Boy oh boy... where to start.
Reading some of your response, I'm incline to agree with the remark above for starters.
Lets start with social security.
OK, let's do that.
You have to understand, Social Security isn't failing because its a "failing" program, not at all, its a program that was intended on helping women and children who were widowed during WWII. It was expanded later to include senior citizens due to the rising cost of living and the standards of wages that were so low from 1920 through 1966 that an average person could not save enough to retire on.
So SS, was started to help women and children as a result of WW2? So let's establish the historical timeline shall we and then apply your conclusion. In what year was Social Security started? "Alex, I'd like to go with
1935' for $500 please!" And the year WW2 started? "Alex,
1939' for $400!" Unless you hold a view of conspiracy theory that FDR had foreknowledge of WW2 and hence the SS Act was an economic fallback to absorb the known blowback of war, then the statement above is incorrect. Now the part about women and children is correct and the opening paragraph of the act supports that part of your claim.
AN ACT to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes.
But before you cheerlead this whole thing on it's illusions of good deeds, you might....hold on a second...Hey Brett, move along as this part looks into that deep stuff again and I don't want to waste your time... OK, sorry TOS.. anywho, you might look deeper below the surface and check out the activities of the folks FDR brought into his administration early on who were leaders of then corp. America. If big scale Corp. America today is trying to shift it's employee healthcare onto the state, is it possible that the blowback from the late 19th century/early 20th century industrialized employee class which moved off the land/self employed/craftsman work and into industrialized cities were creating an underclass whose weight could ultimately topple the very economic structures the state and big business has created eg the centralized economy? That weight began to show itself as the depression wore on not unlike today and thus in 1934' under the authority of the National Industrial Recovery Act, FDR created the Committee on Economic Security by executive order. On the committee were various federal cabinet level operatives but the most interesting was the official advisory committee to the executive committee. This advisory committee was a very diverse array from union leaders, minds of higher education, even representative of mutual aid societies but also the following captains of industry:
Gerard Swope, president, General Electric Co., New York City.
Morris E. Leeds, president, Leeds & Northrop, Philadelphia, Pa.
Sam Lewisohn, vice president, Miami Copper Co., New York City.
Walter C. Teagle, president, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, New York City.
Marion B. Folsom, assistant treasurer, Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N. Y.
source
Swope is interesting because in the 1920's he was a very reform minded company leader who within the framework of General Electric had a very different approach to industrial management. This new approach however was an opportunity to shift the burden and responsibility of industrial management's blowback off the backs of corp. America if you will and onto the backs of present and future taxpayers. The union leaders in the room went along because the industrial employment model was job security and the gov't hand was nothing more than you wash my back, I'll wash your's. Gov't, the bosses and labor leaders have been working together for years to screw us over and we've yet to have the brains or guts to stand up to all of them. Oh and one other interesting fact worth noting, the Committee on Economic Security when working up the social security scheme created 10 volumes worth of documentation and data and only a small amount has been summarized and made public. The bulk of those volumes still to this day remain secret. Hmmmm Committee on Economic Security for Social Secrity SECRET. Hillarycare meetings SECRET. Cheney's energy meetings SECRET. Obama's meeting with Big Pharma SECRET. See a pattern here?
This voluntary program was working fine until Ronald Reagan starting placing I.O.U's into the fund while growing the military arm of this country with YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY money. Again with BUSH 1 social security was borrowed from, then with Clinton, he also took money out of the fund.
For starters, if the program is voluntary as you say then prove it to me by going in and telling UPS to stop all withholding of Social Security taxes? Notify IRS of you intentions to "VOLUNTARILY" withdraw from their wonderful benefit program but just make sure you post a forwarding address of the federal prison camp to which you are assigned. What's that you say, the term "prison camp" is nothing but hyperbolic nonsense?
Really?
As to Reagan dipping into SS and issuing IOU's, it does make for good press but it masks the truth of what SS was all along. In a manner of speaking in a Bernays/Lippmann kind of way, you are correct but you might consider the legislative and then judicial history of what we know today as the social security system. First place to start is the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934' and the precursor model to our now Social Security Act. This act applied to only railroad employees and was the test model for a larger design to come later. This act was challenged in court and went all the way to SCOTUS. The case,
Railroad Retirement Board v Alton Railroad (295 US 330) in the syllabus at sec. 6 stated the following:
6. This Act purported to establish a compulsory retirement and pension system for all interstate carriers by railroad. A fund, to be deposited in the national treasury and administered by a governmental Board, was to be created and kept up by enforced contributions from all the carriers and their employees. The sums payable by employees were to be percentages of their current compensation, and the sums payable by each carrier double the total payable by its employees....
It goes on to describe a retirement program exactly like SS and Alton argued that the Constitution did not delegate the authority of Congress even under the commerce clause to create what in effect was an insurance annuity program for retirement benefits and the high court agreed. 6 months later we get the Social Security Act but this time the gov't is prepared for the court challenge and in Helvering v. Davis (301 US 619) the gov't argues this is a tax (excise on employers and income on employees) and delegated constitutional authority under Art. 1 Sec. 8 and they are correct in this new approach. But in this lay the foundation to the very problem we now face today. You see, under Art. 1 Sec. 8 all those taxes are of a general revenue nature and thus when collected go into the general treasury. Because the gov't could now show this whereas under Alton Railroad it was account specific and set aside as such, the court rightly upheld the new Social Security.
But what about that trust fund? Ah yes, let's look at the
Helvering and the opinion of the court.
The first section of this title creates an account in the United States Treasury to be known as the "Old-Age [p*636] Reserve Account." ' 201. No present appropriation, however, is made to that account. All that the statute does is to authorize appropriations annually thereafter, beginning with the fiscal year which ends June 30, 1937. How large they shall be is not known in advance. The "amount sufficient as an annual premium" to provide for the required payments is
to be determined on a reserve basis in accordance with accepted actuarial principles, and based upon such tables of mortality as the Secretary of the Treasury shall from time to time adopt, and upon an interest rate of 3 percentum per annum compounded annually
Well that sounds like a trust fund doesn't it. Read closer as I thought the same first time I read it but that's not what it's saying. It does create a "reserve account" which is funded on an annual basis with enough reserve to cover all outgoing payments fir that budget year. Question my conclusion? OK but I'll use the other infamous SCOTUS case of the same year challenging Social Security to back up my conclusion. In
Steward Machine v. Davis (301 US 548) the opinion of the court said this:
The proceeds of the excise when collected are paid into the Treasury at Washington, and thereafter are subject to appropriation like public moneys generally.
If Social Security was a true trust fund if you will and all payments came from that trust fund, why would the trust fund need external funding to meet it's annual obligations? Isn't the money already there? If it is, then why like clockwork does the hyperbolic claim that certain congressional interests want to cut Social Security during ever budget cycle? How can you cut funding of a trust fund already there and funded unless the truth is that there is no trust fund, never was and the "reserve account" spoken of in Helvering is in fact nothing more than a line item of the federal budget which has to be funded in accordance as the court spoke of in Helvering. These IOU's everyone speaks of are nothing more than euphemistic bullschitt used to bury the truth, there is no damn trust fund because the court said you can't have one and it be legal under current law (see Alton Railroad and then see the govt's own arguments in Steward and Helvering).
Now one other little item that throws into this mix is that in 1933' the US became a party to an International Labor Organization by treaty and among it's issues advocated was a system of social security. It's hard to say if treaty law played a part in social security but the fact that the UN Charter's Declaration for Human Rights in Article 22 makes the following declaration:
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
IMO treaty law makes any constitution claims moot as treaty law trumps all other laws including the constitution itself. US Constitution, Article VI Clause 2
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
The truth is, social security is nothing more than a pure con job on the same level as the monopolistic company store of the old fascist mill town variety. Load your 16 tons and never get ahead. The bosses via the State rent seek AGAIN our working
and even have our union puppet leaders in on the take and get us to pay in to this illusionary trust fund. Oh, you say because the bosses get taxed too that my conspiracy theory about them don't hold water? Whose work and sweat in the first place created that money on which they paid their part of this excise tax? You think that's their end paying that tax? Corporations don't and never will pay any tax as they all are passed on to either those who labor for them or those who buy their services and products. Go ahead and scream to tax the corporations more and that "fair share" you want will be stripped out of your arse either on payday or shopping day. The solution is to kill the friend'ing Leviathan that feeds the whole con game to begin with.
Now our money goes into the general treasury and they are free to use this money under corp. welfare for their own ends. In the meantime, they want us to work harder and from our annual sweat they fund the whole thing and we're all to damn stupid worrying about whether the NFL or NBA season will start on time. Could social security work on some mutual or collective basis? Yeah, I'd have to concede that it could but for this to work it would require a huge amount of real transparency and openness. You'd have to then work to change the structure of the constitution that caused SCOTUS to rule as it did in Alton Railroad. This would then allow a true trust fund to be set aside in a total hands off fashion and any IOU's if you will would instead be real loans with repayment schedules and an interest schedule to boot but the important part, it would all be transparent.
This "hands off trust fund" does give a type social security system a real chance to work as it was intended and in the simplistic approach to a possible workable solution IMO lay the basis of my claims that a more nefarious intent was at play with social security upon it's founding. When SCOTUS in Alton told them why it won't work, then if a benevolent system was the point, then why was the most obvious solution to achieve that completely avoided eg change the law?
TOS, your statism may indeed be noble and of the best intentions but where you guys always fail is that you still let the friend'ing fox guard the damn hen house and until you guys jettison that bullschitt, you are nothing more than their puppet and you noble intentions get smashed on the rocks of reality by the very scumbags you trust!
wolakota Bro!
again.
