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Guest Post: The Social Security System Is Already Broke
Submitted by Jim Quinn from The Burning Platform
Free Shit "Disabled" Army Massing Its Forces
Whenever I hear a liberal MSM talking head say that Social Security is not a problem, I want to throw something at the TV. Obama and Romney both declared the Social Security system sound. They lied to the American people that it will only require minor tweaks to keep it solvent for a hundred years. Liberals hate math. The Social Security System has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion. This means our politicians have promised $18 trillion more than they can possibly pay out. I guess $18 trillion is trivial to a liberal minded person like Krugman or Obama. Lucky for them that 99% of all Americans don’t understand what unfunded liability even means. The chart below gives the gory details. The Social Security system had a negative cashflow of $47.8 billion last year, after running a $48 billion deficit the year before. You may notice that 77% of this deficit was created by the SSDI program, where the depressed masses gather after their 99 weeks of unemployment run out. Do you have a headache? Are you depressed because liquor stores don’t accept food stamps? Did you pull a muscle getting on your government provided rascal? Trouble hearing your Obama phone? Then you are eligible for SSDI.
The funniest line item on the chart is the Assets at End of Year line, which shows the Social Security system having $2.7 trillion. Even using this funny number, the SSDI will be broke in three years. Al Gore told us this money was in a lockbox. They take it out of your paycheck and put it into a fund, waiting for you to retire and collect what you’re owed. Right? Wrong! If you tried to observe the vault with the $2.7 trillion on deposit, you’d be looking for a long long time. You see, the noble politicians in Washington DC took the $2.7 trillion and spent it on undeclared wars overseas, ethanol subsidies, investments in Solyndra, turtle crossings, tax breaks for hedge funds, TARP, bailing out AIG, subsidizing GM, $800 billion stimulus packages, cash for clunkers, homebuyer tax credits, predator drones, DHS, Sandy relief and thousands of other buckets of shit. There are nothing but IOU’s in the vault. The $2.7 trillion is long gone. The U.S. government had to borrow $47.8 billion to fund SS last year. They will have to borrow over $50 billion this year. There will be 10,000 per day turning 65 for the next decade. The borrowing will rise exponentially. If the $2.7 trillion actually existed, why would we need to borrow?
The trust funds are required by law to hand over all surplus revenues to the Treasury and the Treasury then provides “special issue” non-marketable bonds—essentially electronic IOUs—to the trust funds in return for the cash. These “IOUs” become part of the national debt. When the Treasury pays “interest” that increases the value of the Social Security Trust Funds it does so by increasing the number of IOUs it owes the trust funds. When the Social Security program runs a net cash flow deficit, as it has in the last three fiscal years, the Treasury needs to borrow cash from the “public” to keep the program funded.
Does this look like a trend that is going to reverse itself or level out with 10,000 Boomers turning 65 years old every freaking day?
These costs will be exceeding $1 trillion per year in the near future. Meanwhile, the number of workers per retiree will continue to fall as it has for decades. In 1945 there were 42 workers per retiree. In 1965 there were 5 workers per retiree. Today there are less than 2.5 workers per retiree. There are only 1.6 full time private workers for every one retiree. With Obamacare working its magic of destroying jobs across the land, there is much less revenue going into the Social Security System. The system is unsustainable and ignoring the problem will not make it go away.
A recent article on Bloomberg below barely scratches the surface of the massive fraud going on in the SSDI program. Those who think we owe them a living are faking disabilities by the millions. The number of annual applications were flat at 2.1 million per year between 2004 and 2007. They now exceed 3 million per year, as the Obama administration has actively attempted to get more people on the dole. In a matter of a couple years, there were suddenly 40% more people getting disabled. Amazing!!!
Shockingly, as 1.4 million people have been kicked off the 99 week unemployment rolls, the number of people applying for SSDI skyrocketed. Just because the scumbags on Wall Street and in the rest of corporate America commit fraud on a massive scale does not mean we should look the other way when lowlifes in our community do the same thing on a smaller scale. The working middle class pays the bill for the cost of both frauds. More than 90% of all the people who go onto SSDI never go back to work. This program was supposed to be short term until people could recover and go back to work. There are now 8.83 million people so disabled, they supposedly can’t work. There are only 12 million officially unemployed people in the country. The government is so incompetent, they barely check the applications for SSDI. Anyone with an ounce of brain power (this disqualifies anyone on MSNBC) knows that at least 50% of the people on SSDI are capable of some form of employment.
The Social Security system is already broke. The money is gone. Pretending all is well is for fools and there are millions of them in this country. If someone within the leadership of this country was honest with the American people we could fix the Social Security system. A combination of age adjustments, means testing, and reconfiguration of income levels subject to the tax could make it viable. Too bad Washington is inhabited by snakes, scumbags, liars and knaves. Corrupt lowlife politicians, lying liberal media whores, and a delusional populace will ignore the Social Security problem until it becomes a crisis of epic proportions. Then they will propose wrong solutions and implement them badly. Some things are easily predictable.
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IOUs are NOT a "surplus", moron.
Math is hard, especially for dumbasses
Is that your "Big Boy" voice, genius? See my explanation above.
You appear to be an enthusiastic prostitute to the robber class.
Though I guess it's possible that you're a fucking moron or idiot savant.
Math is easy. Politics is hard. The US Treasury is $16T in debt. It's unsupportable. Of that $16T:
About $5T is held by "Government Accounts" - mainly Medicare & SS, plus Federal agency pension accounts.
About $5T is held by "International Investors" - mainly the Chinese & Japanese, plus foreign Sovereign Wealth Funds.
Who do we default on? U.S. Citizens, International Investors, or both?
U.S. Citizens have stopped buying more US debt and want to start cashing in their holdings. BIG PROBLEM for the Treasury. Make those fucking US Citizens go away! We can't be expected to make good on their damned notes; we've already spent the money!
International Investors continue to buy US debt and we want them to continue doing so. NO BRAINER for the Treasury. Keep making good on the International Investors' notes, and they'll keep buying more.
Except that the damned US Citizens vote, and the International Investors don't. Politics is hard.
I have hedged my social security payout on a lockbox promise..
Total annual SS cost approaching one platinum coin. Maybe Treasury shouldn't have been so quick to close the door on that option.
Ha ha ! ss cost @one platinum coin?
The entire country gets dumber and dumber! Pray tell me if a coin can be worth one trillion, why can't krugman make the coin worth $17trillion? - we pay off entire debt and solve the entire issue at once including an end to the interest payments! Bernanke keeps buying future debt and we can issue a new coin to him after 10 yrs.
"Then they will propose wrong solutions and implement them badly. Some things are easily predictable."
If there is anything like a 'sure bet', then betting against Central Planners has to be it.
but not before they totally fuck up the lives of a shit ton of innocent humans and destroy a lot of personal property.
The scalene pyramid makes it's first appearance of the day!
"The Social Security System has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion. This means our politicians have promised $18 trillion more than they can possibly pay out."
I think Quinn was one pundit who foresaw a Romney landslide. If so, small wonder the same pundit would imply the US can pay $0.00 for a public retirement system supported by its own funding on the basis of a typical insurance premium- like scheme that has been in existence for close to 80 years.
Tylers, please find more reliable pundits. If marketoracle appeals to you, please consider using Nadeem Walayat; or, better still, make him a Tyler and also post up Jim Willie who at least refrains from bad mouthing poorer people and kicking them when they are down.
It's Saturday night for goodness sake.
This Jim Quinn ideological drivel is a buzz kill.
:-(
Jim Willie understands the who and the why of 9/11.
SmokeyQuinn has not a clue and is proud of it.
TD...
More Jim Willie... Lose the Quinn and his ilk.!
A young Mick Jagger penned some words to describe your ilk.
You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal dull affairs
Talking much to loud, center of the crowd, running up and down the stairs...
You'd better stop and look around.
Stick your head in the sand at your own peril.
Can you not see the obvious signs of strain in the system even now, when the tide has just started to gently roll back in? The tide of demographics has only just begun to tilt in the wrong direction. It gets worse from here out. You can debate many things but demographics is impossible. And demographics isn't the only thing working against it. All other entitlements nurse at the same teat, and some of them are already much hungrier than SS.
If you can't even recognize there is a problem at this point, you're too far off in the weeds to pull back. Best of luck to you.
You are clearly a government public education graduate.
Math is hard, especially for liberal douchebags.
What you don't seem to realize is that your math comprehension is pathetic. The only reason nobody will call you on it is because they love where you go with it.
It's not your math that the financial community loves you for, JQ.
You're like the slut who gives it up in gang bangs and then thinks they really, really like you.
Mr. Quinn, do you recommend we reneg on all our unfunded promises, foreign and domestic, or just the ones made to the U.S. working class?
Math is easy. Politics is hard. You are a schill for International Financial Institutions. I'll accept getting stiffed as long as all the other U.S. Treasury Bond holders get stiffed too.
No haircut for SS Treasury Bonds without the same haircut for all other Treasury Bonds. Got it, fool?
On unrelated newz.. Christine Lagarde is chomping on her balls due to low membership FUND enrollment statistics.
http://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/index.aspx
Since my unemployment ran out I'm considering applying for SSDI.
I mean, if I can't get hired into productive employment after a year-and-a-half of trying I must be disabled in some way.
If my mom can make $82 an hour from home on the internet, what's holding you back, e.b.? ;-)
that DI column is starting to show some STRESS
Trust fund? "That's as good as money, sir."
Talk about a clueless article - totally clueless:
"The Social Security System has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion. This means our politicians have promised $18 trillion more than they can possibly pay out.
That statement is totally incorrect. The unfunded liability will mostly be paid by future worker contributions. The politicians have definitley NOT promised $18 trillion more than they can payout.
obi-wan- please to enlighten me as to where all of these fucking "future workers" will be coming from-does guarding FEMA camps and being on "illegal assault weapon retrieval squads" count? this fucking ball game we call the USofA is over.
bill wilson obviously skipped his AA meeting and chugged a fifth of vodka instead.
Visions of sugarplums dance in his befuddled woolly head.
SocSec won't even pay for a month of decent booze now.
Not future workers, future borrowing.
Long as US govt can keep borrowing money, no problem. They can borrow the entire $18 trillion, no worries.
"Future workers"?
Which ones are those?
The politicians can pay $18 Trillion? With what? Broken windows, burned down cities, and a World War?
New law to declare all robots as workers, to have taxes, employment insurance and social security deductions. Robots will pay for the system to support humans. We finally found slaves that don't talk back or revolt (hopefully).
Are you being snarky or are you a fucking genius?
I can see this as a way to "ask" companies to bring manufacturing jobs to the US based on the logic the Progressives are using.
If you take the national debt, and divide it by federal tax revenue, and do this every year you can easily see what is going to happen.
There's no argument about this at all. The Federal government takes in less than 15% per year of what it owes and it has no way to increase it's income, and will not reduce it's spending.
There will be no social security in just 10 years, it may not even last 2.
With the US sending yet more troops overseas, yet again under the well-worn banner of "Fighting Terrorism", one wonders if there will be anyone alive in 10 years time (maybe even in 2 years time!?)
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-01-12/war-terror-spreads-africa-us-sending-troops-35-african-nations
I wonder if BillyBobGates foundation sweat activated "vaccines" will also be immunising all the amrkn troops there?
hmmmm?
billwilson
yes they will pay...no doubt about it, they have the printing press. The point is that the money will not come from taxes collected (a large part anyway) and will not come from some fund of saved wealth. The government will create new cash which will increase the risk of inflation. There is a concept in accounting called 'net present value'. It is the amount you would have to have now to pay for a future stream of income (or in this case expense) at a given rate of interest. At ZIRP it comes close to the sum of future apyments not paid for with taxes....that is where the 18T$ figure comes from. If interest rates rise this number would be larger!!!!much larger.
Want to drastically reduce the SSDI roles? Announce that the names and addresses of recipients will be made public in six months.
american people have no shame-do you think people give a shit any more? it's "fuck you and hooray for me" time-or haven't you noticed?
if they started getting beat so bad that they really do become disabled then they might start giving a shit
Forming a gang of skinheads is NOT the solution.
There is no real solution to the problem. The ball is rolling and its only going to get bigger.
If you see Jim Bob's name on the disability list, and then see him go open ocean spear fishing, you might turn him in.
If Jim Bob works for you throwing tires, and is collecting disability for a bad back, you might fire him.
Or better, offer a reward to anyone providing evidence of lack of disability. Similar ratting out of medicare/medicaid fraud. We need a more adversial system.
ahhh, more "see something, say something" divide and rule.
git yer merit badges, and a cellphone camera, step right up!
We’ll show you that the proposed US austerity program is nothing more than a farce. Math never lies.. Mark my words!!!
Math once walked ten miles to return a nickel it had overcharged a customer, which was odd because it is Math, after all.
Reminds me of "Figures never lie but liars figure".
If I offer someone money for nothing and checks for free, then they will take it. The vote grabbing politicos do this. Phones for all! Or as the Soviets used to say: tractor production up! Big Brother government can work miracles with figures which it controls.
Problem: they soon run out of other people's money to waste. The other people are taxpayers ... and tax dodgers.
No wonder CONgress works hard to gift itself more money and a security armed guard for life covering its families (passed by Obama this week), as it fears to be hanging from lamp posts when the money runs out and its starving voters want revenge. Its voters.
I didn't vote for any of them. They are welcome to their voters.
"If I offer someone money for nothing and checks for free"
Now that ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Found in an email...
Salary of retired US Presidents = $180,000 FOR LIFE.
Salary of House/Senate = $174,000 FOR LIFE.
Salary of Speaker of the House = $223,500 FOR LIFE.
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders = $193,400 FOR LIFE.
Average Salary of a teacher = $40,065
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN AFGHANISTAN = $38,000
Think about this.
Nancy Pelosi will retire as a Congress Person at $174,000 Dollars a year for LIFE.
She has retired as SPEAKER at $223,500 a year.
PLUS she will receive an additional $193,400 a year as Minority Leader. Double dipping.
That’s $803,700 Dollars a year for LIFE including FREE medical which is not available to US...the taxpayers.
She is just one of the hundreds of Senators and Congress people that float in and out every year!
I think we found where the cuts should be made!
/email
i don't know where that teacher teaches but around here they live pretty fat on the hog for working(and I mean actual TEACHING-not fucking off on institute days or MLKoon holidays) about 120 days a year.
Is there a link to the actual laws that proves these salary amounts to be true?
Have you snoped it?
I think I see where the cuts will be made when the money runs out, and voters seek revenge upon CONgress. The USA is a big country, but there'll be nowhere to hide for the venal politicos when their voters realise how they have been ruined by the political class, and its apparatchiks in bureaucracy, academia and banks.
40 million abortions in the past 20 years has increased the mean age, which means fewer working young will be around to pay for the old.
The progressives calculated that uncontrolled immigration would supply cheap labour, but they didn't realise that many newcomers come from traumatised countries where the black market and cheating the state is the norm...and repeat that behavior in the USA.
No matter. CONgress reckons that it can gift itself any pay, perk and armed guards funded by law whipped taxpayers, and run off with the money to armed guarded gated estates. Another miscalculation....
Hunter-gatherers are foragers, not producers. Government itself is a forager, devouring all it wants and providing for fellow foragers.
Importing them by the tens of millions has all but destroyed self-reliance and individualism in the US. There are no solutions to the problems faced, just continued decline.
Where did you come up with that number? bring a link, please. 54% of abortions were due to unwanted pregnancy which occurs in women on birth control. So, they'd not have a child regardless. The cost of living has required both parents in the US family home work.
ABORTION AND CONTRACEPTIONOver the 19 years, pregnancy rates for women in their early 20s declined 18 percent, while the rates for women 35 to 39 rose 38 percent, and rates among women 40 to 44 went up 65 percent.
Abortions declined sharply, to 19.4 per 1,000 in 2008 from 27.4 in 1990 — about 400,000 fewer abortions. There were declines in abortions in all age groups except the oldest women, with the sharpest reductions in teenagers. Abortion rates among African-Americans were almost five times the rate of whites and more than twice that of Hispanics.
The overall pregnancy rate for black and Hispanic women was about 60 percent higher than for whites, but the disparity decreased with advancing age.
The report’s lead author, Stephanie J. Ventura, a demographer with the health statistics center, said the declining numbers were largely a result of birth control. “It’s not that the birthrate is going up and the abortion rate down, which has happened in the past,” she said. “Now everything is changing in the same direction, suggesting that more effective birth control is at work here.”
In 2008, 65 percent of pregnancies ended in a live birth, 18 percent in an induced abortion, and the rest in fetal loss. In 1990, 61 percent of pregnancies ended in a live birth, and 24 percent in an abortion.
Interesting detail, but the previous points still stand.
There will be fewer young workers to support the expanding older generation. Rather ironic that the 60s generation of 'make love, not war' has made most war and least babies.
Uncontrolled immigration promoted by cynical globalists and their pet politicians has foisted greater cost on the USA. Rather ironic that the 60s generation of 'have it all' will be poorer. At least, they'll have the company of diverse cultures. Maybe they can all cut each other's lawns, clean house together, and party on in happy egalitarian community.
Unlikely.
I think your two points (your 'abortion=less workers' and his 'birth control=less workers') are BOTH correct, and complementary.
The number of abortions since Roe v Wade has been estimated as 50 million, just for the USA. Add another few hundred million for births that would have happened but for birth control, and you've got another whole "population of the USA" who simply doesn't exist to pay taxes, invent things, etc.
The global elites were counting on those people to reproduce and work, so they could be stolen from, and it just hasn't happened.
dude, which is it, the feminists (who are blamed for "pro-choice") were invented by the "global elites" to destroy amrka, vs:
here's a thought - maybe "they" are at the pull-the-plug stage, and NO ONE is needed to "reproduce" nor "work" because the jobs have been absorbed, blobbed up in the ZH parlance, and at this stage, there are just too many "useless eaters" per owned territory.
cull the herd might be the direction / agenda being pursued.
"uncontrolled immigration" - haven't you shared that your "husband" is in fact British? among other cultural tags?
aaahh, maybe the clue to your point of view lies in the "cut each other's lawns" - certain immigrants not controlled. . .
Forty million abortions has probably prevented 39 million welfare recipients.
And delayed complete Idiocracy by ten years.
Delaying Idiocracy is explicitly what Margert Sanger had in mind back in the founding days of Planned Parenthood. Eugenics was big back then, before the Nazis even existed. An inspirational character, she was. PP has of course been wildly successful in wiping out colored people, I mean successful in Margaret Sanger's sense.
"PP has of course been wildly successful in wiping out colored people"
Not nearly as successful as banning DDT.
It is amazing that J Quinn still has any credibility. Talk about being a "clueless capitalist and a quintessential psychopath"...
Would you prefer the culpable communist and quintessential psychopath statist, comrade?
All governments are symbiotic relationships between psychopaths and psychopath wannabes.
I'll have my Social Security payment for which I'll gladly pay you.. Tuesday.
Pay you Tuesday
Cash the damn check quick!
All problems are "resolvable" but who wins in the short or even medium term if cutbacks are made? Not citizens, not corporations, not politicians. Only winners are the future generations...but since they don't vote, I don't expect we'll worry much about them.
Money is running out...so are jobs...tax money, and patience.
Children have simple needs: loving adults, food, heat, shelter, clothing. These things are still within the means of ordinary prudent people, although more costly due to the venal ways of the political class, and their apparatchiks.
Fear not. There are still many friends of future generations.
Ronald Reagan says this guy is a FUCKING MORON! Another CAT FOOD FUCK!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUoRD4pYzI
When you say:
"The U.S. government had to borrow $47.8 billion to fund SS last year. They will have to borrow over $50 billion this year."
That money has to come from somewhere. Where will the money come from? Foreign central banks?
Cntrl + P. Buzz Bernanke, QE to infinity and beyond.
Economy : Global Financial Crisis
Learn the past to see the future, just advice!
Cheers, Atomizer.
'History rhymes...'. Yep.
Learn failure & bloom into success.
Now that's wicked smaht Mr Atomizer :-D
It's broken because of two facts:
1) From the 1970's onwards, instead of wage increases, credit was substituted
2) Youth employment is no longer a static replacement [as was the case in early industry], due to technology
6% of a 90% employment record, where wages matched inflation and house prices weren't used as a casino would be trivial; as it stands, 6% of a 50% employment record with house mortgages and credit defaults up the wazoo is a different matter.
Put another way; you didn't see the American Economy crashing post WWII or Vietnam, where the disability index hit higher levels. Nor does this piece deign to mention that after 15 years of warfare, in 2013, you "might" expect a similar rise. What ya gonna do when they all come back?
/Jim, don't jump the shark, you're better than this. Poor analysis in this piece. Bottom line: 6% scroungers is immaterial if the larger body politic is healthy. It ain't, so you're worrying the bone over the rats; far better to worry about where all the cows went.
1971: Nixon ends the gold standard thereby reneging on war debts. Inflation up, wages in real terms down ever since.
All while CONgress gifts itself never ending inflation adjusted pay, perks and pensions...for doing nothing of lasting good for the American people.
And this week, Obama passes a law to give them and their families armed guards for LIFE...at everyone else's expense, as per usual.
Ex-Presidents & immediate family have always enjoyed permanent SS protection. It's part of the pension plan, durr. Jackie had it until her death, and Carter actively recinded it as a measure of his humble origins. Might want to look into Nixon's take on it as well. Clinton still has it while he flits across conflict zones and aid work; so did Bush [Snr] when he did it.
If you really think that ex-State level known actors are allowed to put themselves into potentially dangerous situations without protection, where the American government could possibly be ransomed, then you're an idiot of the highest order.
Of course they have SS protection. Muppet. Same reason Tony Blair still has a couple of MI6 agents attached and so on.
Do your homework, and look closer at that bill, and stop being a total fucktard aping the latest "OMG OUTRAGE RIGHT WING CIRCLE JERK ALERT". The Bill doesn't say that; more than likely, it's actually about ruling all SS personell immune to any & all gun bans that may-or-may-not be enacted
tl;dr
I'll have to read the Bill - but I sure as shit don't believe a random idiot like you. Muppet.
On actually looking into this, I was wrong, so I'll junk myself. He's merely re-activating the 1994 law (that included Clinton, as I stated).
Not a huge change in policy, however much you dice it.
A couple of years ago as the shit was getting deeper and deeper, I requested and received a direct face to face private meeting with my congressman. They asked me to come to DC (probably thinking I would not come) and as it wasn't too far I went and expected to get 5 minutes of bullshit. He gave me over an hour straight face to face private (he did have one staffer in with us...a young guy with a notepad, but I never saw him write anything down.
We talked about many topics and problems witht the debt and FED, but to my suprise, they know all of this and what is happening. It scared the shit out of me. We talked about SS. I asked for any model anywhere that shows there is anyway it will be there for me (I'm 48). He said there is none. He said that out loud. I asked why should I keep paying into it then. His answer was "because it was the law." When I joked about SSDI and I thought that 50% of the people in our district were faking it, he shook his head and said the number was probably closer to 75%. The point of this is that they know, and cannot or will not fix it and are just riding this thing to the end. One other thing that stuck out (besides the amount of time he gave me) was him repeatly talking about how much time he has to spend fighting back things from the likes of Pelosi and Frank and their proposals (I guess we don't see a lot of commitee work and the crayziness).
I guess it looks to them, even the sober rational ones, like one of those game theory situations where every likely outcome sucks, because of the behavior of the players preventing the best outcome. Maybe they are trying to preserve the stucture of the republic until and when some crisis galvanizes the nation to accept sacrifices in order to overcome some common problem. Think of the massive failure of FDR's programs and how Pearl Harbor allowed him and his control freak buddies to actually get the nation moving, because of this exogenous challenge.
Too bad you didn't ask him about 9/11, or why they are stripping the american people of their constitutional rights? That would have been an interesting conversation.
Your anecdote illustrates that even a member of Congress who knows what's going on is nothing but a powerless rubber stamp.
While you are looking in the rear view mirror, CONgress moves forward at your expense. Pensioners and others will pay for CONgress and their family to have armed guards for LIFE, thanks to a new law passed by Obama this past week.
Err...isn't that the same Congress and President who shout to disarm the American people; guns are bad...unless it is for waging endless war abroad and giving cover for the political class at home...for their lives and profit.
How did over a million people suddenlt become disabled?
Is everyone intentionally slipping in the shower or something?
Shit I better get in on this tub slipping action before its all dried up.
+1 for humor.
Shockingly, as 1.4 million people have been kicked off the 99 week unemployment rolls, the number of people applying for SSDI skyrocketed. Just because the scumbags on Wall Street and in the rest of corporate America commit fraud on a massive scale does not mean we should look the other way when lowlifes in our community do the same thing on a smaller scale.
Pardon the ad hominem, but this fuckshit is assuming that the any person on disability is a lazy no-account? Or just some? Or because there are some, fuck the rest of them?
And there is virtually nobody in that crowd that worked for years, paid their taxes, WHILE THEY WERE DISABLED? They didn't want to take a buck they wanted to earn it. Nobody, right?
Then when there were no jobs, they took something of which they were entitled to in the first place.
Like in this day and age, some fucking Corporation is going to hire a Disabled person?
Yeah, fuck them. We have to put up with all of these handicapped parking spaces that they never use.
This is like the fuckin' right-to-vote-cards. Because .00001% of the population got around the law, all of the voters are probable frauds.
Blame the fuckin' victims.
This Jim Quinn is a fuckin' intellectual thug.
"Then when there were no jobs, they took something of which they were entitled to in the first place."
When ranting, the inexperienced usually expose their own fallacies for you.
They worked. They paid taxes.
There's no inference being made here. This guys is saying Disabled people are to be doubted as frauds. When you are left with nobody but the weakest in your Society to pick on, you are a thug.
If you are gainfully employed, then you are not disABLED. You are ABLE, as evidenced by your being ABLE to do the work for which you were paid.
If you are gainfully employed on Friday when they handed you your final check, then (barring some unfortunate accident over the weekend) you are not disabled on Monday.
This isn't Math, it's English.
Read the quote. Quinn is saying because 1.4MM came off of Unemployment Comp, then the SSDI new claims must be filled with fraudsters.
No. The data is clear. The submitted claims went nuclear, but in 2011 and 2012 (99 weeks after the real jobs loses took place through 2009) the actual number of people receiving new claims fell 2.2% and 4.4% YOY compounded. the hard number of new fell below the absolute number in 2009. And net of everything the SSDI part of payouts has progressed no more that it has for at least 14 years.
The only people who are making bitch money, are the lawyers who are pushing the submitted claims and not being real successful. And bloggers who want to claim Disableds are frauds without even a trend to go on.
If the best you have is your cute little syllogism, you're wrong anyway. Quinn is talking about getting your last paycheck and then your "Monday" is 2 years later.
These are the top disabilities, tell me which ones of these are getting better with no HealthCare Insurance and living on $1300/month (which is just a little more than Healthcare Insurance for an unemployed person with a disability. Insurance companies line up to insure them. (/sarc) http://tinyurl.com/a6arexg
Arthritis/Rheumatism 8.6MM
Back/Spine Problems 7.6MM
Heart Trouble 3.0MM
Mental Problem 2.2MM
Lung/Respiratory 2.2MM
Diabetes 2.0MM
Deafness 1.9MM
Deformed Limbs/Extremities 1.6MM
Blind 1.5MM
Stroke 1.1MM
If you are deaf, blind, nuts, have deformed limbs, or have degenerative diseases/ailments like arthritis/rheumatism, bad back, respiratory problems, and a stroke... how do you think things will be working out for you as two years pass.
The only ones we can see for sure turning from 1 to 0 on the rolls, are the jumpers.
You seem to have the balls, so the answer is fuck you and die? No Disability because .0001% of you are frauds, because you could work two years ago. Makes complete sense to me if you live in a cave or Africa.
Like a fuckin' politician who never do the math, and all they do is talk idiot English, what do you plan to with the 47.5MM people and bodies? Wait until major corporations risk hiring Disableds? They have such a great record of re-employing anybody at all.
I have a lot more respect for someone who wants just to kill SS and Medicare on principle. As fuckin' ignorant of the outcome he is, in a civilized nation,.. at least he isn't bastardizing the Disabled to kill the fuckin' Retirement Benefit which is the actual problem with SS.
Yeah. Math doesn't count. Try that one on Dave Rosenberg or Tyler Durden.
As soon as Math doesn't count, then you get eveything we see around us.
I thought that has always been the point.
well argued..has the number of people with back pain/arthritis/rheumatism increased by a lot more than the those with (excuse the blunt way of putting it) fewer limbs?
are you saying there is no link between this and the rise in those dropping off the 99 week/126 week/182 week register?
i would hate to have to live off hand outs; i do think that fraud is prevalent either by the claimants, or by criminals..i have trouble with the number 0f those on disability whether it is 26 million or the increase to 28 million from just a few years ago.
In the narrow spread of the question, I would say that protracted periods of unemployment/underemployment more strongly "mint" legally Disabled people.
If you go back to 2001-2 you see there was also a rise in % of on-the record Disabled. Just as quickly, it came back down to normal. What we are going through in employment today is ??X worse than that because the issue is truly structural to our Economy, and globally utilization is nowhere near what it was 4-5 years ago (see ZH's presentaion of David Rosenberg's state-of-everything for the end of the year.)
I have worked straight for 40 years, with the exception of 5 months for a layoff, and 10 months for cancer operation/treatment that got really complicated. In the 10 months I had to file for 5 months of long-term-disability (LTD). I had my own LTD insurance, but the way it works is the insurance companies will only meet their obligation minus what SSDI you can get from the Gov't. So you have to apply for SSDI anyway, even though you pay to be properly insured. That's not the point.
Every fuckin' day I was out of work, I wanted to be at a job, working, being productive. Forget about money, I would have wroked for nothing just to be healthy and productive. It is my nature, and that of so many people I met while going through recovery and restorative therapy. I'm sorry to the people who think they shouldn't have to pay for my problems, but nothing I did was stunningly "deserving" of getting laid-off (AON dumped an entire business Group). I have always been fit through excercise, watching diet/weight but still got bone cancer.
One thing I did to get to experience first hand, is the overwhelming stigmatization of "being on the dole". People don't want to hear that you can argue that you were responsible every step of the way. Because they have small dicks or strong Cro-Magnon ties, they just don't like you, and outright hate you for stealing their money.
Another whopper is to watch how the Insurance Industry and an amazingly inefficient Healthcare System (public, and more so private) works tirelessly to fuck any hope that many people will get out of a protracted illness/disability without their financial state seriously compromised or completely cratered.
Once you get in the whirlwind, an average person can see where it is going. If you don't, and think "well, it's importtant now that I take the time to work real hard to maximize my recovery for the substantial future I have ahead" you'll be some degree of toast before you know it. My advice is always to run. walk, or crawl to work as soon as you can. Although I consider that short-term thinking, I consider it reality thinking. One is the reason that the Corporate America I live in can eliminate you from thei rolls with ease.
Go to your Human Resources Dept and ask somebody who will be semi-honest. The day you go past the Family Leave/STD 17(?) week to LTD, the company can rid themself of you. I worked for the #2 Pharmco in the world at the time, and they eliminated my position through one of the seemingly annual mergers. There is definitely grounds for sour-grapes there, but onlty towards the Pharmco. I had the #1 Pharmco interested in me two months before I (semi-)fully recovered and capable of be decently productive.
The coup-de-gras was when I was well enough to take a trip into to clean out my personal shit from my office. The guy using my personal-property chair in my old office was very sheepish, maybe becuase I had hired him into the big bucks of Corporate America. It was easy to extract that he was happy to work for 18% than I was paid when I started, his reports were the same number and job description which I had, and he was working to do the same things for the US and Canada that I had done. He didn't get the morall conflict of thanking me for the data repository I had created, the reporting and spreadsheet analyst models I had created, and the area orginization I had created in 5 years. etc etc And the fact he had my job which hadn't been "eliminated".
It gave me a pain in my chest towards him. But you really need to be naive that incredibly stupid shit happens in Corporate America and it's somebody's fault because it happened to fall advantageously in their lap. My job wasn't eliminated, I was. Bone cancer is an incredibly resurgent Disability, and it's not a good cost move, for companies to risk employing that person.
That being said, From what I saw, I was screamingly fuckin' lucky.
Not everybody who is, or becomes Disabled, even has the dignity of recovery in a nice orderly staright line. people get caught in the water around the drain of their Disability and the insane costs which have been statiscally proven to be incredibly higher than any civilized or uncivilized countries on earth. In the 2 income world of the US Middle Class, you will have to sell the kids to medical experiments, if one of the 2 incomes is $1300 and includes the carrying cost of the Disability.
That's why even fuckshits (with fuckshit mortgage lenders) who co-conspired to take on debt they couldn't handle are the #2 reason for Middle class Personal Bunkruptcies in the US. A family healthcare hit and medical bills is still #1.
People assume there is some great reason to live on SSDI payments. It doesn't exist.
The predjudice which was shown by Quinn, is just that. He presented none of the data which shows the actual fraud numbers, and that they are miniscule, although do exist. Mainly because there is a neurotic meme that 100% of the Government is 100% incompetent. With, of course, the exceptions of the military, the subsidy for anybody's fav Multi-national equity stock holding, and Ron Paul. (with Ron Paul being one of the top items on my list to be heard in discussions of all of the shit around us. Heard and impacting peoples' thinking, not fully in charge. Like the basic dogshit we have had in charge for about 20 years.)
Quinn's undeniable effort is accuse SSDI Disabled people as frauds, to somehow leverage his argument against SS. even though...
1) He presents zero data to support it, and there is plenty of data out there with which to do it.
2) Any glance at the numbers, is clear that the Retirement benefit of SS is the vastly fucked and largest piece to this nightmare.
3) He's looking for someone else towards who to hate and blame for the unfortunately disheveled state of the Middle Class..
4) He effortlessly and irresponsibly, with no accountability for his assertions, attacks the weakest in our Society.
Thug.
excellent rebuttal Pike Bishop.
to which I'd like to add, I've yet to see anyone mention the returning soldiers from perpetual wars, those ones who are committing suicide more often than dying in "action" - they've been signing up for "disability" this past decade too. . .
If you are a veteran and want a lawyer that handles both VA and Social Security Disability claims call me at:
whole websites with lawyers answering those important questions.
Good sense says that disabled people exist. Good sense also sees that some people make fraudulent claims - just like CONgress which induces them to do so, for its own profit. See earlier comments regarding the millionaire politicos; champions of the poor when it profits them most.
I'm not here to speak of the frauds, I'm speaking about the Disabled.
How many of them are frauds?
If you offer money for nothing and checks for free, then corruption ensues and so does fraud. Genuine disabled people will be worse off if cheaters are excused because people like you want to believe that everyone is nicey, and no one would cheat the system.
It is evident that there is much waste and corruption and fraud at all levels of taxpayer funded systems. If you think otherwise, then you need to pay more attention, rather than live like Pollyanna.
Crap! It's not being claimed that there are no cheats, nor that those who do cheat should get away with. In fact if you just make an honest mistake with SS, there is no mercy ... unlike with politicians and banksters who deliberately work the system.
Keep your fingers crossed that you don't become disabled and no longer able to work at whatever you do that's so valuable.
Thanks for a hand. These people will not look at the fuckin' numbers.
Quinn may complain that there is this whole bunch of fraudsters, buit I have no idea where he is seeing these numbers. He's making them up. Here's the payee numbers.
http://tinyurl.com/azssda8
NOTHING in the annual numbers,( netting of new awarded claims and netting of terminated claims), says anything about a jump in current pays statistically different than has been going on for at least 14 years. With the exception that SSDI people-paid in 2012 was the LOWEST increase YOY in at least 14 years.(2.9%).
So without foundation, Quinn is trying to convince these HuffPo Saturday night echoers that
1) people collecting SSDI payments have jumped hugely, ... and is wrong. It has been no different than when everybody was buying houses they couldn't afford.
2) The people who came in on 2011-12 (when people starting get bumped off the 99 week) although it was no strange statistical jump, have somewhere between 1 and all of them as fraudsters. And for this he needs no vetting data.
3) But by doing so, he's calling every person who has legally applied and been granted an SSDI check, a destroy- the-nation-fraudster. When you compare them to banks, that's a sleezy journalistic tactic.
The PTP are laughing their asses off. They get assholes to do their bullshit talking for them.
And then shit themselves laughing while they watch us destroy each other.
I have always considered Tyler(s) both slaves-to and heros-of the finest form of data reporting.
For them to let this editorial horseshit through is just not honorable.
Unknown. Without a proper audit, we cannot know what percentage of the disability claims are fraudulent. To be fair, I would expect an aging demographic to show an increase in long term disability, since older people don't bounce back from injuries the same as the young.
Fraud or no fraud, where do they get the right to live at someone else's expense?
Get rid of welfare and bring back charity and you will end the fraud.
It isn't supposed to be welfare, it is supposed to be a form of insurance. However, it is (mis)managed by government, so it doesn't work properly and it is compulsory.
And if you were intellectual, you would realize that SS is a pyramid scheme and should exist in the first place. Then you wouldn't be making ridiculous posts to a ridiculous thread.
Just watched R Reagan in The Killers he wasnt bad Angie Dickinson now that woman had a great ass!
A couple of points:
1) Social security is only broke because we insist on having a military empire and a healthcare welfare state as well; politics is about compromise and making difficult decisions, something which is not done in Amerika anymore because we have infinite debt creation to satisfy all of our wants
With appropriate political willpower, social security would be solvent. Of course, we will never muster the appropriate willpower, so it follows that social security (and indeed the entire federal government) is bankrupt.
2) Despite this, I still do not believe in social security. It's government theft of private savings. Savers who accumulate should be rewarded by a stable money system. Those who don't save should meet their evolutionary end.
When your young you get pussy,when your old you get 'Puss'n Boots"
Don't throw something at the TV. Throw the TV out the window. That's what did 3 times until I finally quit watching them for good.
SCTV is on the air!
Fifty BMG into TV with piers talking about ssi riots and if we had only taken his advice on gun control.
Do you all remember that photo of "W" in front of the SS "lockbox?"
He's standing there looking at and holding a binder full of US Tresuary bond records. That's the "lockbox!"
Funniest thing ever and what I always see in my mind whenever SS is discussed.
The link: http://www.ssa.gov/history/gwbushstmts5b.html#04052005
LOL
Since "W" said it; it must be true!
He is such a noble and honorable soul!
Where is a gun nut when you need them?
They shoot children instead of war criminals?
I don't trust the US Treasury or the FED so I do not believe that the way the monetary system is run and budgeted is anything like what is let on. Therefore I like to believe that the elite that have stolen the wealth over the last 100 years will pay for things until they decide to kill us...which will be soon.
If they kill us Quinn won't have to pay much for SS.
I'm on early SSI. The system as currently structured is beyond broke.
One question I have is: after the coming collapse, what will I get per month in the "new currency", the dollar, or whatever comes out the other side of this coming financial shitstorm?
There's not a doubt in my mind that those of us on SSI will have to take a "significant" hit in terms of real purchasing power in the next few years. The math simply demands be done. It doesn't matter what, the President, the ChairSatan at the Fed, or the morons in Congress think, or do.
If I receive the equivalent of 1oz of gold/month today, What I will receive 3 years from now? expressed in oz's(fractions of an oz).
Anyone?
Zero. Without the fedgov, there is no SS, and the end of the dollar will be the end of the feds.
Let's say you get a 1% cost of living increase per year, but prices rise by 6% per year. Then after 1 year your purchasing power (PP) will be 1.01/1.06 or 0.95283 of what it was initially. After 3 years you will have 0.95283^3 (0.95283 times itself 3 times) or 0.865 of your initial PP.
Plug in whatever numbers you think are reasonable. A 2% SS cost of living increase combined with 10% inflation per year gives you a PP of 79.7 cents on the dollar in 3 yrs.
i recommend you comple a list of bankers that receive millon dollar bonuses and ask them if you can do some work of some sort for them..doesn't have to be manual..could be intellectual..anyway..invoke the "scrooge" premise and ease their consciouses by giving you money; sell it to them as a tax benefit. i think there are around 25-30,000 of these high "earners" out there..and there are probably a few hundred within a short trip of you. try not to steal the jewellery, but this would give you a fast track to a few ounces of gold.
One question I have is: after the coming collapse, what will I get per month in the "new currency", the dollar, or whatever comes out the other side of this coming financial shitstorm?
There won't be any govt default / collapse.
But the US dollar will keep losing value (from all the printing). You'll continue getting SS checks but the dollars in those checks will buy less and less.
The only "collapse" will be USD collapse. There won't be anything coming out the other side. USD will be worthless or nearly worthless, but US govt will continue on, SS benefits still paid out. You just won't be able to buy anything with those dollars.
For obvious reasons I cannot be more specific, but the newest phenomenon in company layoffs is too raise the number of people in the bottom/Unacceptable category in job reviews.
If handled properly, the benefit to the company is that they avoid negative publicity of Layoffs. And less or no severance pay. Bonus for mgmt.
And, BTW, "No UI". No matter how much they paid or for how long. Double whammy!
Pretty underhand and reprehensible isn't it.
Wonder which particular HR Genius thought that up - one thing you can be sure of is that he / she and their ilk always seem to come out with wonderful reviews.
Helps to know the "right people" more than ever these days, especially if you plan to continue working!
Trying to 'fix' SS is pointless. The faster the system collapses the better. The only way out of statism is for the currency and the Empire to collapse. Those collecting SSDI are doing us all a favor by accelerating the inevitable.
I'm not a low life. I suffer from the long term debilitating effects of lazyitis.
Many people are capable of working but their jobs moved to China and India. Maybe the gubmint should give unemployed ppl a one-way ticket to these countries if they can't find a job after 99 weeks.
Nothing more than some steerage-class passengers stuffing their pockets with silverware...
after The Titantic has hit the iceberg - courtesy of the Captain, Officers & Crew
Articles such as this one miss one very important point. The point is that the masses still don't get it and won't get it until the system actually collpases and stops delivering food stamps, pensions, medical care and other benefits.
The system won't collapse, it will be inflated to insignificance.
Compulsory reading for all ZH members : The toxic trail of Neo liberalism as expounded by Hayek
Philip Pilkington: The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part III – Europe and the Centre-Left Fall under Hayek’s Spell « naked capitalism
A good summary of how the US conservative right and corporate lobbies have bought this line of thought since the FDR regime installed "Keynesianism".
Very comprehensive historically/psychologically tainted overview. And, obviously as economic theory is "pseudo religion" it creates a lot of knee jerks to interpret "fact" and what government intervention in a republican framework means in terms of wealth redistribution mechanisms and its basis, its biases and its limits.
For some, all state action; aka taxes, is illegal, immoral theft! ...Like gay marriages are betrayal of God's will!
The supreme irony of this line of reasoning is provided here : Wall Street thanks you for your service, Tim Geithner | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.... Corporate Poacher turns Gamekeeper of Central bank statism!
When you read this article on Tiny Timmy you realise how in the face of real events a delusional corporatist psychopath following Hayek's reasoning during the halcyon days leading upto 2008 crash as head of NY FED, became an outright Keynesian when he became Secretary of Treasure to BAIL OUT his corporate friends; who had destroyed capitalism using COrporatist oligarchy logic unleashed since REaganomics-Thatcherist days, using the Chicago school Friedman version of watered down Hayekism.... We now have the smoking gun proof that this pseudo science is smoke n mirrors. Behind the Ivy League theorising is the REptilian BRAIN MINDSET, of the thirst for power, that Hayek's dreams and anti statist delusions in favour of corporate power construct have allowed Oligarchical man to liberate and assume openly : his most basic instincts at the expense of the 99%.
Hayek and MArx, when PUT into practice, lead to the same consequences.
Charybdis and Scylla of modern economic religious world!
Good bye Mr Geithner, one flew out from the Cuckoo's nest!
The beat goes on, as neo feudalism comes back to first world.
"but on broad principles they follow a pattern that invokes laissez faire, balanced government budgets"
WTF? Well, that's an enormous pile of shit.
nit picking? Great !
now try cherry picking.
lol, felt a need for punishment, eh? I read that series last week at nc and could not help but think of the neoliberal marketing juggernaut that is ZH and how much it would be appreciated here.
It's already an ignored crisis, and shall be forgotten soon even by this author. The shrinking middle class compared to other country's, now that's a crisis.
**Prepare for the Worst: Celente on 2013
Video
http://www.homment.com/jHTBQnDGS4
YES WE CAN print it or take it from the working class.
We're not at a 100% tax rate so there's time to maneuver.
We already know how this ends.
It ends with people getting exactly what they were promised in nominal terms. They just won't be able to live on it.
The price of Your Daily Bread: http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=wheat&months=360
Thi article is a load of crap. A bunch of biased assumptions mixed together with hate.
Yawn.....
The preponderance of SSI can never be bankrupt by definition. It is a pay as you go system. Even if the US defaults on the trust fund, over 80% of it is pay as you go. So benefits get cut a maximum of 20%, but everyone keeps paying in their 15%.
SSI isn't going anywhere.
It's very easy to repeat the anti-SSI meme over and over on ZH. The anti-SSI forces have been completely out argued on ZH, but they just keep coming. Your argument will never seriously see the light of day in the real world. Politicians like to keep their jobs.
So in summary, you have a total loser of an argument and no political vehicle to carry your loser argument.
People keep pointing out that the number of workers per retiree is declining and that we should have more children to stop this trend and reverse it. But why? Young people today can't find jobs. How would it help to have more of them? The future of manufacturing and agriculture is more automation. Low level service jobs will not produce the tax revenue to support the retirees. This whole concept is based on growth forever on a finite planet.
I think we will borrow and borrow until there is a monetary collapse. Medicare will stop and people will die sooner. Those who are able will have to find work to support themselves. Along the way we may have means testing and wealth testing and a subsistence level stipend but what can't go on will stop.
there is plenty of "work" out there, like helping out at home or in a (elderly?) neighbors house or old folks home or finding a piece of land and growing something on it as a hobby or prospecting for minerals or trying to invent something or trading ebay or making furniture or rebuilding cars or...well the list is endless...what we have is a triumph of social networking and game skills over the real world
Oh you mean after I retire on disabiliy?
seen too many people doing too many (good) things in the face of horrible adversity to bite on that one.
go reagan!
jb
he has! gone...007 now a fairy tale like Reaganomics.
Ever heard the song of Roland? Another fairy tale. That's an olde one.
Love fairy tales!
The Rolls Royce belongs to the "Krauts" (BMW), in Bondish jargonese and Aston MArtin to ...Italian investors!
Hey, Mussolini and Sieg Heil own James and Bond street!
Thats no fairy tale!
So many of these people became disabled because of drugs or alcohol. The stay that way and go on ssi. Nobody gives a shit. How many of them have health problems because the only thing they eat is fast food? This is our culture like it or not but payback is a MF and believe me that it is coming soon like a freight train on the wrong track.
yo bro..dotchoo be dissing my bruthas and sistas...we got crack, smack, charlie, X, reds, blues, blow as well...yu wanna hit? drugs are goooood..you don't have to care..
ponders also how many wally worlders are so damn fat also
i am stunned that over 28 million are disabled..i guess this includes vets? or do they get paid via vet benefits?
Gimme a dime of dragi, some obomblow and some krakner. Also a ball of blownanke.
An flow buckets of nuggs hun.
That is not true. I work in the private side of the disability program.
Are you trying to say the alcoholics and drug addicts amongst us eat a balanced diet? What would lead you to argue with a point everyone knows...food is the last thing on the list of a hardcore, nonfunctional addict.
Just to mention a few Vitamin D deficiency, iodine, magnesium, calcium, protein..all have devastating impacts, the first two having an impact on the brain activity, one is useless without the other. Dehydration in itself would impact their health in profound ways. Anemia. Energy levels, sense of well being and ability to focus are all impacted.
Vit D deficiency is epidemic ..so is iodine deficiency..in the general public who'd eat a diet that would be considered as balanced as one could expect in this hurried lifestyle where panic and hysteria are accompanied by glitter and gold. A portion of even fat is necessary to provide the body the necessary ingredients to function well. Study you'll have to google showed that seizure activity in children goes down when a diet includes fat. Conduction.