# These town hall meetings have been interesting **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 23, 2017, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549 "2017-02-23T13:53:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/241 "2017-03-04T02:26:17Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Meh, you are a thick one, but still you had to acknowledge that “either”; it is really stupid to then contradict yourself and add that other “either” because all the money goes to the fund, so unless you can show me the magical mechanism that separates the money going into that pool you can not dip into it without using the taxes of others. Apparently you didn’t read my link. Try again. > [@](#): > > The main reason why you are spewing nonsense is that to keep that reserve fund it is precisely thanks to the taxes from people that are working right now the reason why “Social Security is, and always has been, an inter-generational transfer of wealth.” And? Welfare isn’t an inter-generational transfer of “wealth”. > [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Let me make it simpler for you, parasite: > > Pension: Everyone pays in, everyone gets money out. > > Disability: Everyone pays in, only those who are disabled get money out… and also some cheaters and parasites like yourself. I realize you are too simple to understand this, but SSDI comes from the social security taxes, not a disability fund. I’d have received this money at retirement anyway. > [@septimus](#): > > 😕 You are the one who wrote: > > I am just trying to understand what, if anything, “at a loss” means here. The “at a loss” part applies to the first part of the sentence - I am getting much less than I would have had I waited until retirement age and that amount won’t go up when I get there. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/242 "2017-03-04T02:42:26Z")
I need to ask town hall question that hasn’t been asked yet: If your rep does a huge conference call town hall meeting that randomly dials phone numbers in his/her constituency: What is the number pad key combo to push to notify them that you want to be added to the “I want to ask question list”? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/243 "2017-03-04T02:49:49Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > Apparently you didn’t read my link. Try again. > > And? Welfare isn’t an inter-generational transfer of “wealth”. And I trust the research of Pew and others better than a yahoo like you on the Internet. Also, what **Kimstu** and **RickJay** said. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/244 "2017-03-04T04:30:53Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > SSDI comes from the social security taxes, not a disability fund. The social security taxes **are** a disability fund **as well as** a retirees-benefits fund. [QUOTE=curlcoat] I am getting much less than I would have had I waited until retirement age and that amount won’t go up when I get there. [/QUOTE] You’ve contributed much less in FICA taxes than you would have had you worked until retirement age, too. Since SS/SSDI is not a pension or a retirement account, your benefits didn’t get cut off when you crossed the line of receiving more in benefits than you’d ever paid in payroll taxes. ---
**Author:** ![BigAppleBucky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigapplebucky/32/178_2.png) [@BigAppleBucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigAppleBucky)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/245 "2017-03-04T05:25:06Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This isn’t exactly a fantasy unique to curlcoat. The idea that Social Security is actually a pot of money is an idea that is rather ideologically entrenched. > > The idea is that Social Security payments are used to buy Treasury bonds, and that’s a “Trust fund.” If you’re thinking “uh, that’s just the government lending money to itself,” well, yes it is, but people can get pretty emotional that it’s not, for some reason. > > In any practical sense, Social Security is a pay as you go system. Even if you pretend the Social Security treasury note shell game constitute a “trust fund” it doesn’t have any money left from the past; **curlcoat’s alleged payments were paid to people long ago. She is collecting tax money that people are paying today.** It is a matter of open discussion and public record that Social Security payments are reliant on people paying into it NOW. There is no giant vault of money where curlcoat’s payments are lying. That money’s gone. Not entirely. Until a couple of years ago more FICA taxes were taken in every year since 1933 (or '34?) than benefits paid out. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/246 "2017-03-04T07:26:48Z")
Since I won’t have time for this again this weekend, I wanted to congratulate you all on once again believing what you are told without bothering to check any facts; on not so subtle use of strawmen; doing so well at pretending to believe that SSDI is the same thing as welfare (no one is that dumb); and your success at pushing away anything that might challenge your fantasy world. You can clap yourselves on the back for another “win”. Good going. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/247 "2017-03-04T07:34:57Z")
“[SSDI] has become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn’t supposed to serve this purpose; it’s not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet. Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then, one economist told me.” - [Chana Joffe-Walt, National Public Radio](http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/) ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/248 "2017-03-04T07:44:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The idea is that Social Security payments are used to buy Treasury bonds, and that’s a “Trust fund.” If you’re thinking “uh, that’s just the government lending money to itself,” well, yes it is, but people can get pretty emotional that it’s not, for some reason. > > In any practical sense, Social Security is a pay as you go system. Even if you pretend the Social Security treasury note shell game constitute a “trust fund” it doesn’t have any money left from the past; curlcoat’s alleged payments were paid to people long ago. She is collecting tax money that people are paying today. It is a matter of open discussion and public record that Social Security payments are reliant on people paying into it NOW. There is no giant vault of money where curlcoat’s payments are lying. That money’s gone. Wrong, wrong and wrong. Consider the following points: [ul][li] What would be the practical difference if the SocSec Trust Fund purchased Deutschland 10-Jahre Anleihen with its surplus instead of U.S. Treasury Notes? Then it wouldn’t be “self-debt.” Or purchased metallic bullion? Or just kept a huge pile of Benj. Franklin $100 bills under its mattress?[/li][li] The SocSec Trust Fund currently has $2.8 trillion. It has taken in more money than it has paid out. If I had that much in my bank account I wouldn’t be complaining that I had “no money left”! :smack:[/li][li] Yes, if no changes are made, that surplus of nearly $3 trillion will dwindle and eventually fall to zero, but it is ignorant to state that it is already gone. It is expected to fall to zero in the 2030’s if nothing is done.[/li][li] There’s an interesting perspective on _why_ the SSTF will fall to zero in less than two decades in the absence of program changes. Income above $118,500 is not taxed. Due to the huge rise in inequality in the U.S., an _ever-increasing share of the pie is no longer subject to SocSec payments_. That can be interpreted as the reason for the shortfall! (Yes, yes, one can find fault with this perspective. The art of fighting one’s own ignorance is to consider multiple perspectives, not just reject those contrary to an ideology.)[/li][li] Yes, one can argue that Peter doesn’t get his original money back — he’s paid from the withholdings on his son Paul. (This is why it took so many decades for the SSTF to build up such a large surplus.) But this is true of many financial systems. When you go to the bank to withdraw from your savings account, you get the banknotes from Sally, who just made a deposit. Your original funds were long since loaned out.[/li][li] It is true, obviously, that the U.S. government operates in deficit. This is the case whether SocSec operations are included or not. If you do choose to pursue the alleged “paradox” of SocSec financing, first decide whether you want to treat SocSec separately from the rest of government or combine into a single conceptual government account. _Either accounting approach works._ Just don’t do what the right-wing idiots do — commingle SocSec with the rest of government when you want to coplain about spending, and separate it when you want to complain that the Democrats have robbed your grandma’s pension.[/li][/ul] HTH. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/249 "2017-03-04T07:51:10Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > The “at a loss” part applies to the first part of the sentence - I am getting much less than I would have had I waited until retirement age and that amount won’t go up when I get there. Oh! In this accounting, the worker who takes the biggest “loss” would be one who starts work at age 21, becomes permanently disabled at age 22, and is paid till their death at age 85, receiving more than what they paid in by a factor of several hundred. Is this what they mean by “the New Math” ? ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/250 "2017-03-04T14:38:12Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > “[SSDI] has become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn’t supposed to serve this purpose; it’s not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet. Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then, one economist told me.” - [Chana Joffe-Walt, National Public Radio](http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/) It’s true that people who receive SSDI are more likely to lack education or job skills, but if you think about what disability is, that no longer seems weird. It’s very similar to angry cries that SSDI or SSI is being abused if more people end up on it during a recession. A person can only be employed to do jobs they can do that actually exist. The way SSDI and SSI work is to take a person’s age, physical, cognitive, and mental condition–including issues such as continence, ability to sit-stand-walk, etc.-- education, and work history to determine if the person can continue to do the work they have been doing or other work that they would be qualified or trainable to do. So someone with low literacy is more likely to be considered disabled by these standards than someone with high literacy, since someone with high literacy could potentially get or be trained for office work, which requires less of them physically than being a roofer. And if the only jobs someone is remotely qualified for do not exist, or are extremely limited, they are more likely to be considered disabled. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/251 "2017-03-04T14:46:09Z")
> [@curlcoat](#): > > \ > What solution are liberals advocating that addresses the issue of people having children they cannot afford? Well, abortion would help with some of that. > [@septimus](#): > > \ > Better yet, since we know from Tarantino’s _Hostel_ \ I can’t believe that I’m the first person to point out that _Hostel_ was made by Eli Roth, not Tarantino. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2017, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549/252 "2017-03-04T22:56:44Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > It’s true that people who receive SSDI are more likely to lack education or job skills, but if you think about what disability is, that no longer seems weird. It’s very similar to angry cries that SSDI or SSI is being abused if more people end up on it during a recession. > > A person can only be employed to do jobs they can do that actually exist. The way SSDI and SSI work is to take a person’s age, physical, cognitive, and mental condition–including issues such as continence, ability to sit-stand-walk, etc.-- education, and work history to determine if the person can continue to do the work they have been doing or other work that they would be qualified or trainable to do. So someone with low literacy is more likely to be considered disabled by these standards than someone with high literacy, since someone with high literacy could potentially get or be trained for office work, which requires less of them physically than being a roofer. And if the only jobs someone is remotely qualified for do not exist, or are extremely limited, they are more likely to be considered disabled. Pardon me, but the point is over here… > [@curlcoat](#): > > doing so well at pretending to believe that SSDI is the same thing as welfare (no one is that dumb) > [@Skywatcher](#): > > "[SSDI] has become a de facto welfare program [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/these-town-hall-meetings-have-been-interesting/780549.md?page=12)