Truth about Social Security...

Chicago PM Saturday 28 April 2012 

Editors, The Washington Post

Gentlepeople:

The Washington Post of Friday 27 April has Frank Luntz writing of a myth about conservative voters, that they “want to slash Social Security and Medicare.”

Whether conservatives want to slash Social Security and Medicare is irrelevant considering the fact that Social Security is, and has been since its 1937 inception: a complete lie and scam:

It is supposedly funded by worker contributions, and sure enough, those working when it started experienced a 1% cut in their paychecks after it went in to effect. But ever since then, it's been employers sending the checks – if they don't, they go to jail. Employers are also required to give employees a written statement saying if they weren't forced to send in that money to DC, they would have given it to the employee. Where do the employers get the money? They add it to the cost of their product. Thus the alleged contributions to the Social Security trust fund come from a silent, painless, national sales tax.

And that Social Security Trust fund - the only fund that money goes into is the general fund. And that is where all the money the federal government spends comes from. Of course, it's never enough, so they feds do what they do best: they borrow the needed shortfall. Because of the strength of the national economy, this works for a long time, but now we are having $trillion deficits, such that we couldn't pay it back if we shut the government down completely and permanently.

So instead of writing about a myth about conservatives, when will Mr Luntz and the Washington Post start writing about the myth that Social Security is a viable retirement system?

The Supreme Court has never been asked if Social Security is constitutional, but in their 1961 Fleming v Nestor decision, they did point out what it isn't: “The noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits are based on his contractual premium payments.... To engraft upon the Social Security System a concept of "accrued property rights" would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands and which Congress probably had in mind when it expressly reserved the right to alter, amend or repeal any provision of the Act.”

Arnold H Nelson   ah_nelson@yahoo.com