🚀 go-pugleaf

In ca.general David Marc Nieporent <nieporen@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
> In article <d9noch$n5n$1@blue.rahul.net>,
>  Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:
>>In ca.general BTR1701 <btr1702@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>>>> I've got an idea to "fix it."  STOP giving it away to people who
>>>> didn't earn it, to people who are not entitled to it.  That means all
>>>> illegal aliens.  Kick them the f*ck out of the country.  Stop throwing
>>>> money at them; it only encourages more of their kind to sneak across
>>>> the border.

>>     Social Security is not "given away" to people who don't earn
>>it.  The amount of your monthly check depends on how much you have
>>contributed over the years.  

> The amount _taken_ from you -- it's not a "contribution" -- provides the 
> government with a means to calibrate how much it feels like giving you, but 
> it has nothing to do with "earning" it.  The money taken from you is not 
> invested on your behalf; you are not given a return on that investment.  
> That's simply part of the subterfuge by FDR to make people think that SS 
> was a retirement program rather than a welfare program.

     As I've always said...think of it as a tax, it doesn't make sense to
try to figure it out any other way.  In "return" for paying this tax,
you get an amount that is supposed to keep you from starving.  Assuming
you have paid enough tax over the years.
     The amount is "taken" from you in the same way any other tax is,
and the government decides what you will get for it, the same way
they decide how much defense or fire protection or road building you
will get.  Luckily, you get to vote for the people who make those
decisions.

>>(You should be getting a letter from
>>the Social Security Administration every year detailing your expected
>>monthly check based on assumptions about your future earnings and
>>FICA tax payments.)
>>     BTW employers have been known to charge illegal alien employees
>>Social Security, Unemployment, IRS withholding, and other taxes and
>>then...keep the money themselves rather than send it to the
>>government.  After all, the employees are in no position to complain.

> That doesn't make any sense.  Why would employers go through that 
> chicanery, rather than simply lowering the pay that they offer?  Why would 
> an illegal alien care whether his employer said, "Here's $200, minus $50 
> being deducted for IRS withholding," or "Here's $150"?

     Don't know...possibly it's built into their payroll systems.