🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <daabkb$o84$1@blue.rahul.net>,
 Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:
>In ca.general David Marc Nieporent <nieporen@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>
>...
>
>
>>>And regarding Social Security, don't DARE fuck with the money I put
>>>into my account since I was 16 years of age.  I need this to live on.
>>>It is my ONLY source of income, outside of a small pension from a
>>>private company that will pay for a couple of heart-clogging
>>>cheeseburgers a month.
>
>> You're confused.  Social Security is a tax.  You didn't put any money into 
>> "your account."  You have no "account."  The proponents of Social Security 
>> wanted people to think they did, to build a broad base of support for the 
>> program -- but it was just propaganda.  There are several Supreme Court 
>> rulings clarifying this for people who thought they had some sort of 
>> contractual right to Social Security payments.  It's not property or a 
>> contract.  It's simply a transfer program, like welfare.  You pay taxes to 
>> support old people who aren't working, and then later on, when you retire, 
>> workers pay taxes to support you.  Bush *wants* to change the system, to 
>> give people the personal accounts they thought they had all along.

>     People thought all along that they could manage their own
>investments in Social Security?  Either they were very confused,
>or you are...

No, of course people didn't think they could manage their own investments 
in Social Security.  But they thought they _had_ their own investments, and 
that the government was managing it for them until it was time for them to 
collect.

---------------------------------------------
David M. Nieporent    nieporen@alumni.princeton.edu