Social Security, Medicare and Socialism

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/taxRates.html

Social Security:

In 1937, the amount contributed out of your paycheck was 1%.

By 1960, 23 years later, that rate was up to 3%.

Medicare was added in 1966.

By 1970, 10 years later, the total amount was up to 4.8%.

By 1980, another 10 years later, the total was up to 6.13%.

By 1990, we reached our current rate of 7.65%

Please note that this is the rate for employees AND employers each. So, for every 7.65% you are paying, your employers are paying 7.65% for you as well. That is another 7.65% that the employer could be paying you if there was not this tax. Combined, that's 15.3% of your pay that the government is getting for Social Security and Medicare.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/12/social-security-medicare-seen-failing-faster/

I am 35 and began working in jobs outside the home/farm around 1991. That means that my entire adult working life, the government is getting over 15% of my pay with the implied promise that Social Security and Medicare will be available to me. That promise is an empty lie.

According to the above article, as it stands now, Social Security will be broke 2 years before I turn 65 (current full retirement age). Please note that this is 4 years earlier than anticipated just last year. So, who knows how long it will really last, but the estimates keep getting worse.

Medicare will be broke 20 years sooner, in 2017, or 22 years before I retire. This estimate too is getting worse.


Other than my personal interest in the fact that I am getting the shaft on this program, why does this matter?

Great question.

Here's why it matters:



FDR, the man who "Beginning with his inauguration address, ...began blaming the economic crisis on bankers and financiers, the quest for profit, and the self-interest basis of capitalism", the man who tried to drastically change the Supreme Court when it didn't agree with his New Deal, and the man who sent 120,000 Americans to interment camps and deprived them of liberty and property, is the man who started the Social Security system.



This man started the biggest American experiment in Socialism that has ever been conducted...and that experiment is failing.

Let us all remember that as we think about "universal health care" and "fairness".

It cannot succeed. I'm not saying that it cannot be allowed to succeed, I am saying that the math says it is incapable of success.

Socialism doesn't work. All of the best intentions will simply lead us down the road to hell.

Aloha.



FDR References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court-packing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt