Re: 2012 Presidential Election Part III: October Surprise!
They destroyed that program along with everything else. And now they think they're owed something.
Umm...not sure if you are talking about Social Security here?
If you are, that indeed
was the promise that was made to them: you pay money into this program throughout your entire working lifetime (I had Social Security tax withheld from my paycheck when I was 16 years old, working as a ticket-taker at high school athletic events) and then at retirement the program pays money out to you. In the early 1980s there was concern that the Social Security Trust fund was running low on money, and so Reagan and Rostenkowski put together a bi-partisan deal that substantially raised the payroll tax, in order to make sure the money would be there when needed.* That "fix" extended the projected insolvency date by several decades.
So if I make a promise to you that if you give me $x I will give you $y, for most people, that would mean that I do indeed owe you something, namely $y.
That money was supposed to be set aside in a Trust fund to make sure it was available when needed. Then the politicians raided the Trust fund and spent all the money.
So there are two different "they"s involved and you seem to think there is only one? One set of "they" is people who've had money deducted from their paychecks for forty-five years under the promise that this money was being set aside to provide for them in their retirement. The other "they" are the embezzlers who stole all the money.
it sounds like you are saying "serves them right for not paying closer attention." Really, Scooby, someone commits criminal fraud against you and rather than sue the person who committed the fraud for restitution, you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "oh, well."?
Now, if you were to say something like "gee, it really is a shame that so many people were defrauded by their own government. I really feel for them, but realistically, you cannot expect the rest of us to bail them out at 100% on the dollar; it's only fair to spread the pain around equally, and so let's bail them out at 80% on the dollar" then you are being responsive. To blame a janitor for believing a politician's lies however seems like a pretty extreme position.
* from Wikipedia:
Social Security Amendments of 1983, Public Law. 98-21 (April 20, 1983). The 1983 Social Security Act provided solvency for the social security system which was facing bankruptcy before the enactment of this critical bill. Specifically, the 1983 Act secured the financial solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund by providing a dependable stream of revenues to the Trust Fund and by rationalizing the benefit structure including the retirement age determining benefit eligibility.
