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Why fight on the hill you are willing to die on when you could fight on the hill your enemy is willing to die on
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Subverting Social Security
10.4K posts
Subverting Social Security
@SubvertingSS
The Hardest Thing To Explain Is The Glaringly Evident Which Everybody Has Decided Not To See—Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
Joined Mart 2020
1 Following362 Followers
@GreenPlusAnE Wow, he’s saying the quiet part out loud
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"I can't rely on the government for my retirement, therefore I should work and save less."
I guess that's one possible response to unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities.
James Medlock@jdcmedlock
Given the importance of perception on incentives here, people who fearmonger about social security not being there for the next generation are directly increasing deadweight loss of taxation in the economy.
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*Truly* smart kids would discount 100% of future promises because
NO PERSON LIVING UPON THIS EARTH HAS ANY GOD DAMNED RIGHT TO MAKE SUCH PROMISES AT THE EXPENSE OF THE UNBORN
The fruits of THEIR future labor is not a bargaining chip the government can offer in exchange for paying current FICA taxes. THAT is the fundamental misconception plaguing your efforts to enact reform. You’re AFFIRMING their claim of jurisdiction over the wealth of the future and then when they offer it as recompense for sacrificing ourselves to TBLC, your response is “NOT GOOD ENOUGH.”?!?!
If the system wasn’t broken and demographics were favorable, would the smart ones embrace Social Security?
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1. Smart Gen Z and Millennials already discount US Government promises. They know the system's broken.
2. Social Security already uses a progressive formula. Above ~$93k average income, each extra dollar of indexed average earnings raises benefits by just 15 cents. So the tax-benefit link is already weak.
3. Yes, taxes discourage work. Also, public benefits displace private saving and investment.
Alex Tabarrok@ATabarrok
Eliminating the wage cap on Social Security taxes & capping benefits severs the link between what you pay in and what you get out, making the payroll tax more distortionary. Make SS more like an individual notional account, not a welfare program. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
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@ATabarrok “More distortionary”
What do you mean by this?
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Eliminating the wage cap on Social Security taxes & capping benefits severs the link between what you pay in and what you get out, making the payroll tax more distortionary.
Make SS more like an individual notional account, not a welfare program. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
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“Headed toward”
More future tense misdirection to maintain our collective disassociation between our runaway debt and the growing financial challenges being experienced by tens of millions of young families.
Murray 🇺🇸@Rothbard1776
If America’s national debt was financed at 5% interest rates, we would have to pay $2 trillion in interest on our national credit card every year. This is more than the entire federal budget in 2001 and 50% of the budget in 2018. We are headed towards a financial catastrophe.
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Subverting Social Security retweeted
@CBSNews Social Security robs from black men to fund Asian women's retirements
It's a basic demographic fact.
@SocialSecurity Is inherently racist and sexist.
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@cosisiwa18701 @CBSNews Hilarious point if you have absolutely no idea how Social Security works
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@CBSNews Oh no! Rich couples are getting their own money back which they already paid into the system?
We should take all their money! Then we could tar and feather them!
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Rich couples are collecting over $100,000 in Social Security. A new proposal would cap that. cbsn.ws/41tdd9F
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@CBSNews This is bullshit. If you pay in, you at least deserve to get your money back. That was the deal.
SS is a terrible program. But raising the retirement age is the obvious and *fair* stop-gap fix.
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This is a common misconception.
“Because either way I’ll be consuming what younger people are producing, there is no difference between Social Security and personal savings.”
In the case of savings/personal investment, you are purchasing goods that retain/grow in value specifically because you want to sell them for dollars in the future. This can be stocks, real estate, precious metals, baseball cards or beanie babies. The point is—when you need cash you have something to EXCHANGE with future workers for their dollars. The workers won’t buy your real estate/stocks/gold/collectibles unless they value them more than their dollars. They don’t become poorer funding your retirement consumption.
In the case of Social Security, you are promised that the government will SEIZE dollars from workers and deliver them to you, with no recompense given.
We are made poorer when the government takes our $$ and gives it away to retirees. We are not made poorer when retirees sell us their summer home.
delaniac 🌹🌱@ChadNotChud
private savings obscure this fact because they make you feel more independent, but they’re a “Ponzi scheme” in exactly the same sense that social security is
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Advancing American Freedom by increasing the amount of money the government gives away to retirees.
Straight to hell, all of you.
Advancing American Freedom@AmericanFreedom
It's time to end Social Security's outdated earnings test and let people work if they want to. @RachelGreszler offers a solution:
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@GreenPlusAnE Whose demands? Who exactly gets to decide what the demands of 2026 are?
If you took a poll I’m pretty sure you’d find “fulfilling Social Security’s promises” is demanded by 100 million-or-so people.
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Bingo. Perpetuating Social Security as it stands isn’t the goal. The goal is a federal budget that meets the demands of 2026, not 1983 or 1935. That means radical change is in order.
dylan matthews 🔸@dylanmatt
The Clinton budget was unbelievably brutal to pass; Al Gore had to break a Senate tie. The big q is: if you get a once-in-a-generation hike on top earners, do you want to spend it all on the elderly? Or do we have other priorities?
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke Bless you sir. That actually means a lot.
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@SubvertingSS @charlescwcooke Okay. I think I got what you're saying. Basically, you're saying the better approach is to challenge the underlying presumption that "politicians have any right to make such promises in the first place". Right? I agree with this.
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Not only is this incredibly dishonest—benefits are capped, too, so this makes sense—it flies directly in the face of the other dishonest claim the exact same people make, which is that “it’s not a tax, it’s a savings program.”
Senate Budget Democrats@SenateBudget
MURRAY: Is it true that people making under $184k pay a 12.4% Social Security tax rate? DAHL: Yes. MURRAY: And the rate for someone making $1 million? DAHL: 2.2%. MURRAY: So, a 12.4% tax for people making less than $184k, but 2.2% for a millionaire or .0002% for billionaires.
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke It’s exactly the wrong messaging is what I’m saying.
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Right, they view it as a “if I pay my taxes I earn a benefit” agreement with the government.
Charles Cooke AFFIRMS that view by saying “this is how it works, the benefits are capped just like the tax” and then he says the lie being told is that it’s a savings program, which nobody anywhere is saying.
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke What in the video clip is unclear or dishonest?
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@SubvertingSS @charlescwcooke I'm certain you wouldn't find any. So we can agree there is no *explicit* claim of this. But that shouldn't excuse the exploitation of this perceptual "grayness". If we want to have productive discussions to fix things, we need elected people to speak clearly and honestly.
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke That Social Security’s popularity doesn’t depend on people misinterpreting it as a savings program. That’s what the OP is getting at—‘if you say it’s a savings program, why do you need to scrap the cap?’
But nobody actually makes that claim, he’s tilting at windmills.
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke He put “it’s not a tax, it’s a savings program” in quotes. You don’t put quotes around things people only imply but never say.
I know it appears nit-picky, but there’s an important lesson being missed here.
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@SubvertingSS @charlescwcooke Understood. But, to be fair (and honest), theirs a fine and subtle line here. And politicians have exploited this perceptional "grayness".
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke I know they’re implying it. The OP said they **claim** it.
Trust me, you’d be hard pressed to find any politician or pundit make claim that Social Security is a savings program.
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@SubvertingSS @charlescwcooke "These claims are different than saying explicitly that Social Security is a savings program."
Yes. They cleverly avoid *explicitly* saying it while artfully leaving the impression it's a savings program.
So sorry you don't see this.
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@ChrisCuilla @charlescwcooke Right, because they paid their taxes with the expectation of collecting a benefit.
To them, they have a legitimate claim—not because they think their money was saved—but because they’ve been told ‘this is how it works’
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@SubvertingSS @charlescwcooke "Social Security’s popularity is NOT dependent on people misinterpreting it as a savings program."
That's not entirely clear. Many people get outraged at any changes that might not "give them back *their* money".
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