This is up for debate. Is social security a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor or the poor to the rich?

Now do it for health care.

Keep going.

Social Security is income deferral right? FICA taxes collected go into trust funds (SS and Medicare) and the trust funds pay out benefits to those who are eligible. Those who are eligible for SS receive benefit amount based on their age when retired and how much they earned over their working career. The total amount of the benefit is capped. That is the basics the way I understand it.

Medicare? Obamacare? Medicaid? And to be fair, employer sponsored health insurance should be considered because it is a benefit that employees receive that is not taxed and employers basically get to write it off as a business expense. Not sure how SCHIP factors in now.

Healthcare expenses is a more complicated situation.

Einbert tweet embedding and 5ive's clever posts are always helpful here.

SS: it is mainly income deferral but poor people as a whole benefit more
Healthcare: money transfer from the rich to the poor
Tax: nearly every form of tax is money going from rich to the poor, but a few can be argued to be neutral

This is not up for debate. It is an open and shut case. It is another example of a liberal trying to make conservatives look evil, but being factually wrong and sounding really stupid in the process.

I'm not sure you are correct. The poor enter the work force earlier, they pay into the system longer and they die earlier. Are you sure it benefits the poor?

I don't know. We tried educating the racists once. They threw rocks at the teachers and later shot the principal.

"Social Security benefits are progressive: they represent a higher proportion of a worker’s previous earnings for workers at lower earnings levels. For example, benefits for a low earner (with 45 percent of the average wage) retiring at age 65 in 2016 replace about half of his or her prior earnings. But benefits for a high earner (with 160 percent of the average wage) replace about one-third of prior earnings, though they are larger in dollar terms than those for the low-wage worker."

http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-...ocial-security

I also found this interesting: "Administrative costs amount to only 0.7 percent of annual benefits, far below the percentages for private retirement annuities."

bert, I know I am hard on you sometimes so I want to take the time now to say you have been doing really well lately with not posting a bunch of random articles and tweets (without saying why you posted them or what you think about them) that have nothing to do with what we are talking about.

In fact, in your honor I want to post this article from the very liberal Yahoo without saying anything else about it.

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/miss-us...152055939.html

Note that Madcap has smoothly transitioned from saying that people aren't racist to even if they are we need to be nice to them, skipping right past the step where we determine whether or not they are.

This is an argument that is breathtaking in its cutting edge newness, literally no one has made that before. Wow. Lot to think about.

Trump's tweets appear to confirm the story that he gave classified info to the Russians after admin officials spent all yesterday denying it happened

LOL everyone stupid enough to have voted for this idiot

By the way, when they sent H.R. McMaster out there yesterday all like "story is false, I was in the room, it didn't happen", did anyone for a second actually believe him? We all knew inside he was the sacrificial lamb they sent to look like a dumbass defending this, yeah?

They're all just dumb, incompetent liars. Be proud Trumpkins, this is what you wanted!

The dying earlier part doesn't benefit them but of course it depends. Spousal benefits have to be evaluated too. Depending on when you are born you can collect partial benefits at age 62, full at 67. Links to studies would be appreciated. You bring up a valid point about life expectancy.

Yes SS is somewhat progressive. bahbahmickey you are one of my favorite posters especially being a Packer fan and all (I was at Lambeau over the weekend). You seem very knowledgeable about SS so I ask you what is your take on how the Trust Funds are managed given that the government borrows from them every year to fund other federal government spending. As I'm sure you know, the federal government issues non marketable treasuries in borrowing that are exclusively owned by the trust funds. I find that to be problematic. What is your view?

I think we should really take another look at this. I like Social Security, I think it helps us as a society. I do not, however, like the fact that it's non-transferable. You should get back what you put in, but hey, whatever, I don't want a bunch of old people running around with 0 income.

Let's think about this for a second. People put in X amount a year. If you drop dead at 65 and another person lives until 95, obviously one person benefits a lot more. As Adios brings up, spousal and survivor benefits apply. Certain demographics live longer than others. Hell, if you're a black male you should get your social security at 26.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/17/...s-to-the-rich/

Nearly two-thirds of Social Security payments go to people whose earnings place them in the top 40 percent; and more than one-third goes to the top 20 percent. White men with more than 16 years of schooling on average live up to 14 years longer than black men who have fewer than 12 years of education. That means the white, educated men get more Social Security and Medicare.

The older you are, the less likely you are to be poor. According to a 2011 Congressional Budget Office report, the typical U.S. household headed by a senior citizen has a net worth 47 times greater than one headed by someone younger than 35. According to the Urban Institute, a typical two-earner couple receives nearly a quarter of a million dollars more in Social Security benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes. One Politifact piece from 2013 showed that on average government spends more than double on each senior citizen than it spends on each child.

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-...he-poor-2010-8

Because the poor die younger, they don't get as much of their pay-in back, whereas the rich do. Were Social Security replaced with individual accounts, that money paid in would become an inheritable asset, so that at least it could be passed onto the next generation, mitigating somewhat the shorter life expectancy. As it is, though, the pay-in disappears back into the pool, rather than to the offspring of the poor that could probably use the money.

I saw your post before it got deleted and had to go to sleep. Your assumption was wrong. I'm a youngish person living in Boston. I know like two people who admitted to voting for Trump. The vast majority of people I know are liberal or just never mention politics. (I'm sure some subset of that last group are Trump voters)

The problems with the GOP are just self evident. They were the party who actually supported this maniac.

*not all republicans are racist but, even if they were, hating them wouldn't solve anything.

I really can't tell if you post things like this because you have trouble with reading comprehension or if it's just straight up dishonesty.

Go Pack! I would not say I am "very knowledgeable" about SS. In regards to the gov't borrowing from SS, I'd say there should be a limit in the same way there should be a limit of how funded pensions are supposed to be. There is no doubt SS is in trouble of going bankrupt, but before that happens they will "fix" SS as they have done previously. By fix they mean they will tax it more (lower that amount at which point SS becomes taxable + possibly raise the tax rate) and push back when full retirement is.

I would love to see the gov't offer to buy people out of their SS in the same way many companies w/ a pension offer a lump-sum. After having worked for 16ish years I would take a $1 lump sum today if it meant I didn't have to pay into SS anymore and I am sure there are others like me.

wil, SS is similar to insurance in that a majority of people will "lose" money will a few will "win" money. Making SS transferable like you are suggesting is totally changing how it is set up and is a totally different animal.

Incoming tangent, but hey, it's responding to a discussion itt.

I think most Republicans are not racist. It will come down to an argument about what makes one racist. If you take real racism - judging people morally based on genetics or skin color - there are very few racists, far too many, but still way less than half.

If you take some lala land definition of racism, like, you oppose illegal immigration, or you oppose affirmative racism, then, sure, there are lots of racists. I would be a "systemic" racist under that definition, even though I hate racism.

And why should we care what you have to say? You're just a racist.

Expanding the definition of racism to include things that it shouldn't is politically useful.

https://twitter.com/ppppolls/status/864483558672539648

Luckily for Republicans all polls are fake and this is fine.

This was such a fun idea from another place

Your view is that all taxes are theft and are immoral?

This is all just semantics. I don't know if you are racist or not but declaring "I hate racism" does not make one not racist, and basically all but the most hardcore of racists claim to be not racist.

No, I don't think of taxes as theft and I believe we should have taxes. I was simply pointing out that saying repub wants to steal from the poor to give to the rich is incorrect and suggesting this is the case is so far from the truth I am confused how someone could actually think this.



Victor, can clear this up? How can you think repubs are trying to steal money from others when they are working to reduce the amount of money being taken out of peoples pockets?

I mean this is completely a semantics argument. Like nobody believes that Republicans are advocating for policies that literally take money that poor people already have and transfer it to rich people. But, like, higher taxes on rich people also doesn't take money that rich people already have and hand it to poor people, because it would only apply to future income, i.e. money they do not yet have. I don't think anyone has seriously proposed a wealth tax (?).

So, did you have a point beyond this semantics deal, or was that it?

When someone agrees that repubs are "trying to steal money" from others I don't know how else to it but to think they believe repubs are trying to take money from the poor or that the poor deserve all the benefits they receive from the rich and anything less is "stealing".

This is not a semantics issue. Higher taxes on the rich is taking money from the rich. Reducing how much we take from the rich (as many repubs want to do) is not taking money from the poor - that is money that is not theirs.

I am confused on how you believe what you wrote in that post so here is an analogy that I hope helps:

If in the last 3 Christmases you have received an avg. of 10 presents from your parents, but your dad lost his job and your parents decided to only give you 5 presents this year you wouldn't say your parents were taking money/presents from you. However, if the woman that took your dad's job had 5 presents stolen from the back of her we could correctly say money/presents were taken from her.