Mostly insults, which I expected. But there was one section I'd like to address.
[ QUOTE ]
The Supreme Court case
Fleming v. Nestor (
http://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html) established that the taxes you pay for Social Security are just another tax and the revenues are not distinct from the general fund. <font color="red"> A gross misinterpreation of
Nestor, a contract case, which in part says
"THE TAX PROCEEDS ARE PAID INTO THE TREASURY "AS INTERNAL
REVENUE COLLECTIONS," I.R.C., SEC. 3501, AND EACH YEAR AN AMOUNT EQUAL
TO THE PROCEEDS IS APPROPRIATED TO A TRUST FUND, FROM WHICH BENEFITS
AND THE EXPENSES OF THE PROGRAM ARE PAID. Doesnt sound much like a claim that revenues are indistinct from general revenues.</font>
[/ QUOTE ]
Thank for your followup quote, it supports my position nicely.
Note how the section states that once congress collects the pile of money (which are all "IRS collections"), it then "appropriates an amount equal to the proceeds". The proceeds themselves are not handled separately.
In fact, Copernicus, you have reiterated *exactly* what I was saying. The monies are collected, and then there's a bunch of internal accounting procedures which are unrelated to the sources of the monies collected, just as I described. The money from Social Security Taxes DO NOT go into the Trust Fund. They go into the general fund and later the Congress earmarks some of that money to fund the SSA. This is a subtle, yet crucial difference. It is the crux of the scam in fact.
Imagine there were no payroll tax, but some other taxes were higher and the IRS revenues still totalled what they do today. What would congress "appropriate" to the SSA? They'd be in the same scenario they are now, with one big general fund and an SSA budget. Would they over appropriate and then borrow back the rest, as they do now?
They wouldn't do that, because there would be no need to maintain the pretense that the SSA is funded by Social Security Tax. Congress would simply appropriate what it costs to fund SSA that year and be done with it.
The tax is misleadingly labelled as Social Security Tax when in fact it's just a generic wage tax and the revenues are general IRS collections just like income tax. Once it is all collected and thrown into the pot together, the congress makes some internal accounting tallies that further the pretense of a relationship between the two.
Returning to Fleming v. Nestor, we see this is true. Nestor found out the hard way that you have no claim to your benefit even though you paid the tax. So much for that. He literally paid into it all his life and got nothing out. Why? Because the benefit is just a giveaway, not a payout from something you paid into like a typical defined benefit.
And the tax is something separate even though it is disingenuously labeled "Social Security Tax".
Lastly, I'd urge you to do what I said at the beginning of my post. The most important thing to do before even beginning to analyze the Social Security program is to clarify exactly what it is you think this program ought to accomplish. What is the purpose(s)?
You dismissed my discussion that many people think of it as a welfare program for the elderly but you yourself have admitted the program acts as a way to perform some redistribution to the less wealthy recipients. Why do we modify the benefit to favor the less wealthy? Is it because the program is supposed to subsidize poor retirees? (aka welfare).
There is no denying that Social Security in some way acts as a welfare subsidy to a certain class.
Once you realize/decide that the program intends to/ should subsidize poor retirees (or whatever else you think it should do), we can begin to address how and why this could be better accomplished in a different way.
natedogg