MyGovCost News & Blog

libertarian jerry says:

Socialism(the welfare state) has bankrupted America. I think the majority of the American population will wake up one day soon and find that the “money” they counted on for Social Security retirement,because of inflation,will be worth next to nothing. In essence, the Social Security money that the retired people receive to buy their free lunch will barely buy a can of dog food.

Jerome Bigge says:

And Obama’s “tax cut” to the payroll tax makes the problem even worse yet! Actually Social Security isn’t anywhere near as big a problem as is Medicare. Social Security costs are easy to predict since those who will benefit in the future from SS are already alive and their numbers are known. However in the case of Medicare the problem is utter and completely different! The USA has the world’s highest health care costs. We have the world’s highest paid doctors, the world’s most expensive hospitals, the world’s most expensive drugs produced by very profitable drug companies. Nor do we have “free market health care”. What we do have is a system where we have created a professional monopoly that is “immune” to the actions of the free market in controlling costs. Because doctors hold a legal government enforced monopoly over the supply of medicine, they are able to do “rent seeking” to a high degree. For example, assume you wish to control your blood pressure and your cholestrol. Using the prices Walmart charges, this would cost you $80 a year. I think most anyone could afford that! However, thanks to the government having given doctors a legal monopoly over the supply of medicine, you have to “purchase” their “permission” to buy medicine. The doctor therefore will insist on being paid for office visits, will insist on lab tests (called “spreading the wealth around), adding perhaps two to three hundred dollars additional to the $80 that you’d pay without prescription laws. This is one reason why we pay so much for medical care. Yes, the other countries have prescription laws (which adds to their own costs), but they control the doctor’s fee so that the cost is much lower. However without prescription laws even these countries could no doubt save considerable amounts of money. Proof again that Libertarian ideas of allowing the free market to operate can save money anywhere it is allowed to do so!

Tom says:

If a government produces and issues fiat currency then that same government cannot have “trust funds” that are funded by collecting and sequestering amounts of the same money. THE IDEA THAT ANY ACCUMULATION OF TREASURY NOTES AND/OR BONDS IS AN ACCUMULATION OF WORTH IS ASSININE IN THE EXTREME.

Social Security and Medicare are not going broke.....They ARE BROKE and have been perpetually broke since their inception. They haven’t worked as intended simply because it is not possible to design a system that will work in a way that will achieve the intended goals and objectives when the cost of the benefits are routed back through The Treasury and then dumped out into the operating costs of the enterprises that are producing, distributing, transporting and selling the goods and services that are being purchased using the same money that the same enterprises are paying into the system in the form of payroll taxes.

Goofiness is pervasive in Goofyville on the Potomac!

Tom says:

Very few people actually pay attention to the so-called “unfunded” liabilities because they represent debt against which no government bond has been issued.....although they still have to be paid for. The so-called Social Security “Trust Fund” is non-existent, containing nothing more than IOUs (actually: “UOU”s) that government accounts regularly classify as “assets”; an act that, if attempted by a private corporation, would land their executives in jail pronto. You pay $1.00 in social security “taxes”. Government then takes that dollar, for the general fund, and inserts an IOU for $1.00 and calls the transaction “even”. In effect, not only is your original $1.00 in taxes long gone from Social Security, but you’ve now been strapped with an additional $1.00 that has to be paid in taxes (assuming no interest on the bond) just to replace the original $1.00 that you paid in the first place. This whole naked Ponzi Scheme must be stopped immediately.

Wild Bill says:

Some of the early posters miss the point. Inflation (the printing of excessive amounts of unbacked currency) is a tax. It robs people who have savings accounts and similar investments. The original trust fund idea protected workers from such theft of their savings. The money from the RSDI insurance premiums would be invested prudently, protecting the funds from such theft. Unfortunately, the Trust Fund was stolen by Congress to fund “National Defense,” which isn’t that at all. Instead, the stolen money was used to fund corporate adventures elsewhere and, more recently, to fund the creation of a police state here at home. “Socialism (the welfare state)” has nothing to do with it. A handful of horror stories about senior citizens who weren’t forced to starve to death doesn’t matter. If the money had been invested prudently, the Trust Fund would own ABC or NBC and wouldn’t have a shortage of funds at all. Our nation’s largest “defense” contractor, General Electric, has been raking in profits like crazy. Much of our “defense contractors’” unjustifiable corporate profit goes to outrageous executive salaries. We need to exercise eminent domain and seize assets from some corporations, particularly those which do not operate in our national interest — banks and broadcasting networks.