It’s neither “common knowledge” nor is it true.
You are taking some true factoid and putting a ridiculous absurd spin on it. I’d love to help you fight your ignorance, but need a cite to know which little factoid you’re mis-spinning.
Good grief guys. Here’s the budget right from the SSA. Notice the proposed “appropriation” request.
Payments to Social Security Trust Funds : 16,400,000
FY 2014 Request: 40,737,000,000
FY 2015 First Quarter Advance 19,700,000,000
Those requests and advances are deficits. The congress is borrowing money to fund SS.
Let’s work with very round figures. Because of demographic changes, it is now true that Social Security programs take in, in payroll taxes, only almost exactly as much as they pay out. But they also receive interest, of over $100 billion annually, on Trust Fund assets, totalling over 2.6 teradollars, from prior years in surplus. Thus, the SSTF still makes, in round figures, about $100 billion in “gross profit” per year. (Caveats: 1. The shortfall due to the temporary reduction in payroll tax, part of the Job Creation Act of 2010, is compensated from General Fund; this was a political decision. 2. By “Social Security” we mean Social Security, not Social Security and Medicare.)
Now it happens that the Social Security Administration has administrative expenses, and these are treated as “discretionary” general appropriations. Whether they should instead be subtracted from SSA’s revenue is a book-keeping detail. In round figures, the expense is 1% of total payments, or about 10% of their “gross profit.” However, as just stated, this administrative cost will appear as a (discretionary) expense on the Federal budget.
It appears that it is this administrative cost that fudrucker refers to. Do you see that this expense, and the way it happens to appear on the budget, has absolutely nothing to do with SS solvency?
Fudrucker quotes a 40 gigadollar request for 2014. This is much higher than administrative cost (though still much lower than SSTF “profit”)and I’m not sure what it is. I can see that it is only a budgeted ceiling.
Not even remotely true. Social security benefits are more than 22% of federal expenditures. The trust fund is subsidized by the government borrowing money it doesn’t have.
There is no such thing as a profitable government agency. These mythical profits are merely taxes collected from citizens.
Worse yet, social security was supposed to be a self funded benefit collected by a so called payroll tax. In other words stealing. Taking the property of one person and giving it to someone to whom it does not belong.
Well, that answers that.
Yes it does. The definition of stealing has never changed. Neither have the moral consequences. It doesn’t matter if it’s committed by an individual or a government.
I guess you’re stealing public services then.
In other words, you’re either foolish enough to think that a civilized society can be run without taxes, or you’re a parasite who wants the benefits of such a society without paying for it.
Remember that he doesn’t like the police or military, so I guess he’s happy not to pay for them. He’s got a gun - that’s all the government he needs.
That would make it “foolish enough to think that a civilized society can be run without taxes”, then.
fudrucker, I’m not going to “debate” you. But I do want Dopers to be very clear on what you believe.
In 2006, The S.S. Trust fund held 2.0 trillion dollars. In 2011, it held 2.7 trillion. Do you agree? Is it your claim that this $700 billion increase resulted from subsidies from the General Fund? Do you have even the tiniest itsy-bitsy clue of what you’re talking about?
Outside of places like NYC, I don’t know wtf you are talking about. I support licensing and registration and i vehemently oppose gun bans never mind confiscation.
As long as you have “shall issue” license and registration, I don’t see the threat you are talking about.
:rolleyes
You have your reasons for supporting the second amendment, I have mine.