JNewgs

The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good has been quietly relocated to a different state and allowed to resume work. thedailybeast.com/ice-agent-jona…

BREAKING: The Supreme Court struck down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana, weakening a landmark voting rights law’s protections against discrimination in redistricting. apnews.com/article/suprem…

I am going to go over this once again. Hopefully, this will be the last time I have to go over this, but I will likely have to do so in the future. Social Security is a de facto state-run Ponzi scheme. It is a tax. Even if you don't agree with that framing (in which case you are wrong), it is undeniable that Social Security it is economically unsustainable in its current form. You don't need to be an economist to see this; just take off your rose-colored glasses. First, retirement should be self-funded. There are no if's or but's about this. The federal government should not take your money, spend it on shit, then pay you later on with other people's money. The ideal way to plan your retirement is to save your own money. And, if that was our system and you decided to spend it all instead of saving it, putting it into a 401K, or investing it, oh well, too bad, that's on you. When the Social Security Act of 1935 was signed into law by socialist FDR (arguably one of the worst U.S. Presidents in history because he expanded the size of the government more than Woodrow Wilson did), the retirement age (i.e., minimum age requirement to be eligible for Social Security benefits) was set to 65. At the time, average life expectancy in the U.S. was 61. In other words, about half of the population would not live to be old enough to collect the benefits. 🔗ssa.gov/history/35act.… 🔗ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-e… And, because of that condition, it was economically sustainable. The revenue generated by payroll taxes could be used to pay seniors once they reached age 65. There were plenty of young people “contributing” to the pool such that the government didn't have to borrow (or in reality, print) a bunch of money. In 1960, for every retiree, there were 16 workers to support them. But because our World War II veterans came home, got frisky, and banged the shit out of their wives, spitting out tens of millions of children, and each subsequent generation has had fewer kids (mostly due to decreased demand for labor on farms and cultural shifts), we have unintentionally created a top-heavy population that is age 65+. So, as a result, there are now only about two or three workers per retiree. 🔗fixthedebt.org/securing-socia… Older generations received far more in benefits after retirement than many currently do. That's not always the case now, but the pool of money available to pay retirees has become smaller and smaller. Because of that and because there are fewer young people who contribute money via payroll taxes, the federal government has to “borrow” (in reality, print) money to pay out the rest. This increases the national debt, and printing leads to inflation, which is the biggest tax on all of us. This is economically unsustainable. You cannot debate this point at all. It's a mathematical fact. You may not like it, but this is nonetheless a fact. Another fact is that unless there are significant, and I mean MAJOR reforms to Social Security, such as raising the retirement age to 80 or privatizing it like George W. Bush wanted to in 2005, or abolishing it all together, we will go insolvent. My solutions? Pick one: 1⃣ Privatizing Social Security would guarantee that you get back what you directly paid into it (or perhaps more if it's invested), and it wouldn't force currently working people to pay for your retirement (which is immoral as it exists in its current form). 2⃣ Raising the retirement age to 80: It would make Social Security more sustainable because the average U.S. life expectancy has increased to 79. Recall, in 1935, it was 62 while retirement age was 65 (today, it is 67 for those born in or after 1960). Now, morally speaking, this would be problematic because, well, age-related physical disabilities can start to show up in your 60s, and by the age of 80, many people can't work, at least on tasks that are physically demanding, such as blue-collar jobs. But this would, in theory, prevent the need to privatize it. 3⃣ Allow people under the age of, say, 40, to opt out of payroll taxes + Social Security: The issue with this, though, is that it would balloon the debt even more, and that would cause unprecedented inflation. I don't think that this is a good idea, especially since it would blowback on the youth more than the current system does. 4⃣ Abolishing Social Security altogether: A hard-to-swallow pill is that although you may have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Social Security for the last few decades, you are not actually guaranteed returns should Congress decide to repeal the Social Security Act of 1935. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled in Helvering v. Davis (1937) that Social Security is essentially a tax because Congress can spend money for the “general welfare” under the U.S. Constitution. And, that's what Social Security is; they take money from new contributors (workers) and give it to older investors (retirees). Further, Flemming v. Nestor (1960) ruled that you are not legally entitled to Social Security benefits, even if you paid in. 🔗supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/… 🔗supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/… So, in reality, you aren't entitled to squat. 🤷‍♂️ But of course, doing this would cause mass outrage and potentially put tens of millions of seniors out on the streets because they rely on Social Security for their sole post-retirement income. It nonetheless is one of the biggest contributors to our national debt crisis. Republicans aren't going to talk about it. Democrats aren't going to talk about it. They won't touch it with a ten-foot pole because the one thing that they both can agree on is that it is political career suicide. But I am not running for office. I have no plans, much less desire to. So, I can be honest about it. It might make my followers mad. It might alienate some of you who love my work on climate + energy. But I do my best to speak truth on any topic I discuss, and I don't hold back punches. I don't blame boomer voters for this situation at all. They didn't vote for it. I do, however, blame FDR for his socialist policies and the gullible people in pre-boomer generations for believing Social Security was a retirement savings plan instead of a benefits program that required big government spending (it's now nearly a quarter of our budget). I also blame every Congress and President that has failed to do anything to reform it. It should have been done decades ago because it would have been much easier to do. Ronald Reagan wanted to, at least in his campaign, but only got minor reforms passed in 1983 (e.g., slightly raising the retirement age to 67). George W. Bush wanted to privatize it in 2005 but was opposed by both political parties. We have a uniparty in Congress and a bunch of gullible idiots spanning multiple generations who keep voting them back in one election cycle after the other because they prefer a familiar face they saw on FOX News or MSNBC instead of doing their homework on the cand And, yes, before you bite my head off, so is Medicare / Medicaid, and national defense. I support cuts there as well, particularly to private contractors that we use to enable the Military Industrial Complex. We spend more on national defense than the next 8–9 countries combined, which is unnecessary (in my opinion). Also, there is government waste and fraud in other areas (as DOGE, Nick Shirley, and Data Republican have found), but mathematically speaking, major cuts need to be made to “mandatory” spending. As one final point, I don't want to put seniors out on the street. I don't. I have two grandmothers that I love dearly. Both collect Social Security (albeit one does not need it at all; she is well-off). And, I don't blame any of you reading this for taking advantage of this system. I probably would too if I were 65+. But young people need to increasingly push for the abolition of this pyramid scheme, or at the very least (and perhaps most reasonable) some significant reforms. The status quo is unacceptable, especially if you are a real fiscal conservative or Libertarian. I rest my case. ---------------------------------------------------- * BTW, I will not just “stick to weather / climate.” This is my personal X page; I will talk about things I'm interested in. My lane is whichever lane I choose to be in. I like to talk about economics; country and rock music; culture war stuff; and TV shows, such as NCIS. Climate is boring right now in any case; there's nothing that interesting to talk about that I haven't covered before (when there is something in the news, you'll be the second to know).