I adopt a slightly different turn of phrase regarding social security and medicare. By government definition, they are entitlements. I think you are arguing they are earned entitlements because you have already paid for them.

But, it's important for the federal budget to distinguish between entitlements (mandatory spending) and non-entitlements, which is discretionary spending in the budget.

Well...I look upon it as “you took my money for many years for those before us with the promise to do the same for us as we grew older. Time to pay the piper and that makes it mandatory for me”.

You really should tell that to your children and grandchildren not this forum

We will start to BUY and DEMAND AMERICAN made products. We will learn to help our neighbors. Teach our children how take care of themselves. We will for sure enjoy the outdoors!

Once we started down that road (Social Security and Medicare) there is no way to go back to the beginning ... and no off ramp. Both are good examples of (well intended) social welfare. But, the mathematics has changed. In 1945, there were 42 workers supporting each social security recipients. By 2010, there were 3 workers supporting each recipient.

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Well, not really. But, there are some differences and similarities. I think the biggest similarity is that both are doomed to financial collapse after the passage of sufficient amount of time; that's not gonna happen anytime soon mind you, but it WILL happen. The biggest difference is that one is legal and one is illegal.

You are exactly correct although many on this forum will complain it is politics, it is not it is just facing honest but very uncomfortable facts. Numbers don't lie. Thank you for post and painful honesty.

We will forget quickly. Aftermath from the government, ie regulations and legislation $$$$ that will never go away.

So we shouldn’t hope for a return to “normalcy.” The old normalcy is what necessitated shutting down the world economy because of some pesky new bug. We don’t want to return to that normalcy, do we? Instead, there’ll be a “new normal” to live with.

from The American Thinker

Please don't include social security as contributing to our grandchildren's debt. Many, many folks have paid into that system for many , many decades, and don't forget to include the funds donated to that system by our employers. I did the math, I would have to live into my mid 90's before I exhausted all of the contributions both I and my employer have made.

This left-leaning guy says that was a pretty good right-leaning article. Thanks for sharing. A little sensational with the pig excrement on planes, but otherwise insightful.

But, unless there are major changes made to Social Security, it will definitely contribute to our granchildren's debt. The math may seem to work for people who worked for a long time and were in the middle and upper income brackets. But, those contributions are paying the benefits for lower income people, people who didn't work for a full career, and those who receive a generous spouse benefit, some of whom didn't work at all. Also, the number of people collecting Social Security disability payments has been greatly increasing. The system will probably go broke in about 15 years, unless Congress makes major financial changes, which is very unlikely.

Once there is a vaccine for this new corona virus and a proven treatment for Covid-19, I want the old normalcy back.

I may be wrong but I believe you and your employer were paying for your parents and grandparents not into a personal account. Yes we were over paying and the government we elected decided to spend that money and create the imaginary trust fund you reference. I may have an odd way to look at it but we should have been paying more income tax instead of spending excess social security taxes that were collected. Now that we both shared opinions how do we fix it?
Regards

What will change
 

People will be more selective about avoiding buying junk from China just because it supposedly is cheaper....at least for a while.

More thankfulness..........maybe, hopefully.

Here's 3 ideas. Raise the retirement age, eliminate the spouse benefit, and crack down on bogus disability claims.

True Diane!

Just an update, as of today, April 16th, the US death toll has topped 30,000. Worried yet?

No. Not at all.

Lower the retirement age. Studies so far indicate that the immunity system of younger people reacts to protect them more strongly than older people after the virus is caught and they survive. Time for Boomers to let the young ones work.

Yes, and I’d like to know why? Only 3 countries with much larger populations have deaths higher than NY state.

Why is simple. Have you looked at mere size of the United States. You could fit Italy, Spain and France within our border. Combine their losses against ours. The media is comparing apples and bananas.

But I sense our per capita case rate is strangely high. I could be wrong. Haven’t had a chance to do an analysis. But even if it is, I’d attribute it to our propensity for international travel, scarcity of testing and locking down late.

Let me try to compare apples to apples.
What I was trying to say NY state has 828 deaths per million of its population from Worldometers.

The other top countries in the world for death rate are:

Spain 409 deaths per million of its population
Italy 367 deaths per million of its population
France 275 deaths per million of its population

So NYState has 2 times as many people dying as anywhere in the world at this time and I said, yes, I am worried about it.

Did you worry when 60,000 died of H1N1? I’m not worried in the least.

I can answer that as a native. New York City is densely populated. Apartment buildings can have many many floors, 30 to 50 floors or more, of multiple apts on each floor. It would be impossible not to run into neighbors. There is also an element that does not follow rules and you can be sure that’s who’s filling the emergency rooms. The numbers are no longer scary once you know that when you get out of the city and go more upstate, it’s pastoral with very few, if any, cases.

You are right... but I have friends in NYC too.

Really only high in New York because of population density.

There are sufficient tests for sick people and that’s who should get them not every one who needs to assuage their fear. You cannot test 330 million, nor should you.
Besides, you could be negative on Tuesday and positive on Thursday.

DeSantis was wrong to let the partying go on at the beaches as long as he did.

Same here. I never lived in the city but always the burbs but the crowding there was high.

Personally, I find this offensive. The government should use the proper terminology. Mandatory or Discretionary would be fine. To label something we paid into (while the congress exempts itself and its' friends) as "Entitlements" is misleading and offensive. The next step is to define SS as "Government Benefits" which will make it very easy to cut or eliminate.
How about making all federal employees, including all three branches of government, subject to Social Security. Scrap their overly generous retirement programs, and live like the rest of us. Then see what they call it.

We should have a serious dialog about all three of those you mention and others but honesty and desire to be re-elected are powerful deterrents.

As a retired federal employee, I'd like to point out that we were required to contribute a significant portion of our salary each and every payday to the federal retirement plan. It's an annuity. Anyone who socks away money throughout their entire career of multiple decades has the same expectation for a potentially "generous" outcome. We do not have access to Social Security benefits. And whether the program is "generous" is a matter of opinion.

Federal retiree benefits vary greatly depending on occupation, geographic location, educational level, length of tenure and other factors. Many federal retirees could not live comfortably in the Villages on their federal annuity alone.

Try adjusting the data for population density, people per square mile. Then adjust the population for working versus home base. Then adjust the data for public versus private commute, ie bus, subway versus tax and personal vehicle. ie, Then you will have your answer.

Good data analysis requires lots of relevant variables, but the more relevant the variables, the harder the variables are to get quality relevant data. . . .

sportsguy

I surely agree about handshaking. And all that hugging I have seen in groups here is so annoying. Why oh why were these silly ladies practically racing across a Rec Center room to hug someone they see 2x a week. Then stand there holding & rocking back & forth to show everyone else that they have a friend. They were doing this as recently as early March at exercise session. I never did get it.
Oh...and cruise ships: a virtual germ/virus factory. After a 10 day cruise about four years ago neither my husband nor I ever wanted to do another cruise. Glad we agreed on that. I would rather fly or drive to a lovely destination & stay there to enjoy the ambiance.

[QUOTE= Many federal retirees could not live comfortably in the Villages on their federal annuity alone.[/QUOTE]


I'm sure you are correct. I don't know of ANY ss recipients who could live in the Villages on ss alone. I stand on my statement.

" I don't know of ANY ss recipients who could live in the Villages on ss alone. I stand on my statement. "

Of course you stand on your statement, it's your statement.

I live on my income from Social Security.

Perhaps I mis-spoke.
I stand BY my statement. Is that better? You obviously got the idea, but chose to get a bit snarky.
If you do live solely on your Social Security income, I congratulate you. Obviously, no mortgage. Possibly maxed out benefits by holding off on retirement? Good strategy, although not all can do that. You are the only person I have heard of that is living strictly off Social Security. I doubt many others are in your position.

My spouse's pension is less than what just his SS payments will be when he's eligible for it next year, and we have no trouble living off of just his pension as long as we're careful and don't go crazy with travel or expensive toys and doodads. Our health care costs are low only because I work part time to bump up our combined income JUST enough to be eligible for ACA subsidies. It's just another $1600/year that we need to make up for. His social security check will bring us to the point where I can quit working forever. And that would be true even if he didn't have his pension.

Two years after that, I'll get MY social security, and we'll be living the lifestyle we had actually planned on living before hubby's department shut down and forced him into early retirement.

I congratulate you. Obviously, little or no mortgage. Little or no debt. According to reports I have seen, approximately 40% of villagers have mortgages. That has a huge impact on affordability if you only receive ss. Once you are on just ss, don't forget to budget for medical expenses. Either a significant monthly premium with no deductibles/copays, or no premium with significant copays. They get you one way or the other. Don't forget to budget for even minimal travel. Or gifts to kids/grandkids. Oh yeah, and then there is car insurance, home owners' insurance. Did I mention water, trash, amenity fees? And when the virus problem is eventually solved, you may want to go out to eat on occasion. I'm pretty sure I may be missing some other items.
If you can truly live on only ss income, and not touching savings or 401k or pensions to accommodate any of the above, you are way ahead of the game. Congratulations.

I believe the cruise industry is totally finished, unless a cure and a vaccine is developed, And ship design will have to be altered dramatically--maximum density will now play second fiddle to safety & sanitation

They let the frequent norovirus exposures go on for way too long