Social Security Staggers Toward Collapse

by Dave Blount | July 22, 2010 2:31 pm

Liberals often point to Social Security as the definitive accomplishment of collectivism in America. Sure it required their idol Franklin Roosevelt to set himself up as a dictator and steamroll over the Constitution, but it was worth it to guarantee that no one needs to take responsibility for their own retirement plans.

Few realize just how much money the government steals from them on behalf of this program, because employers match employee contributions, which are expropriated from your paycheck before you even see the money. This means that if you’re self-employed like yours truly, you have to pay twice as much. Four times a year I am forced to send a big fat check to Washington. Social Security takes up more space in my budget than discretionary spending. What will I get for the money? According to Gallup, most people agree that the answer is nothing[1]:

Six in 10 Americans who have not yet retired believe they will get no Social Security benefits when they retire, more pessimistic than at any time since Gallup began asking this question in 1989. Similarly, retired Americans are now significantly more likely than they were five years ago to believe their existing Social Security benefits will eventually be cut.

Meanwhile, the government allows illegal aliens to collect Social Security, even for jobs obtained through false or stolen documents[2].

How long will Social Security stay solvent? It’s hard to say, when our rulers won’t let us know how bad its finances have gotten[3]:

The Social Security’s trustees’ annual report is, by law, supposed to be published by April 1 [appropriately]. This year, however, the trustees have postponed its release indefinitely. The program’s financial condition continues to remain hidden from public view…

The program’s cash flow has been in the red for several months as payroll tax revenues have declined because of the recession. The recession and slow economic growth are worsening Social Security’s long-term finances as well, as the latest Congressional Budget Office report on the long-range federal budget outlook confirms. According to liberal folklore, the Social Security trust funds will ride in to the rescue and are capable of plugging the revenue shortfall for a long time. Unfortunately, when it comes to those trust funds, there is no “there” there; they are just accounting devices — and the call on general revenues has already begun.

Given the lead times necessary to prepare the trustees’ report, it is highly likely that a final draft report was readied by early March to meet the April 1 legal deadline. But the trustees’ decision to table that report was clearly unopposed because Social Security currently has no confirmed public trustees. All of its current trustees are ex officio members of the Obama administration, leaving no one to register concern that delay would prevent the public from knowing how rapidly Social Security’s finances are deteriorating.

Evidently the truth they’re hiding is that the Ponzi scheme is collapsing, as long predicted. If Bernie Madoff were behind this, they would add another thousand years to his sentence.

On tips from Oiao. Cross-posted at Moonbattery[4].