A wonderful example of an angry lady



It was at a High School LaCrosse match in Utah

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Time is running out for Congress to fix the looming financial insolvency of Social Security, the program's own trustees say

In just nine years, the oldest Gen Xers will reach Social Security’s normal retirement age of 67. But they will have a rude awakening when they learn that the program’s trust fund is empty, leaving it able to pay out only as much in benefits as it takes from the paychecks of those then working.

That’s straight from the Social Security trustees 2024 report. It also notes that without congressional action, benefits will have to be cut by 21% across the board—including for those already retired—beginning in 2033.

Cuts or Taxes

For the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 a year from Social Security, that 21% cut will translate into a loss of $4,600 per year. As Social Security benefits will grow faster than payroll taxes for the foreseeable future, benefit cuts will reach 31% at the end of the trustees’ 75-year projections.

Simply maintaining currently scheduled Social Security benefits would require large tax increases. The program’s trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%, adding $2,500 to the median household’s annual Social Security taxes.

Even that projected hike may be too conservative. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 17.5% tax, or an extra $3,800 per year for the median family, is necessary to maintain current Social Security benefits.

Such high tax rates are a far cry from Social Security’s original intent. The program started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised it would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks.

And for a program that currently replaces about 40% of workers’ earnings during retirement (and will decline to 32% beginning in 2033), the current 12.4% tax is a hefty price to pay. If workers invested that amount in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds, they should have enough at retirement to replace at least 75% of their earnings.

Even as Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of income in retirement, its rising taxes have made it increasingly difficult, particularly for lower- and middle-income workers, to save for retirement.

In fact, Social Security’s growing size and scope could be exacerbating wealth inequality because the hard truth is that Social Security is not a savings program, and workers have no ownership of the Social Security taxes they pay.

Despite Social Security’s original intent to be a predominantly prefunded and effectively a forced-savings program, it now functions as a pure intergenerational transfer program. That happened because Social Security’s benefits increased more than its tax hikes.

A Bad Deal

In every year since 2011, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has received in tax revenues. This means that workers’ payroll tax “contributions” aren’t saved and don’t earn a positive rate of return over time.

Although the formula that determines retirees’ benefits is based on what they paid in Social Security taxes, their actual benefits come directly from younger workers’ paychecks. After 2033, retirees’ benefits will be entirely dependent on how much future lawmakers are willing to extract from workers’ paychecks.

The fact that Social Security taxes aren’t saved makes the program a bad deal for most Americans. It can also exacerbate wealth inequality among low-income and minority Americans who have lower life expectancies.

One out of every four black men dies between the ages of 45 and 64, having paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in Social Security taxes. But because they have no ownership of their contributions, they and their family members receive little or nothing in return.

What could have been a $350,000 retirement account that a low-income worker would have to pass on to his family is often just a $255 death payment instead.

With less than a decade left before Social Security runs out of money and automatic 21% benefit cuts ensue, lawmakers must act now to prevent insolvency and to improve the program for future generations.

Some commonsense solutions include gradually shifting to a universal benefit based on years of work instead of total earnings, automatically updating the program’s eligibility age to align with changes in life expectancy, and using more accurate statistics to adjust benefits.

Not much time

These reforms would translate into bigger paychecks for all Americans by allowing Social Security’s tax rate to decline over time.

Moreover, if coupled with a personal ownership option, Social Security reform could help more Americans build wealth that could increase their retirement incomes and provide a leg up to help their children and grandchildren pursue goals like education, homeownership, or starting a small business.

Whatever lawmakers do, they must act soon. Time isn’t on our side.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/13/someones-going-have-pay-lot-your-social-security/

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Businesses Destroyed by Rampant Crime

The iconic Macy’s department store on Union Square in the heart of San Francisco is closing because of rampant theft and the societal rot that have infected the city.

The massive 400,000-square-foot flagship building, which anchors an entire side of Union Square, has been in business for more than 70 years at this spot, and Macy’s has been in San Francisco for more than 100 years.

Employees at the store told the Daily Mail that thieves take “at least four blazers, 10 wallets, and 20 packs of underwear every day.” Another employee said that thieves routinely steal “men’s Ralph Lauren Polo, women’s North Face, and Levi’s clothing.”

With dozens of store closures in and around Union Square, and the dangerous conditions caused by open-air drug use and mentally ill people living on the streets, fewer and fewer people come downtown to shop.

See the Daily Mail’s map of store closures.

The closures are caused in large part because of lax enforcement of petty-theft laws by rogue prosecutors George Gascon and Chesa Boudin, who served as district attorneys in San Francisco from 2011 to 2022.

Read more about their rogue pro-criminal, anti-victim policies here, here, and here. For a deeper dive, read our book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Cities.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/13/societal-rot-part-1-businesses-destroyed-rampant-crime/

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‘We Ceased Being a Democracy’: Former Australian PM Calls for COVID-19 Royal Commission

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has raised fears Australia could be placed under lockdown again if a full Royal Commission investigation into the pandemic response is not held.

Mr. Abbott, who served in the top job from 2013 to 2015, said Australia stopped being a democracy for a couple of years during the pandemic.

The former Liberal Party leader spoke to his former Chief of Staff Peta Credlin following the release of a submission from the former Liberal Health Minister Greg Hunt to the current government’s COVID-19 inquiry.

Then presiding federal health minister during the pandemic questioned the measures implemented by state and territory leaders at the time, who rolled out vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and domestic border closures

Mr. Abbott told Sky News Australia said the cure was worse than the disease.

“The policy to deal with COVID turned out to be far worse than the disease itself. And when you go back and look at this honestly and dispassionately, you'd have to say that the first mistake that governments made was throwing out the carefully prepared pandemic plans that we all had in panic in early March 2020 because of the dire photos coming out of overwhelmed Italian hospitals,” Mr. Abbott said.

“But I think that had a lot more to do with the Italian hospital system than it did with the severity of the disease itself.”

Mr. Abbott also echoed calls from several Australian senators for a Royal Commission, raising fears the country could experience lockdowns again.

“My fear is that without a fair dinkum Royal Commission-type inquiry into the whole response to COVID, next time a pandemic happens, and it will, we will take the over-the-top response to this one as the model for all future actions.” Mr. Abbott said.

“But the last thing we'd want to be is locked up for several years, again, in response to a disease that turned out to be relatively mild.”

While he supported the medical advice, Mr. Abbott felt this should not come at the expense of Australia’s democracy.
“I’m confident that inside the Coalition a lot of these issues would have been more debated than they seemed on the surface, but there’s no doubt for a period of time we ceased being a democracy and became a kind of a ‘doc-docracy,’” he said, in reference to the influence of doctors and medical experts on public policy.

“Now I am all in favour of taking expert advice seriously, but in the end, we’ve got to remain and open, transparent accountable democracy, and I am afraid we weren’t for a couple of years during the pandemic.”

Liberal National Party Senator Matt Canavan and One Nation Senators Malcolm Roberts and Pauline Hanson have pushed strongly for a COVID-19 Royal Commission, following news that the AstraZeneca vaccine was being withdrawn globally.

Despite calls for a Royal Commission, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese instead opted for a COVID-19 Response Inquiry to examine federal actions during the pandemic.

More than 2,000 submissions have been received so far, chaired by Robyn Kruk, as well as panel members Professor Catherine Bennett, and Dr. Angela Jackson.

Victoria’s Pandemic Restrictions Against Medical Advice: Hunt

Former Health Minister Hunt revealed in his submission that the then-Victorian government’s decision to restrict movement to five kilometre (3.1 miles) radius from home, and implement curfews went against medical advice.

Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews introduced these measures during the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns in metropolitan Melbourne.

However, Mr. Hunt said the curfews and restrictions were not subject to federal advice, or to the best of his knowledge, medical advice.

“National Cabinet developed a series of step-up and step-down distancing measures as part of the COVID Roadmap. This included nationally agreed restrictions on gatherings following medical advice,” Mr. Hunt said (pdf).

“Subsequent unilateral decisions of some states outside of the National Cabinet framework, such as Victoria’s curfews or five kilometre movement restrictions were not the subject of Commonwealth advice, and nor to the best of my knowledge has the medical advice for such restrictions been either released or affirmed at state level.”

In the future, Mr. Hunt recommended states commit “not to take unilateral decisions” against National Cabinet decisions unless there is published and signed medical advice to the contrary at the deputy chief health officer level or above.

He also suggested that a Memorandum of Understanding should be signed between the Commonwealth and states that commits to the continuous use of the National Cabinet for future pandemic management.

World’s Longest Locked Down City

During the pandemic, Melbourne became one of the world’s longest locked-down cities.

“The strengthened settings will see a curfew imposed from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. every night. There will be increased police presence across metropolitan Melbourne to ensure public health measures are enforced,” the former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said in August 2021.

“Exercise and shopping are still limited to five kilometres from your home. If there’s no shops in your five kilometre radius, you can travel to the ones closest to you. You are also able to travel more than five kilometres to get a vaccine if you need to.”

Mr. Andrews said at the time that the restrictions were hard work for every Victorian, but the rules were in place for a reason.

“Everyone wants this pandemic to be over, but the rules are in place for a reason—we know they work and if we follow them together, we’ll be able to lift them sooner,” he said at the time.

Economically the city and state continues to recover from the impact of lockdowns with 7,606 businesses de-registering from the state in 2022-23.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/we-ceased-being-a-democracy-former-pm-calls-for-covid-19-royal-commission-5647420

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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