Why I have a Social Security entitlement

[ThomWV]

I started working when I was young, John Kennedy was President. I paid about $0.03 in Social Security tax on the first hour of work I ever did ( for an employer who paid with checks). Many years and tens of thousands of working hours later I paid in $2.43 in Social Security taxes on wage for the last hour I worked before retiring. From that first hour to the last my employer took some of the money earned by my labor and paid 'the employer's matching share' too.

Charity or welfare this ain't. I paid for my benefit, and like many my age who are drawing from the system now or soon will be I expect to have it.

[RB TexLa]

1. Nope, that's only if you have children, tell this board that you don't have childen

and you'll get told real quick that other people's children are going to have to "pay for your God damn social security!"

[Romulox]

2. Social Security is a social insurance program, not an investment account.

All living workers have been paying into it all their working lives.

[Warpy]

3. It isn't an "entitlement," it's INSURANCE and you've paid the premiums

all your life, which is rather the point. It was always set up to be a self supporting insurance program, which it still could be.

LBJ put it into the general fund so he could use the small overpayment to fund his war.

Reagan raised the premiums SIX TIMES and robbed the HUGE overpayment to finance his giveaway to the rich. Every president since him has done the same.

If we want to preserve it, we need to get it OUT of the general fund and that means eliminating Reaganism in its entirety and I don't see that happening.

What I do see happening is a gradual chipping away of benefits and raising the percentage even higher to make it unpopular.

This is the first time in my life I've thought it was truly in danger.

Damn Republicans to the hell they want to create for us.

[Raven]

4. I'll be happy to take my money back together will all the interest

I would have earned on it. Fuck these crappy people.

[Common Sense Party]

5. Of course it's an entitlement.

We are entitled to receive the benefits from the system we deserve.

[Warpy]

14. Don't fall for Newspeak.

Calling it INSURANCE would mean that people wouldn't be fooled into thinking it's old folks' WELFARE.

It is not. It's an insurance program most of us pay into our whole working lives. Yes, that insurance is duty bound to pay off when we qualify. However, calling it something besides what it is is one way they have of fooling the public into thinking it's unnecessary and a giveaway.

[REP]

6. No, it is an entitlement.

3. the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.

The RIGHT to GUARANTEED benefits under a government program.

[Common Sense Party]

15. I don't know why some people are so scared of that word.

It is an entitlement. I paid in to the system, I'm entitled to my benefits.

[econoclast]

12. Just a note to clarify.....

Nobody "robbed" anything.

For a period starting in the LBJ administration and ending in the Reagan administration SS WAS "on budget" and SS surpluses WERE put "on the budget" and any SS surplus did reduce the reported budget deficit. They called it the "unified budget". There is a school of thought that thinks LBJ did this to hide the true cost of the Vietnam war.   But that stopped in the 1980's and SS was again put "off budget".  It is "off budget" today.

Since the inception of the SS program in the 30's any surplus is required by law to be invested in US Treasuries. THAT has never changed. The SS surplus does not and has never ( with the exception of the 15 or 20 years when SS was "on budget" ) reduced the budget deficit.

[Warpy]

13. You're missing the point

Until enough of us were thrown out of work, OASDI ran a huge surplus thanks to Reagan and that surplus was put into t-bills the government simply printed for the occasion to pretend the money hadn't gone anywhere. Then they spent it in order to cover up the disaster that Republican tax cuts had caused.

[JDPriestly]

7. I started working a job subject to Social Security when I was 14.

I don't think I paid much, if any tax, but I think I would have paid Social Security. I had a special work permit to work at 14 and I worked in day-care with small children..

[TNLib]

8. Damn straight I'm sick of this BS that SS is an entitlement. I paid for this benefit

and I expect to get what I paid for when I am eligible to collect!!

[Obamanaut]

10. Yup, as others have stated, you paid for this, you are 'entitled' to it. nt

[damntexdem]

9. That's why you, and I, and millions of others, are entitled to our entitlement.

That's why we should fight against the stigmatizing of the word "entitlement." And that's why we need to keep the power flowing to Social Security, the third rail of politics.

Or as I tell my gerontology students: I've paid my dues, now you can figure out how to keep paying me back.

[Spinny Liberal]

11. I thought what we put into it

pays for the ones who are on it. And the next generation will pay for us when we're on it. But it'll probably be bankrupt by then. I've just resolved myself to the fact that I will work until I drop dead. =)

[trotsky]

16. Some confusion on this thread.

Yes, SS is an entitlement. In the government sense, not because you paid money into it. Folks are confusing different definitions of "entitlement" and "entitled."

On Day 1 when SS took effect, way back in the 30s, the people who received checks had obviously paid NOTHING into the system. Yet they were "entitled" to it just the same.