A significant number of SF members are pre-Boomers and most exited the work force a decade or more ago. (I'm 83 and quit work in 2006.)

Too much tax money is being wasted in welfare programs. Not saying there shouldn't be welfare, just that a great many recipients should not be. The concept of Workfare is a good one.

I'm accused of being a "double dipper" because I have a military pension and also get Social Security (but not disability). I was promised the pension if I served at least 20 years, so I feel that I earned it. (Officer pay was discounted 7.5% to help fund it.) Social Security was also promised and I contributed to it from age 13 on (not much at that age, admittedly). My "government income" is being taxed, both pension and SS, so I'm still doing my part.

We need to stop all the outrageous spending being done by the current government.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Population growth isn’t slowing among certain groups, and sooner or later that will have profound effects that a lot of the rest of the people won’t be happy about.

It will end up like every post apocalyptic movie ever made rolled into one, with large portions of the country where people dare not go. Instead of zombies branching out of population centers, it will be raiding parties of marauders, formally on welfare.

Lord I wish I were joking. Thankfully, or regrettably, I will no doubt be dead by then.

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:
Too much tax money is being wasted in welfare programs. Not saying there shouldn't be welfare, just that a great many recipients should not be. The concept of Workfare is a good one.

We need to stop all the outrageous spending being done by the current government.

flashguy

Mrs. Flash spent 10 years working for the County Welfare Department, 10 years working for the County Hospital and 11 years working for County Mental Health.

She said she had the same people for clients in all 3 jobs.

She also said it was common for 3 generations of a family to all be on welfare at the same time.

That's the problem, there's absolutely no way you should have 3 generations of a family on welfare simultaneously. They've obviously decided to live off the government teat for all of their lives.

I was a kid in the 70's. We piled as many kids that would fit into the back of a station wagon to go to sports practice or games or wherever.

When my son was in private day care, to go on a field trip they needed several minivans a worker/parent driver for each and a child seat for every kid. And kids have to be in child or booster seats until they are like 8 years old. And you can't really buy or sell them used, because the specs change every year.

Yes safety is important, but all of this stuff makes kids expensive for parents who follow the rules. I know people that need an Expedition size vehicle just for two kids and all the crap they have to bring everywhere. Big SUV's are expensive too. And then I see "immigrants" on the highway with several kids in the bed of a rusty pickup truck and wonder why they aren't pulled over for seatbelt laws, or more appropriately child endangerment.

College is expensive, all the activities kids do now are expensive. People think they need to spend $50-$100 every weekend at the movies, or the trampoline place, or the whatever child entertainment place. Add a dinner for 4 and that's $200 every weekend.

Hell with the change in school schedules kids can't get summer jobs. We 2 week breaks in the fall, winter, and spring and a very short summer. And the damn school "activities" they need to put on college resumes absorb a lot of time in the summer. Sports? Can't work have to go to summer practice. Marching band? Same deal. The schedule change was because the teachers bitch about having to take vacation in the summer and not at other times. There was a reason for that - for kids to WORK in the summer. On farms in the past, in fast food or retail jobs when I was a kid.

But yeah it's a worldwide thing. Smaller towns in many countries have unemployed men that used to work in manufacturing or other labor jobs that have disappeared. Women move to the cities and do office or service jobs and don't get married or have kids until much later, often after having kids is really feasible. I know women that get married at 35 and try to have kids at 40. They don't have more than one, if they can even accomplish that.

I read something interesting - the most vocal younger democrat members of Congress and other politicians are largely unmarried with no kids. And they make decisions that affect people with kids.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:

...
It's also the problem that will cause China to collapse. One child policy for 40 years 1978-2018 - and the single child parents are hitting mandatory retirement age now. As they continue to retire die off over the next 50-60 years. the population of China will drop by 1/2. There is no way to stop it. Now they let people have two or more kids, but 2 kids for every family will only stabilize the population at the 1/2 mark. To avoid falling to 1/2 families will have to have 3 or more. And guess what? The culture, economics, housing, school costs, and everything else has normalized to having only 1 child. People can't afford more than 1, or they cannot afford more than 1 and have the lifestyle they want. Only other option is to immigrate massive numbers of people from SE Asia, or possibly to industrialize farming such that they can move some of the 1 billion people in the countryside into the cities to take the industrial jobs.

...

It's probably why they are chomping at the bit to go full-on world-takeover within this generation. USA civil war is the enabler.

I retired early to enjoy living off your money.

The US is one of the few countries that is not having this demographic problem.

Immigration is offsetting the declining birth rate for the next thirty years or so.

We have enough under 18s to offset the old people clawing back what the government took from them.

That works only if the government does not pay them more to stay home than to work so they can tax them.

But that still doesn't change the fact that at its core, Social Security and Medicare have become massive wealth transfers from the young and productive to the old and unproductive. Social Security is not a savings or pension system, it is simply a current account tax on the young that is given to the old. And of course we know that all excess tax receipts exceeding benefits paid are diverted to the general Treasury fund for other uses.

Should have been converted to an actual investment system a long time ago, so you get out what you put in with interest, but it wasn't.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
Should have been converted to an actual investment system a long time ago, so you get out what you put in with interest, but it wasn't.

Yes, it should have, and if it had been put in an investment that was merely an index fund, everybody on SS would be getting around twice what they are now.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
Immigration is offsetting the declining birth rate for the next thirty years or so.

You mean illegal immigration.

quote:

But that still doesn't change the fact that at its core, Social Security and Medicare have become massive wealth transfers from the young and productive to the old and unproductive. Social Security is not a savings or pension system, it is simply a current account tax on the young that is given to the old.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
A bulk of social security payments support the young and disabled. That is what is bankrupting social security which was never meant to be a disability program. Seniors on Medicare have had to work for at least ten years to be eligible for the program which started in the 1960s. Bidens tax proposals propose a massive transfer of money to the less fortunate. That is a much greater concern.

This is totally false. Over 85% of SS expenditures are for old age and survivor benefits, under 15% go for disability.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/doc...facts/stat_snapshot/

Going back to the semi-original subject, any attempt to go after retirement savings for tax revenue would start a political thermonuclear war. Going after Social Security would be hard enough. Going after peoples retirement savings would start an armed conflict. The politicritters know this, and likely don't have the stomach to try.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
^^^^^^^^^^^^
A bulk of social security payments support the young and disabled. That is what is bankrupting social security which was never meant to be a disability program. Seniors on Medicare have had to work for at least ten years to be eligible for the program which started in the 1960s. Bidens tax proposals propose a massive transfer of money to the less fortunate. That is a much greater concern.

In December 2016, there were 10,153,205 people receiving Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children.

That is not a drop in the bucket. I do not know the exact percentage.

quote:

Going back to the semi-original subject, any attempt to go after retirement savings for tax revenue would start a political thermonuclear war. Going after Social Security would be hard enough. Going after peoples retirement savings would start an armed conflict. The politicritters know this, and likely don't have the stomach to try.

^^^^^^^^^
RMDs from retirment plans are being taxed already. Under the Biden proposal the rate will be increased.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
In December 2016, there were 10,153,205 people receiving Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children.

That is not a drop in the bucket. I do not know the exact percentage.

Based on the numbers BBMW linked to from August 2021, it's currently 9,386,000 on Disability.

But there are 65,061,000 total people on SS.

So that's only 14.4% on Disability.

Yeah, 9.3 million is a large number, but his point was that it's far from "the bulk" of the total 65 million, as claimed.

(And good news! It's down by over 750k people from December 2016. )

OK thanks for the clarification.

Maybe the boomers can ask the chinamen they gave half our jobs away to for some tax dollars.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
In December 2016, there were 10,153,205 people receiving Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children.

That is not a drop in the bucket. I do not know the exact percentage.

Based on the numbers BBMW linked to from August 2021, it's currently 9,386,000 on Disability.

But there are 65,061,000 total people on SS.

So that's only 14.4% on Disability.

Yeah, 9.3 million is a large number, but his point was that it's far from "the bulk" of the total 65 million, as claimed.

(And good news! It's down by over 750k people from December 2016. )

The 14%, however, are people who have contributed less or nothing, and will draw benefits far longer than a retiree. It seems like the impact of disability recipients on the SS fund is far greater because they will draw from it for way longer than a senior. If the administration is trying to increase the number of younger people who qualify for disability, then it could increase that 14% to a much higher number very quickly.

I don't have so much of a problem with those who are truly disabled due to no fault of their own. However, I have an ex-BIL who chose to keep taking drugs and commit crimes to support it. He eventually got on disability in his mid 30s because all the meth gave him bipolar disorder. He will now draw a check every month for the next 50 years. He even got that check while he was in county lockup for 364 days straight after exposing his genitalia to an old lady. To me that's not somebody who should qualify for disability.

It sounds like the Universe 25 experiment.

^^^ It's a good point.
Overcrowding tends to create bad results. Overcrowding is not a world-wide phenomenon, but it is localized.
Several things reduce population. It's coming, one way or another.