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Michael Covel (FT Press)

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Broke (Film DVD)

Michael Covel

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Social Security Is Broke (Except for People Who Drink Kool-Aid)

From ‘Meet the Press’ today:

Gov. Granholm: “If you care, if you care about democracy and what the everyday citizen believes, and you want to empower them, and they don’t want the Social Security system to be dismantled and they don’t want the Medicare system to be dismantled, because you’re picking and choosing, and this is a compact between generations to be able to make sure that all of our seniors have the funds when they retire that they’re not going to be homeless, so they’re not going to have to go to a shelter.”

Social Security is broke. It’s not going to keep people off the street, give seniors money to retire on or empower them. The seat belt light is on. Please take your seats. Clear air turbulence ahead.

Note: No vulgarity or ugly attacks. There are other places for that.

  • Ash

    The most dangerous consequence of the prevalence of welfare in Western economies is that people rely on it and base their plans around it. Even productive people who want to work expect that government will ultimately bail them out if their plans go wrong. These are the very people invested in media-fuelled, long only stock market / real estate strategies. Combine these folk with the ‘lifestyle option’ welfare cases and, well, we basically end up with what we’ve got now.

  • Pete

    SS is not a welfare program and referring to it as welfare is dangerous and misleading. Referring to SS as welfare will, over time allow the government to treat it as such and decide who get their money back and who doesn’t. And that as we all know will be based on politics and votes.

    Our government created this retirement program and demands working people contribute into the system. Our government has mismanaged the program and should be held accountable. It should be taken from their incompetence hands.

  • Mike W.

    just makes me laugh when people say SS is a “compact” between generations… I tried to talk to the next generation…you know..that tyke sitting in the highchair… I can’t speak or understand infantile gobbledegook.. how in the heck can I make a compact with him??? Or better yet, how in the heck can he know what he is agreeing to??

  • Ash

    As far as SS is concerned, if it contains any element of wealth redistribution, then it’s welfare pure and simple. It’s actually more pernicious than welfare that’s labelled as such because it encourages people to rely on it. Most right thinking people would try to avoid welfare per se due to the social stigma, but SS is welfare that’s practically forced on us. Want a real contract between the generations? Then make inheritance tax zero forever and leave government out of it.


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