Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I've always agreed with the argument that W-2 employees also pay both halves.  The money an employer pays to the government for that is money he's not paying you, and otherwise could be/would be.  The fact that the government is taking it from you before it ever makes it to a category that we consider "deductions" is irrelevant.  It's money that would otherwise be part of fair compensation for labor. 

Oh I definitely agree.  Your employer doesn't care what you GET, they care what you COST.  Conversely, you don't care what you COST, you care what you GET.  

I detailed this here several years ago, I'm pretty sure, so I won't do it extensively again here.  But back around 2012 I checked on getting disability and Medicaid.  That was my crash-course introduction to the way the system worked, and it made me beyond sad and frustrated.  I'll keep it short since I already ranted about it back then, but the bottom line was once they had me, they weren't interested in letting me go.  I wanted help to get past medical problems with the goal of re-entering the workforce.  They wanted me to permanently alter the course of my life, with a bent towards holding my hand out, on the dole.  Because I wouldn't make that decision and also because I had been financially responsible prior to that, I was eligible for Jack Squat amount of help.  The head of the local SS office actually told me she admired my attitude, but "the system just wasn't set up for people like me."
And that's not even getting into her comments that if I weren't Caucasian, I probably would've been able to get some help anyway.  In my case--and I'm talking about my ethnicity--she said I'd need to blow out my savings account either through sheer waste (or, I realized, I could ultimately retain the money via fraud, which I was not willing to commit).  So yeah.....I got no help from disability or Medicaid, when I felt like I was exactly the kind of person it should be set up to help. 

I haven't dealt with SS but I've spent years dealing with BWC and JFS (Unemployment).  My experience has led me to the belief that somewhere in the bylaws of both organizations there are instruction that:

• In the case of completely legitimate claims, this organization will scream, kick, yell, drag our feet, and generally impede the claim to the extent possible, and
• In the case of ridiculous, bogus, or fraudulent claims, this organization will do everything possible to get the claim paid as quickly as possible. 

I've always agreed with the argument that W-2 employees also pay both halves.  The money an employer pays to the government for that is money he's not paying you, and otherwise could be/would be.  The fact that the government is taking it from you before it ever makes it to a category that we consider "deductions" is irrelevant.  It's money that would otherwise be part of fair compensation for labor. 

you have a different opinion of employers than most of us.
Just because an employer COULD pay the employee the money that otherwise would be going to the government certainly doesn't mean that the employer wouldn't keep it to spend on something other than wages/compensation

I'm already at the point (just turned 50), that my only real goal left in life is to save enough to retire.

My wife is really thrilled when I nitpick every one of her nonsensical purchases with the statement --- "You know that I'd like to retire one day, right?"

She's actually not too bad on the "DAF" expenditures, though the 2 new grandkids has exacerbated the poor decision making.

Another of her favorite jgvol quips:  "We aren't the parents."

1975 or 1974?  I'm 1975.  

you have a different opinion of employers than most of us.
Just because an employer COULD pay the employee the money that otherwise would be going to the government certainly doesn't mean that the employer wouldn't keep it to spend on something other than wages/compensation

Most of you know I run a business as well as my regular 40.  I make payroll out every week, I see what my employees cost me, their wages and what I have to pay for SS and Medicare.  I only care about what they cost me, and anytime I think about giving somebody a raise, I very well consider the overall cost when I factor in that 6.2% and 1.4% of SS and MC.  

FWIW, most of my guys are rather low paid, like $13-15 per hour.  Wanna take a guess at how much I spend in payroll every week, OT included?  I have 4 full time employees.  It's by far my number one expense, other than COGS. 

I remember reading your thread when you first started it, but then I didn't keep up with it, so yesterday I caught up on the whole thing.  I have a random thought or two, but to start with your quoted post here, I lean more pessimistic in general and I tend to side with Cincy here.  I have major doubts that this will ever get fixed because the politician who tries will get ousted with record speed.  This country has already voted itself into managed decline, and my confidence is high we'll vote it off a cliff too.  The public won't put up with short-term pain and will keep whistling past the graveyard, blindly believing that the Piper never has to be paid, until it all irreparably hits the fan. 

Another big topic for a while was SS's solvency where @betarhoalphadelta and CD were discussing what's being done with funds paid into SS.  I won't pretend to know what happens to it--that's not something I've ever learned about or paid attention to--but they seemed to agree about it going into bonds.  Just going off of what they were talking about, brad seemed to make the better point there.....it looks like a case of double-spending where the government is trying to show the same tax dollars (debits) under two different expenditures (credits).  It's accounting BSery, and I don't see how anything good comes from it long term. 

The other thing that caught my attention was some comments you (Gigem) made--I think it was you--about wages and cost of living.  How income in the low $100k's isn't that much anymore.  I was glad to hear you say it because I've been scratching my head over exactly that for a while now.  My cost-of-living mental index is still stuck in 2005, it seems, because what my wife and I make jointly affords us a pretty modest life according to what I think our income ought to afford us.  Granted, our budget includes a lot of stashing away into a savings account I keep separated with a spreadsheet for upcoming expenses.  I know a lot of people don't do that, and if we didn't do it, we'd be able to loosen the belt considerably on discretionary spending.  But I don't know how else to run my life......I only save for things that I know are coming, so that they don't wipe us out on the months when they finally show up.  Most every recurring annual expense (or any length of cycle) I save precisely for, and a lot of other things I estimate (pretty well, I have to say).  Things like new tires.....I know about how many miles we drive each week, how many miles we can expect to get out of our tires, and what tires cost, so I divide that out into monthly savings contributions in a high-interest savings account, and when it comes time to buy new tires, it's not a meteor strike on the budget.  We don't really feel it.  So again, I know a lot of people don't do that, and we'd be able to "do more stuff and afford more things" if we didn't do it, but I just don't understand what people do if they don't save and then an irregular budget-buster hits them.  Like, I know the damn dryer is gonna break again and I'm gonna have to call Sears to come fix it.  I know stuff is gonna break or need repairing around the house or the yard.  I know Christmas is coming.  And I know about how much we're likely to spend on that stuff, and how often, so I just spread it out over "payments" in the form of monthly savings, so we're not crushed or putting stuff on credit cards when the time comes.  That's a nice peace of mind to have, but it has left me bumfuzzled more than once, that we make what I've always thought was pretty decent money for our area, but it doesn't seem like we keep up with the Jones', so to speak. 

The only person that I know of that has actually put their money where their mouth is is DJT and Elon Musk.  Dozens of politicians over that time have held hearing after hearing, political rally's, everything under the sun except to DO SOMETHING.  

Elon has said that the database is full of errors and outright fraud.  Do you believe him?  I don't know, he seems to be so unhinged at times I wonder if he's just gone plain nuts.  He claims they have started marking deceased anybody over 120 years old.  He didn't say that they were still getting a check, he just said that they were marked as deceased. Yes, I'm aware that he might not be telling the whole truth because some people claim that the way the database works doesn't necessarily mean that somebody is actually over 120, but whatever.  Next they're making people check in with the SSA and verify they are who they say they are.  I'm very interested in where we end up with SS after a year or two with regards to expenditures.  I personally feel like the whole system is being massively defrauded, and probably a lot of unintentional waste.  

Recently I read that he's trying to re-do the SSA database QFH, which many people have derided as impossible.  They say it's written in COBOL (I actually know some of this code because we used it in our company and lots of system still run on it).  I think that if the only human alive that has successfully landed a rocket the size of a large building says he can do it he probably can.  Will there be problems?  Abso-fuckin-lutely.  But in my view, we have to do this now or it will just get worse by the year.  No future politician will have the balls to do it either.  

I'm a frequent user of X (twitter), and although Elon's behavior on there has at times been straight weird, he says over and over that the USA is bankrupt, the debt is out of control, we have to do something.  It's like he's the only person who gets it.  


Next he's trying to verify that the people that are getting SS are who they say they are.  

1975 or 1974?  I'm 1975. 

12/27/74

Barely made it.

Do we get to hear it?

the short version is that some mental health service or prescription wasn't covered by my health insurance.  the folks there "helped" her fill out the forms and successfully put her on Medicaid.  This was over ten years ago.  She's still on it.