Letter to Chicago Tribune explaining the Social Security scam

Chicago Sunday 5 September 2010

The Voice of the People, Chicago Tribune

Gentlepeople:

The letter “Hands off” in the Sunday 5 September Chicago Tribune says the writer “paid for these [Social Security] benefits and refuse[s] to let these so-called 'fiscal hawks' use Social Security as a piggy bank....”

No wage earner has ever written a check made out to 'Social Security Trust Fund' since its August 5, 1935 inception. Did you think FDR trusted 100 million individual wage earners to send in checks every month to cover their 'contribution'? The program has been a tax on employers from the beginning. If the money doesn't make it to Washington, the employer goes to jail, never the wage earner.

But since every employer must pay the tax there is no competitive advantage for any employer not to add the entire cost of the tax to their prices, resulting in the Social Security tax being nothing but a silent, painless national sales tax.

Further, the Social Security act is absolutely unconstitutional. Anyone who thinks it is justified under the general welfare clause should read James Madison's explanation of that clause in his Federalist paper number 41.

What about those millions of wage earners, with handfuls of pay stubs saying “You earned, and your employer paid”. Here is what the United States Supreme Court said Social Security owes to these people, in its 1961 Fleming vs Nestor decision:

“The noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the [Social Security] 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.”

The evil George W Bush realized what a terrible scam we are passing on to our descendants, and that the only way to kill it is at its source: the tax on employers.

There's no need to stop a single payment to the 40 million citizens now receiving Social Security payments. That $615 billion annual cost will disappear painlessly in 40 years. The people who have allegedly already paid into the system can be told to give it up for our children, and be glad they are not Chrysler bond holders.

But in the meantime, that $615 billion a year will be retained by the employers. What would they do with it? Hire more people? People who will pay taxes?

Arnold H Nelson