Is breaking out the smart:
At present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans -- the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries.
Consider an elderly widow, say 70 years old, with a modest retirement income of $18,000 living in a $300,000 house that's fully paid for. She might receive local property tax forgiveness, medical and prescription drug subsidies and other federal, state and local subsidies based upon her age and income.
When subsidies are provided for this lady, whom are we truly benefiting? It's not the lady but her heirs. Conceivably, the lady could make a deal with a financial institution to pay her property taxes, allow her to live in the house for the rest of her life and give her a lump sum cash settlement so that she can live without the handouts. Upon her death, the house becomes the property of the financial institution, not her heirs. Giving the widow handouts allows her to bequeath to her heirs her assets, a $300,000 house. If her children want to inherit the house, they, rather than taxpayers, ought to take care of their mother.
Read the whole thing.
Except that the widow, and or her husband, paid taxes (and a lot of them) for years and years in advance against the day when she'd need that assistance. I don't have a problem with that, and don't have a problem if people want to opt out of Social Security. The problem is that the politicians want that money in order to fund the people who didn't pay into the system.
ReplyDeleteWhy should a retired person, who worked hard all their life, be penalized for saving and being financially responsible? Why should people who didn't pay get a free ride?
If you want to change the system, which probably should be changed, we need to look at it from the ground up.