Social Security

 The Name Game

Come on everybody
I say now let's play a game
I betcha I can make a rhyme
Out of anybody's name
The first letter of the name
I treat it like it wasn't there
But a "B" or an "F"
Or an "M" will appear

The NAME is Social Security INSURANCE

Social Security (full disclosure, I am collecting Social Security. Hey, there have to be some perks to being 71) is an INSURANCE program.  An insurance program is NOT a Ponzi scheme. An insurance program is the OPPOSITE of risky behavior.  Payments into an insurance program cease being my money as soon as I make a payment. The fact that everyone with a wage pays into this insurance program does not make it any less of an insurance program. A payment from an insurance program is NOT an entitlement. The fact that the administrators of the program are the government does not make it any less of an insurance program.

Claim: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is one that collects money and makes payments, allegedly as interest, from the principal, in order to trick someone into believing that they are receiving interest. The payments into Social Security are made before you reach retirement age and the payments from Social Security are made after you reach retirement age. This is no different than any insurance. You make payments to an insurance company before a claim and receive payments from the insurance company after a claim. The fact that the payments into insurance happened before the claim, in the past, and the payments from insurance happened after the claim, in the future, does not make it a Ponzi scheme.

Finding: False.

Claim: The stock market has a better rate of return than Social Security.

The mean rate of return is not relevant here. The rate of return on an individual’s investment is what is relevant The average return on investment for the stock market might be 5%, but that might be one investor having a -5% rate of return and another investor having a 15% rate of return. In social security everyone has the same rate of return, so this is not a valid comparison. We don’t live in Lake Wobegon where all of the children are above average.

Finding: True, but irrelevant.

Claim: Money paid into Social security is your money.

Tell that to MetLife! Once you made a payment to Social Security Insurance, it ceased being YOUR money. If you die before retirement age, the payments are NOT part of your estate. The fact that the payments from Social Security are based on the payments you made into Social Security does not mean that while in the Social Security Trust Fund, it was your money. And besides, are the payments by employers into Social Security based on your wages, your money, or the employer’s money?

Finding: False

Claim: Social Security is a government program.

I love the sign “Government keep you hands off my Social Security." Uh…the government collects the payments, and the government pays the benefits. Is YOUR ”Social Security” the payments you made or the benefits that you receive.  Both are government actions, hands.

Social Security is a government operated INSURANCE program. The fact that is operated by the government does not make it NOT any less an INSURANCE program, I do not get Social Security. I get payments from Social Security Insurance. I might call it AMICA, but that is only its name, not what it is. AMICA never pretends that is not an insurance company.

Finding: True but it is a government INSURANCE program, NOT an entitlement.

The rINOs objecting to Social Security are “republicans In Name Only. They object to any government, including the constitutionally mandated Republic that is the United States. They seem to have forgotten the pledge we all make.  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."