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Social Security, Medicare are "going to be gone," Donald Trump warns (www.newsweek.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
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Donald Trump warned Tuesday that if the Democrats don't approve funding, there are dangers to the future of Social Security and Medicare.

Trump said at a press conference that when he asked Democrats for feedback on the funding bills, one said, "It means death."

"There's nothing about death," Trump said. "Theirs is death because they're going to lose Medicaid, they're going to lose Social Security, they're going to lose Medicare, all of those things are going to be gone because the whole country would be bankrupt, and you're not going to have any kind of medical insurance."

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[–] 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That's the great misconception and lie of Social Security. People think it's like a government run 401k, that you're "investing' in some retirement account every paycheck. That's not at all how it actually functions though. Social Security is two entirely independent things. First it's a benefits program like SNAPP or Medicaid. In that regard Congress votes every year on how much budget they're going to allocate towards paying people Social Security. Literally everyone receiving Social Security cheques in the following year are reliant on Congress deciding to allocate enough money to make sure those cheques don't bounce. Secondly it's an income tax. The two are not connected in any way. The amount of Social Security income tax that the federal government collects each year has absolutely no bearing on the amount of funding that Congress allocates for Social Security in the coming year.

Let that sink in.

Social Security is the world's biggest Ponzi scheme. Always has been. That's a huge part of why a lot of Republicans, particularly older ones (like ones around retirement age) are hand wringing about falling birth rates. Social Security always counted on the idea that there would be more people working and paying into Social Security than the number of people currently collecting Social Security. In a country with a positive population growth that would always be true. It ceases to be true the moment you have a negative population growth rate though.

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  • [–] 81 points 1 year ago*

    Social Security is the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. Always has been.

    No, it's a big insurance scheme, but its finances have been fucked with. The original intent was that the money went into a trust fund isolated from other government finances. It didn't take long for some scumbag to realize that the trust fund could be used as collateral for loans, or "lent" directly from the trust fund to other government activities.

    Also, even if it's funded year-to-year, if the cap on contributions were lifted, the system could be self-funding, or nearly so. But the Republicans (and some conservative Democrats) have been trying to kill it since FDR started it, and the specious argument is always that it's not affordable.

    The US in 1935 could afford it. The only difference now is a matter of priorities and who's in charge.

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  • [–] 64 points 1 year ago

    They cap it at 160k a year. So if you make 3m a year, you'll only pay on what is due on the 160k.

    Getting rid of that, along with taxing the rich, would fix that problem. If 8 people have more wealth than like 4 billion people, it's really not a "we need more people to keep this ponzi scheme" problem, it's more of a France in the 1790s problem.

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