RE: What's Wrong With Free Money?
I have always liked Larkenrose, but I see a few glitches in this post.
No "REAL" money exists. The Federal reserve is printing Monopoly money, and always has.
They print and give more on the "Friends and Family Program," leaving the extorted out in the cold, as per design.
Social Security is not a hand out. It was extorted from the people and companies who "PAID" for it. Imagine the next time you have an auto accident, your insurance adjuster tells you they are cutting back on entitlements and your car will not be repaired.
Where are the creative new ideas? Why are we limiting ourselves to this same old, them vs us paradigm?
What did tribes and clans do before money? Did everyone sit on their can, while one or two fed them, made all the clothes and took care of the young and sick?
What would happen if all people had food, shelter and an education? The stealing from Peter, to pay Paul is a problem because there is something to steal.
1 - Yes, the current fiat currency system is fraudulent theft. That doesn't make a new flavor of violent wealth redistribution moral or rational. 2 - No, no one "pays into" Social Security. They pretend that is the situation so people feel entitled to the pay-outs. It's a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple, where the robbery victims today are funding the robbery victims of yesterday. 3 - Feel free to come up with "creative new ideas." UBI is not a creative, new idea. It is a repackaging of an old, immoral, destructive idea. 4 - Tribes and clans TRADED, and often found common mediums of exchange that made it easier, i.e. "money." 5 - What would happen if everyone got "free" stuff from the state? Ask the dozens of MILLIONS of people who starved to death in China and Russia for believing that feel-good line.
I can tell you that the, "NON PAYMENT" that comes out of every paycheck is "REAL." I didn't say it was right, I said it's not a hand out. You failed to address the car insurance metaphor.
I never mentioned UBI, or any other current idea. Also, I didn't mention the State giving free stuff. I'm talking about tribes and clans, not governments. Trading between people without a middle man, bank, government, Grand Pooba.
I see this, us vs them even among anarchists, it's just so worn out. I would love to see people addressing the problems with solutions.
1 - The car insurance metaphor is 100% irrelevant. "Social Security" is not insurance, is not an investment, is not paying into ANYTHING. It is a direct redistribution of wealth DISGUISED as a retirement program. 2 - There is an "us versus them" that matters: AGGRESSORS (which includes all "governments") versus their intended victims. Come up with any VOLUNTARY solutions you want. UBI is state violence.
I didn't create social security, and yes it is and was insurance. https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html (Full text of 1935 Act)
The two major provisions relating to the elderly were Title I- Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance, which supported state welfare programs for the aged, and Title II-Federal Old-Age Benefits. It was Title II that was the new social insurance program we now think of as Social Security. In the original Act benefits were to be paid only to the primary worker when he/she retired at age 65. Benefits were to be based on payroll tax contributions that the worker made during his/her working life. Taxes would first be collected in 1937 and monthly benefits would begin in 1942. (Under amendments passed in 1939, payments were advanced to 1940.)
Again, I tell you to read what I posted. I did not mention UBI, or government solutions.
At the rate currency is being printed or debased. It does not matter if social security is or isn't insurance. Even if it is not ponzi styled, the currency paid out probably won't buy anyone much.
It matters very much that Social Security, was and is collected with inflation taken into account. We do not pay 1937 dollars into this system in 2017.
That it was and is an insurance benefit and not welfare.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html
The significance of the new social insurance program was that it sought to address the long-range problem of economic security for the aged through a contributory system in which the workers themselves contributed to their own future retirement benefit by making regular payments into a joint fund. It was thus distinct from the welfare benefits provided under Title I of the Act and from the various state "old-age pensions."
I have cited my sources that prove my car insurance metaphor is 100% relevant.
It still sounds like an indoctrinated economic class from a Keynesian's point of view. If the buying power of the money your forced to pay into the SS back then was yours to invest back then, you could obtain assets that provide possibly nontaxable income in the future. How do the rich become rich. The point is that if the average person understood how this corrupted system worked, it would make a difference on the power they are able to control, as far as, economics anyway. As you know if you start to displace a card in there house of cards the system changes. The roles reverse, instead of us having to adjust for every move they make, they have to adjust for every move we make. Now I personally say trash it all, reset the whole thing and lets try this from the beginning before we had a government to make the rules, but until that happens, use the tax incentives, and what ever else to your advantage. You don't really thing Trump pays into social security do you. If you're collecting SS now, just think of the buying power your money had 50 years ago when you started putting it in, vs the buying power that money has today.
That is exactly right. Those forced contributions would have created rich retirees if that money had been in a modest interest bearing account.
My point is that it is not a hand out. That was money taken from people and their employers. Lumping it in with welfare is just nonsense.
Who said anything about Trump, or any of the clowns occupying the organized crime syndicate, called government?
I agree with you on another salient point @dbarzo. Trash it and start from scratch.