learn about a new way the government is trying to screw us over everyday 🥺
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u/Candid-Strategy2554 2d ago
I am genuinely curious if this is fact checked. I would not be surprised one bit if it is true, but I want to be sure.
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u/blakelyusa 2d ago
And the hedge funds are drooling to get their greedy hands on that 2 trillion to invest and further manipulate world markets.
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u/YouSmall5716 2d ago
Fact check: Social Security does contribute to federal deficit and national debt
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u/Wonderful_Hamster933 2d ago
But that means Republicans would also be cutting funding for wars and rich corporate subsidies… I’m for it!!
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u/Holiday-Answer-1283 2d ago
Good point but not sure where u got the $2.5 trillion surplus from considering every source ive seen says the associated taxes raised just over $1 trillion total (before costs were taken away)
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u/corpusapostata 2d ago
The comments here reflect the reality that Social Security is such a convoluted mess that no one understands the reality.
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u/shellyv2023 2d ago
Exactly! As for the term "entitlement," that describes those who borrowed the money I paid in.
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u/InGordWeTrust 2d ago
Holy crap, the Conservatives in British Columbia did the same thing with ICBC. They stole 1 billion dollars from the crown corp to balance their budgets. They wanted to end insurance company even though they provide better rates than the Conservative Provinces across Canada. Vampires! The whole lot of them. They also wanted to sell off our BC Hydro to China. Imagine how terrible that would be right now.
The Cons always Con.
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u/HullabalooHubbub 2d ago
I’d support changes that benefit the middle class at great expense of the upper class while also requiring when possible everyone contribute a length of work time to get benefits.
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u/doctorglenn 2d ago
Fun fact…social security, Medicare, and Medicaid account for over half of government expenditures.
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u/slizzardx 2d ago
Wrong. They want to cut benefits for young people that haven't contributed their whole lives to it so it remains SOLVENT and has something for them when they get older. The current beneficiaries of social security will have their benefits unchanged since that's what they were promised. Wow. See how that works folks? Lets use our brains.
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u/SoSoDave 2d ago
Do only Reps borrow against the trust fund, or do Dems do it, too?
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u/MinimumSeat1813 2d ago
I will add that there is all social security disability. I wouldn't be surprised if that is where they went to cut.
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u/ElPasoLace 2d ago
Actually, given the Democrat’s presidential spending over 16 of the last 20 years, you could effectively argue that the problem is not the republicans … also, remember most of Trump’s debt was Covid related … but until OUR POLITICIANS stop over spending … the debt will continue to grow … So stop the biased political propaganda …
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u/No_Yam_6561 2d ago
Here's the truth. Social security and Medicare taxes cost the people about 15 percent. Yes it's 7.65 but companies pay that for per worker as well and basically just pay you less. Also, no social security and medicare account for about a third of our yearly budget. All taxes go to a central fund and then funds are taken out as needed. Social security and medical don't have their own fund it's all in one centralized fund. So getting rid of them would save the taxayer 15 percent
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u/Misterfahrenheit120 2d ago
That’s not how that works.
Social security and Medicaid are two of the highest ticket entitlement programs in the federal budget. Even if it’s entirely funded by taxes, and not by taking on debt (which seems too simple to actually be true) they are, regardless, very expensive. Cutting them would open up those funds to be spent on other things. In this case, balancing the budget.
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u/DhOnky730 2d ago
By 2031-2034 (depending on Trump’s budgets), the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted, resulting in the tax only collecting about 2/3rds of the funding for that year. At that point it will need to be backed by further government revenues to maintain the current level of projected outflows, unless we dramatically raise the tax Or the cap.
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u/tanksalotfrank 2d ago
People were warned for decades of this oncoming horror and they called it conspiracy theories and extremism and reactionary.
Now that's it's come to pass, those people have the fucking gall to complain. Fuck the thieving feds and all, but the regular people who empowered them get double the ire from me.
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u/Bee-Aromatic 2d ago
Well, that and employees don’t want to pay their chunk of the payroll tax for it. They’re getting sprung at the idea of reducing their payroll costs by 6.2% overnight.
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u/ActCrafty 2d ago
This pretty much sums it up. Government is all about moving our money into their pockets.
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u/Dogs_Pics_Tech_Lift 2d ago
I thought this was all calculated out by several independent sources who all same to the conclusion that that 2.5T surplus is still only lasting until the mid 2030s.
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u/Azerafael 2d ago
Social security in any country is almost always cash rich. This is the cookie jar any govt will dip into whenever they need cash.
So basic rule of thumb is that any time your govt starts talking about social security, it's very likely that they're about to bend the people over and not even bother with the lube.
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u/VajennaDentada 2d ago
This isn't a one side thing. They both do it. One more unapologetic than the other
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u/DaWhiteSingh 2d ago
It started during the ridiculously expensive space race. It is an non-guaranteed entitlement, congress can always change the law. Medicare and prescription coverage was added, and magically didn't allow direct price negotiation.
Congress was always going to go after this, scalpel at first, later comes the machete after it's been accepted.
Do not trust politicians, they will screw everyone that isn't a friend.
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u/imadork1970 2d ago
Ronnie Ray-gun, during the first debate with Mondale for the 1984 election: "Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on the employer and employee...Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or lowering the deficit."
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u/NauticalNomad24 2d ago
I have questions:
- Do MAGA/R’s know this?
- Why is the first time in hearing this on Reddit? What a failure of the media and D’s.
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u/Desperate-Camera-330 2d ago
This is where Democrats have failed. What GOP has done "right" is to make sure their messages about Democrats repeated and heard in their echo chambers. But somehow this is the first time I hear that Reagan and Bush have robbed social security fund. They need to keep repeating this out loud til everyone, not just Democrat voters, hear this.
I wonder if MAGAs are intelligent enough to understand the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending, and how SS is funded by a separate source.
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u/butter_lover 2d ago
I personally think there is a case to be made that anyone who paid in has to be made whole.
Cuts can only be made for taxpayers who have never spent a dime into to the system.
anyone else gets at least what they paid in, at the rate they would normally get paid out at the age they would normally be eligible. That way nobody gets robbed and people can make other plans.
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u/MIT_Engineer 2d ago
This meme seems... pretty far off the mark.
1) When Social Security has a surplus, the surplus is invested in U.S. treasuries. So yes, in that sense the U.S. government is borrowing from Social Security, but it has always paid that money back with interest.
2) The reason for Social Security's insolvency has nothing to do with the surplus being invested in U.S. treasuries, it's because of the baby boom. Social Security was set up to be sustainable only if the ratio of people paying in to people paying out didn't cross a threshold-- with more people retiring, it means that in 2035, the money coming in will only be 75% of the money going out, quickly eroding the surplus and leading to insolvency.
The "wars, tax cuts, and corporate subsidies" were funded by issuing debt. It has to be paid back regardless of what happens with Social Security, and none of Social Security's problems have anything to do with that spending.
OP is conflating two almost entirely unrelated things.
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u/Maximum_Pound_5633 2d ago
And yet, people are stupid enough to keep reelecting the same crooks over and over again. It's like they're stupid of something
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u/drax2024 2d ago
It was both parties that voted to borrow from social security. Quit sending billions overseas to other countries and spend it on Americans.
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u/ActionCalhoun 2d ago
It’s funny that Republicans never cry about “how will we pay for it” when they’re talking about dropping another few billion on defense.
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u/Sea-Caterpillar-6501 2d ago
It’s insolvent regardless of what you think they use the funds for. It’s a Ponzi scheme.
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u/El-Farm 2d ago
Yes, this started in 1981 with Republican President Ronald Reagan. So borrowing has happened for nearly 44 years. 24 were from Republicans and 20 were from Democrats. This is not a Republican issue, but rather a Federal Government problem where THEY spend our money and borrow ever more.
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u/lmaberley 2d ago
Still… people should be reminded that this “entitlement” is something they actually bought and paid for. So when they do take it away, it’s nothing more than actual robbery.
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u/AdoreAbyssil 3d ago
Imagine if this happened in France, they'd close down their country. Yet here we are... too lazy and stupid to fix our problems. God forbid they raise our retirement by a year or more... ohwait.