ARTICLE V CONVENTION? I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!

[Bob Russell]

There are many people, some who erroneously call themselves conservatives, panting at the idea of and calling for a Constitutional Convention as a resolution to the dilemma of politicians ignoring and violating the current document.  What those poor, demented fools don't understand, despite my numerous attempts to enlighten them, is that the ruling class political elitists will either abolish the current document altogether, which is the most likely outcome, or continue to ignore any restraints on their power.  Power hungry despots, if the Article V idea were to succeed, will only continue the treasonous actions they currently engage in because they hold We the People and the idea of God-given rights to be absurd at the best and dangerous to their absolute power at worst.  Tyrants like barak obama, harry reid, nancy pelosi, mitch mcconnell, and their henchmen see themselves as better, smarter, and more deserving of power than the "unwashed masses" of peasants called We the People and will simply ignore any addendums an Article V would put on them.  The only solutions to our current situation are a return to the Judeo/Christian precepts the nation was founded on or a full blown rebellion as our founders went through, and that rebellion on the doorstep. 

read more:

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2016/01/article-v-convention-i...

[M]

Like I said Jack, those are only two examples. Think outside the box they put us in.As far as a shortage of SS is concerned, there are about two million more people in the nation today than when the baby boomers were paying the freight on the SS. The numbers and what the politicians are saying do not match. What is draining our coffers are the funded projects and programs that automatically remain funded with a yearly increase without Congress doing anything else. We need to force Congress to stop all automatic funding and deal with it directly with an up or down vote every two years on every thing funded by the Federal Government. That way Congress is held directly responsible and would have to put in a full days work for most of the year. 

Hoe come it's Social Security that is always going broke when Welfare, Foreign Aid,and other things like that are getting more every year with no problems?

[jack ludwig]

because welfare, foreign aid and other things are a drop in the bucket compared to what is paid out to SS recipients. We have a 2 million population growth per year plus about 2.5 million increase in immigrants per year. However the number of new people going onto SS and Medicare every year is growing and the life expectancy of those already on the system go another few decades on average. That payment schedule is impossible to keep up with. M I don't know if you are on SS and medicare yet but if you just use yourself as an example. I have done that analysis. I paid the maximum SS for nearly my entire working career and even paid the self-employed rate for more than 10 years. I have been retired since 2010 and the federal government has paid me more in SS payments and my medical bills two times more than I ever paid into SS including what my employer paid in plus any normal interest it could have earned. Every year I continue to live is bonus money I am getting for free that the government has to come up with the funds to pay. 

[Bob Russell]

So Jack, your answer is to abolish social security and medicare after we have paid into it for 50+ years rather than try to find other ways to solve the fiscal problems and tell all of us old people to just go die so the crooked politicians and illegal aliens can have all they want without ever lifting a finger?  good plan, sparky!!!!!  politicians stole that money or there wouldn't be a problem.  I say stop welfare and stop the illegals from sucking the economy dry as the first step, then come tell me I don't deserve any consideration.  This can be done but the ruling class political "elites" don't want the problem solved so they continue stealing and wasting.

[jack ludwig]

Politicians did not steal the money, Bob they put IOUs in the treasury. I know of no one who is not getting their SS payments. I am not advocating abolishing SS or Medicare I am simply explaining for those that want a balanced budget you can't do it without changing how SS and Medicare work's today. You can replace the IOU's with actual money cancel all future welfare payments and reversing the illegal immigration will only make the SS deficit worse and the economy worse. Medicare will continue to go broke if we continue to think the American people can pay for everyone's good health. Good health for most is a lifestyle change for most and reasonable healthcare planning. For those unfortunate that get an illness through no fault of their own may need our support if they do not have the means to take care of that expense. That would be a very small percentage of our population. As a society, we have to decide do we want to have a fiscally sound government with a balanced budget or do we want to have social programs like SS and medicare that we all pay for but we can't have both. SS and medicare can be fixed it just needs to be used for a very small percentage of our population less than 1% and the rest of us it needs to be our own responsibility. The problem with that idea is it will never sell well to most Americans. The American citizen believes today that is a basic right and has no interest to give it up.

[M]

Jack, 

Actually the politicians did steal the money because the original SS act was worded to prevent any of the SS funds to be spent on anything else. They were only supposed to be disbursed to the retirees. The original SS plan can be likened to a modern day work pension plan where the employee contributes a matching amount to the company's share so they will have a better retirement check. OK the analogy does not exactly match, but the point is if the company decided to take those funds and use them strictly to pay off debts the company incurred through their business programs and just left IOU's in place with no money or collateral to back up those IOU's the corporate heads would be heading to jail for theft.

Besides, Welfare is three or more times as expensive as is SS and welfare does not have an ongoing contribution other than our tax dollars to keep it somewhat solvent. Neither does Foreign Aid and other Government boondoggle programs that have automatic funding with an automatic increase in funding every fiscal year. Those are the programs we need to closely examine, All of those programs are not in danger of going broke, ,just SS. I wonder why that is? Can you explain it Jack?

One other thing you are not taking into account; With the population growing much more than the scapegoat Baby Boomers ever was, there are ever more people in the workplace contributing to SS than even the baby boomers did during their turn to have the money forcibly taken from them by law. So, with more people in the workforce now than ever before in our history World wars excepted, why is there not enough money to fund the SS like it should be funded if Congress kept their sticky fingers out of the pot?

[jack ludwig]

welfare and foreign aid are a mere spec compared to the SS cost M and they never go broke because there is no set amount that needs to be funded like SS has. The new additions to eligible SS recipients have been growing every year for the past 70 years and they are living longer which means that liability continues to increase. Our worker participation rate has been decreasing for 30 years and will continue to do so as long as America continues to fall behind other countries in worker skills. So as we have fewer worker paying into the system and more people getting payment from SS how in the world can you keep that trend up. IOU's are as good as money as long as the government can come up with the funds when the money is demanded. Works the same as banking. You deposit your hard earned money which the bank uses to make loans giving you an IOU until you demand your money. Everything works fine until more people demand their funds then they have in the bank. I also told you it makes no difference if the government never spent a dime of the SS money ever, it still would be underfunded because the system doesn't work.

[M]

Jack, you say there's no set amount? What about the generations of recipients on welfare? That is an ongoing charge. What about the illegals getting aid in ever increasing numbers? Check your historical records, until the Democrats figured out a way to steal from SS during the Eisenhower administration SS was expected to be solvent for the next hundred years, and that included the baby boom generation. The real stripping that is still ongoing came during the LBJ administration when the Socialist/Democrats decided to take all the sequestered money that was either properly invested or simply sequestered for Johnson's fiasco with the 'Great Society" we are still paying for because the programs are ongoing and more costly than when they were originated. 

[jack ludwig]

yes M there are generations of welfare recipients on the program, I am not arguing that is a good program or even a waste of taxpayer funds. I am just saying they are completely different programs with uniquely different problems and solutions. The welfare program does not even come close to the cost of the SS program. Money is only stolen when it is not there to be used when needed. SS has never been in that situation where the government couldn't pay the SS bills. As I said time and time again it does not matter if the government borrowed the money SS  could never have enough money to pay the continuing growth of this program. If you put $1000/ year in saving at any reasonable interest rate for 50 years and then expected to receive $40,000/year in pension figure out how long that would last, less than 5 years. The average person collects SS for 13 plus years. Who is paying the difference? SS was projecting insolvency the minute it went into effect.

[M]

Jack,

Have you ever read the original SS Act? Please do so, then we will talk. Originally for every dime a person put in there was an estimated dollar that could be taken out When the Original act was put in place we had about 150 Million people. When I started working we had about 200 million, today we have about 450 million and the number is going up. I agree that SS is a Ponzi scheme and always has been but with the increasing number of people it would have remained solvent provided the Congress had not mis-used the funds.

[jack ludwig]

well M I took your advice and read the original SS Act...other than take up my time it did not offer me any new information that the system would work back then now or ever. You can adjust the numbers any way you wish, this Ponzi scheme can and could never work. The money spent by congress has absolutely nothing to do with the solvency of the program. The program itself is the reason for the bankruptcy condition. It is a simple matter of mathematics which was known in 1936 just as it is known today. 

[M]

Jack,

Now that you have read the original act look at how much more Congress through the Democratic socialist administrations have added to it. It did not have medicare originally, it did not have SSI connected to it originally. Look at; https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-other-ussi.htm  for more information. these programs and the Democratic Socialist penchant for taking peoples sequestered retirement money amount to well over half of the debt incurred. I believe it's a lot closer to 3/4 of the debt incurred by SS. Besides, don't forget that it's the peoples money taken forcibly from then over the 30 to 50 years they worked. The Government using it for anything else like shifting incoming funds to Welfare or other Govt. programs is in my considered opinion institutionalized stealing, under the color of law.

[jack ludwig]

absolutely you are correct M the more programs you attach to the SS program the faster they run out of money. I am not looking at all the different parts of SS that are bad, I am trying to keep the program as simple as possible and only look at its original intent to work as retirement benfit for aged citizens. It doses not work, mathematically! So why even begin to talk about all the other programs attached? It just makes the program that much more insolvent. It is time to recognize this program cannot be continued because it is not feasible even just for retirement purposes.