The Government claims they can solve any problem. Our elected officials are quick to point out our increase in crime, school failures, drug dependency, illegitimacy, low cognitive skills, poor work ethics, and many other social problems. The people of the United States should be now realize that the Government promises are seldom kept and too many times the Government creates many more problems than they solve. So the Government declared "War On Poverty" with unattainable goals, by illegally stealing additional money from the American people and started the largest welfare state in the world.
The Government of the United States told the American people to once again trust them for they had the answers.
After one critically evaluates the Government's record concerning the Entitlement program, including Social Security, it's not very difficult to declare that the entire Welfare System is a failure. Today, almost 60% of the federal budget is consumed by bureaucrats who deliver hundreds of billions of dollars to millions of recipients in the United States. Our elected officials who desire to rectify the injustices and dangers, inherent in the federal entitlement programs, feel that they become politically vulnerable.
And they claim incorrectly, "the Entitlement Programs cannot be touched." Would any elected official or any bureaucrat produce any document establishing that law? Entitlements are not written in law and they not only should be changed but for the future of our Constitutional Republic, entitlements have to be eliminated.
There is little disagreement among Democrats, Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives that the current welfare system being implemented on the people is a failure by anyone's standard. The total cost of all social spending has increased by over 600% in just forty years, from 140 billion dollars in 1960 to close to one trillion dollars in 2000.
The American Government paid over $5,000,000,000,000.00 ($5 trillion) to eliminate poverty and we have more people in poverty today than anytime in our history. When the "War On Poverty" was started, only 3.5% of America's children were receiving Government subsidies. Today there are over 14% or one out of every 7.5 children on Government entitlement programs.
The Social Security System was clearly sold to the American people during the great depression of the 1930's as an insurance program that would guarantee the people their own retirement income. If our elected officials who originally established the program preformed a simple mathematical evaluation, they would have realized the system from its inception was flawed. It wasn't until years later that a large number of Americans realized that the actual system was a classical pyramid scheme and the main objective was to cover increased government spending by creating a new tax that the unsuspecting and trusting people would not oppose.
The new tax was labeled the Social Security Tax and the people believed that the government was going to withhold money from employees and employers. This money would then be deposited into a social security trust fund account where it would be saved and used to pay people as they retired. This was never the intention of the elected officials of the Government of the United States.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in "Helvering vs. Davis, 1937," that money paid into the Treasury in the form of taxes, of any kind, belong to the American Government and could not be spent on current Government obligations. Mr. Davis should have challenged the Constitutionality of the Government going into the insurance business but he challenged on the Constitutionality of spending the Social Security taxes on current government obligations.
Of course the lawyers for the government presented a case based on the assumption that money deposited into the Treasury was not labeled in anyway so therefore the government retained ownership of this money and not the employees and employers who actually paid the tax.
When the program began in 1937, the maximum social security tax permissible by law was set at $30.00 per year and the employer was required to match it, for a total of $60.00. Today the maximum total tax is $6,882.00 per year. These matching employer contributions increase significantly the cost of production, companies are forced to decrease other costs including employment. Because of increased government taxes, increased regulations and trade agreements, our companies are forced to relocate which negatively impacts social and economic issues.
Contrary to widespread belief, Social Security is not an insurance program, nor should it be, because government is not authorized to be in the insurance business. It doesn't matter how much one has contributed into Social Security. Benefits supplied under the system are considered a grant or entitlement by the government. Government has altered the terms, including the amount to be paid, when it is to be paid, and even if it is ever paid.
If Social Security is so good, why do members of Congress have a private pension program where the benefits are far greater? This money taken from the wages of workers and the potential profits from the employers were supposed to be deposited into a private trust fund administered by the government on behalf of the people.
Our politicians claim that if elected they will guard the trust fund account by locking the box, thus preventing other elected officials from raiding or stealing the money of the American workers. This is not true. The politicians know all too well that there is no trust fund and there never was one. That's right, your own elected officials who proclaim slogans like "putting people first" are misleading you.
The government knew when Social Security was passed that it was nothing but a Ponzi scheme. This program the way it was created benefited those people at the very beginning, but gradually over time the system would become insolvent. For the system to operate effectively, more people have to contribute into the system than receive contributions.
The system has not operated in that fashion for many years. The government is now spending more than $35,000,000.00 (thirty-five million) per hour or a total in excess of $325,000,000,000.00 (three hundred, twenty-five billion) a year.
After World War II, there were over 40 workers for every person receiving contributions. In the Korean War years, there were only 16 workers for everyone receiving benefits. This ratio dropped drastically in the 90's to 3.2 to 1, and today it is presently 2.5 to 1.
We need honest elected officials who aren't afraid to oppose the powerful self-serving interest groups and inform the American people concerning the illegal confiscation of your money. We do not need politicians who are also self-serving and are allowing the interest groups to generate misleading and or false information. It is time for a change!
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, in their publication entitled, "Economic Quarterly," Volume 83, number 4, 1997, state on page 55, "The Social Security System is but one part of the government. It is the largest part, with transfers amounting to 22 percent of government expenditures in 1995.
The system's trust fund is really a myth. Social security receives contributions or taxes from workers and their employers and pays out benefits to retirees, their dependents, and those on disability. Excesses in receipts over expenditures are handed over to the U.S. Treasury to be used in financing other government activities.
Employing an accounting fiction, the Social Security system treats these transfers as investment in government securities and adds them to an imaginary portfolio that collects fictitious interest payments." Does this sound like your elected official "putting people first?"
If any one in the private sector used customer premiums for other expenses, and put non-negotiable IOU's into a fictitious account and paid with imaginary interest payments, that person would be in a federal prison. Why do some criminals go to jail and others do not when both commit the same crime? The one that does not go to jail is far worse than the person in jail because he never took an oath to protect and defend the unalienable rights of the people against all enemies.
Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and a member of France's Legislature wrote a little book called "The Law" in 1849. In this tiny book Mr. Bastiat praised the United States when he wrote, "There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within it's proper domain; the protection of every person's liberty and property."
Mr. Bastiat would not have written that book concerning the government of the United States today! The problem is the manager in the private sector is committing illegal plunder and the politician is committing legal plunder. Mr Bastiat explains what is meant by legal plunder. In "The Law," Mr. Bastiat wrote, "But how is this legal plunder to be identified?"
Quite simply, see if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law - which may be an isolated case - is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
Before any substantial and any constructive change can occur concerning our problems, we must demand that Congress give us an honest money system. Before we can notice any real change in our system of government, our currency must become stable and be a standard of value as well as a store of value.
Today, we are living in a fool's paradise. Our elected officials and money manipulators through the control of the total mass media, has successfully created a false illusion of unparalleled prosperity and in reality they have created the most massive amount of debt and paper money in the history of the world.
In 1940, a dollar was a dollar like it is in 2004, but the real difference is in the purchasing power of that dollar. In 2004 that dollar could have purchase two candy bars, but in 1940 that same dollar could have purchased 20 candy bars.
What would the value of your retirement account be, under the same inflationary conditions as the candy bar story? In 1940, $20,000 could purchase a beautiful home and in 2004 it possibly would qualify for a down payment on that same home. Let's assume the government had a trust fund in your name, what would the purchasing power of your money be 40 years later? The answer is 5% of the original face amount.
Are you really being told the truth? I think you deserve to know the truth so you can join me in my request for an honest money system. All of the campaign promises and glitter and nothing ever changes, it's the same story.
top of page > |
