Why is Granny Throwing Her Kids Under the Bus?

Recently I posted a short piece about a hilarious video that some goofy people made that showed a guy pushing an old lady off a cliff. I say goofy because it was apparently meant as a serious attempt to make people think that any reduction in spending increases or any rational Medicare reform was proof that mean old Republicans and other evil doers were trying to kill Granny. 

It was titled Unintentional Humor is the Best Kind and if you missed it you can revisit it here and have a good laugh. The video backfired of course, at least with anyone of average intelligence.

So what's with the title of this post? Surely I'm not going to accuse old people of intentionally screwing their children and grandchildren, am I? No, I'm not.

But I am going to try to illustrate the point that it's not Granny or any other older Americans who have been paying into Social Security who will be left holding the bag when that system finally collapses if it's not reformed in a meaningful way, and soon. It's her kids and grand kids who will come up empty because that's who is paying her monthly check in the Ponzi scheme farce we call Social Security.

Despite what liberal activists (AKA the mainstream media) have been trying to lead us to believe, absolutely no one from either party has floated any reform proposal that would cut any current recipient's benefit or raise the age of retirement for anyone near the filing age. And it would be political suicide if they did, so no one need worry about that in the short term. (It's the monetization of that debt they should be terrified of.)

The reason for this post is that I got a heads-up on another fine article written by American treasure Dr. Thomas Sowell from a family member who stays current on rationally thought-out articles and knows of my penchant for reading anything Sowell puts to page. Many thanks to son-in-law Bob for pointing me to one I hadn't seen yet.

The article is short and super readable, just as all Sowell articles are. The combination of his intelligence and writing skill make it one you won't want to miss, particularly all you liberals who read this blog. (OK, I can't resist mixing a little humor into every post.)

The Missing Money by Thomas Sowell

One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head.

He said simply: “Don’t you understand, madam? The village is not there any more.”

To many such people of that era, the village was the only world they knew. And to say that it had been destroyed in the carnage of war was to say that there was no way for them to go back home, that their whole world was gone.

Recently that image came back, in a wholly different context, while seeing pictures of American seniors carrying signs that read “Hands off my Social Security” and “Hands off my Medicare.”

Read the rest..

A Great Retirement at Thirty Years Old - Happy Anniversary!

I'm not talking about anyone retiring at thirty even though I tried to hook you in with that headline. Instead I'm talking about the thirtieth anniversary of a social security system that actually works and (unlike the one we suffer with in the USA) will never go bankrupt.

I'm talking about a successful government system which is not a Ponzi scheme but a retirement savings plan that the people actually own and which has a rate of return which makes the US Social Insecurity system's (merely theoretical) return look pitiful by comparison.

This year, on May 1st, Chile celebrated the birth of it's privatized Social Security System. They were the first of some thirty other rational countries to "just say no" to government Ponzi schemes which were headed for default and say yes to a privately held, government regulated retirement system that has not only out-performed all expectations but befuddled the leftist naysayers who cannot stand the idea that any system that isn't administered by elite government central planners can succeed in aiding ordinary people in providing a great retirement for themselves.

According to an article in the Investors Business Daily on April 29th;
"In 2005, New York Times reporter John Tierney worked out his own Social Security contributions on the Chilean model and found that his privatized pension would have been $53,000 a year plus a one-time payout of $223,000. The same contributions paid into Social Security would have paid him $18,000."

The return on investment since inception for the Chilean system; "Over the last three decades these accounts have averaged annual returns of 9.23% above inflation. By contrast, U.S. Social Security pays a 1% to 2% (theoretical) return, and even less for new workers."

Of course as any even semi-informed citizen of this country knows, there is no Social Security Fund with any real assets in it for American people. The money has already been spent buying votes from the people who put the money in in the first place. The "Fund" is just an accounting device "account" full of government IOUs promising to print enough paper dollars to satisfy the claims of those who have paid in all their lives. (Until 2037 anyway, when even those Tooth Fairy promises also run dry.)

As part of the law the people in Chile actually own their own accounts as private property, just like your 401k or IRA accounts in this country. 

In a world where American "progressives" are constantly comparing the US to other countries to see if they can find a way to denigrate our way of life, they forgot to compare us to the thirty-ish other countries who have come to their senses and left America in the dust on this one.

 It's enough to make you wonder what the climate is like in Chile.