Remember social security? Yea it's still fucked because OMGZ TAXES~!

Good lord, the wall street journal deploring the payroll tax cut in the recent tax bill for it's possible effects on SS. The wall street journal is saying to raise taxes. The articles numbers along with the graph at the end shows why despite the fetish some people have for thinking if we just let people do what they want with their SS money that's taken in taxes that the world would be all puppy dogs and rainbows.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704073804576023890972991846.html

So the bottom 60% of retired people, the people who need SS the most, get about an average 70% of their income from SS. So given the fact the baby boomers are about to retire and become the largest voting demographic, how long can congress keep cutting taxes? (Forever actually)

 

the last time i looked i saw that i could expect around $300 a month from social security

hopefully i'll be dead before i have to try to survive on that - or whatever cut of it might remain . . .

[see ya in the dumpster]

 

You might be pretty stoked to get that 300 a month if that's all you've got.

Then again, if you can find a way to live sustainably, growing your own food, generating your own energy, that might be all you need.

I figure I've got about twenty years to figure it out.

 

The only reason the government still keeps that black hole (aka Social security) is to track our ass, but I wouldn't doubt that they will get rid of it in the near future once camera's have been installed on every street corner in america and face imaging software gets better..

 

Such things as state pension schemes that benefit society as a whole (for the majority of people as opposed to a minority) that were often fought for and are the hallmark of many liberal democracies are often the relics of a Keynesian or even socialist past, but what has been promoted for the last 30 years is neo-liberalist ideas that are ‘free market’ orientated and so often anti-state and opposed to such social systems (except where it benefits a few rather than the many). The supporters of neo-liberalism have been trying to whittle away at such schemes for many years, trying to privatise, time limiting benefits, removing funding etc.

So what we have had is an assault on the Keynesian systems, but since those systems are often very popular with the many (heathcare, pensions, unemployment benefit etc) they are very often hard to just get rid of in a democracy.

So we have often get an unhappy marriage of two opposing ideas, with the newer neo-liberal tax cuts and the older social schemes, which is not good but can just about work when things are booming but can quickly result in deficit at any other time.

The neo-liberal answer is to keep the tax breaks that mainly benefit the few and cut the social schemes that mainly benefit the many.

The question comes down to who runs the country, the many or the few?

What happens if popular schemes like heathcare, pensions, unemployment benefit etc are taken away, would the democratic process allow that and if not are the few then going to think that maybe the problem is democracy?