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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (421932)	4/14/2011 9:33:22 PM
From: ManyMoose	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793843

I rec'd Josh's post, but I have another slant. Josh is right that the collective 'we' is to blame for the Social Security mess. We did nothing when it became obvious the fund was going to bust. We should have required our representatives to fix the problem instead of just bumping it down the road. They could have cut benefits or taxed them for people over a certain income threshold. They could have created a real trust fund based on growth instead of spending every dime the minute it got in the income stream. There are any number of high level fixes that should and could have been implemented, but our pols did nothing and we're ultimately responsible for not firing them. I believe we are not Individually to blame for the fix. Sure, we all take our benefit check (well, I don't, because I am in the Civil Service Retirement System and my SS deposits are sunk costs for me, and not recoverable unless I work the required quarters, by which time they'll ban double dipping). The thing is, each SS recipient followed the rules that were set out for him or her. In fact, I'm not even sure we have a choice to decline the SS benefit (could be wrong). The collective 'we' can hardly blame the individual 'me' for simply following the rules. Also, like a car rebate or other government funded program, we'd be fools not to take a benefit that everybody else is taking. The SYSTEM (collective we) is to blame. Perhaps the root problem is that we have made political careers too lucrative and too long lived. The result is the politicos (no fools, they) take advantage of the system too by giving us what we say we want instead of what we really need.