It's hard to fathom how it is that the people with the greatest fortunes in the world are the most angry about paying taxes like everybody else. Maybe they are, at their core, antisocial; maybe they were never raised right. Spoiled brats are annoying, but spoiled brats with money and lawyers are dangerous to civilization.
Today's Mass OT reading from Amos the prophet should strike a respondent chord:
"Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!
'When will the new moon be over', you ask, 'that we may sell our grain, and (when will) the sabbath (be over), that we may display the wheat (for sale)'?
'We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating!'
'We will buy the lowly for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!'
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
'Never will I forget a thing they have done!'".
Amos 8:4-7
Something to think about... Eternity is out there somewhere.
1. The billionaires want the trillions in the trust funds. It is solvent, but could "default" by 2033 or 2034, at which time, benefits will come from FICA taxes..
2. The idologues hate it because it is "social insurance" and it is the most successful anti poverty program in US history. It also provides for widow(er)s and orphans, family dependents.
3. So far, the trust funds have never missed a payment. I do not have any affiliation with him, I do not know him, but if you are concerned and need to protect youself, please watch Ed Weir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y6NQ_CxogU&t=906s
4. As to reirement, if you are in. pay status, your benefit check comes from the trust fund and not from bugetted funds.
More immediately. FICA and the Trust funds represent billions if not trillions that they could use to speculate on the roulette wheel which is the stock market, and meanwhile investment bankers would scrape off their commissions..
Musk wants to get rid of it, because he believes that all of the money being paid out to seniors could be redirected into his Occupy Mars Project,, just as he believes that by shutting down all government agencies and projects that don't benefit him, means that the money can be re directed to his Occupy Mars project.
Trump simply wants to destroy America because most of us don't like him and think he is wonderful., and he wants to split the world between himself and Putin.
The GOP knows that its long-desired dream of cutting Social Security through legislation will never happen because voters will not re-elect anyone who votes to cut or eliminate it. The GOP and its oligarch bosses can't accomplish what they want through democratic legislative processes.
So, they are using cruel corporate practices: "downsize" the staff and sell off assets of the business, like SS offices and land. Once the staff is gutted and SS's buildings are sold off Social Security will be weakened to ineffectiveness and easy pickings for the oligarchs.
Looks like IRS, the VA, the US Postal Service, etc., are all set to get the "oligarch gut." Democratic government has kept them from getting their desired "legislative cut."
I've already contacted my Representative about this & a number of other things. I call so often they recognize my name. In fact I had plans to bring cookies to the office to introduce myself but now with Social Security so much at risk I don't want to spend the extra cash or energy to make them (Energy-natural gas for the stove,electricity for the mixer, gas for the car to deliver them. By the way the last utility increase to PG&E made my bill go up by $30-40/month)
I wrote to Ace Hardware Corporation to tell them that this is the time of year I like to buy plants for my yard but that I won't because my finances are at risk. Target already knows what's happening.
So just think how my pull back of spending times the number of seniors in my position & that will be an economic factor.
Just because those rich bastards won't feel it doesn't mean it won't hurt.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
No, I will not donate to save SS, when the most obvious solution is to raise the income limit subject to SS tax. Both Dem & Republican administrations have failed to implement this easy fix.
Currently, everyone who makes more that $176k per year stops paying into SS as soon as they hit that amount of earnings. Raise that cap to make ALL earnings subject to SS withholding, and the trust fund will be solvent for many more years.
There’s no time to piss around. Putin has been and is in control of our country, with or without Trump, Oligarchs and all the traitors(Maggots) and is destroying everything everywhere at astonishing speeds. The heads have to be cut off, period, or there’s no hope.
Our Democratic Representatives are weaklings too inept at anything close to mounting a minuscule front to Putin’s control of our country. We haven’t seen anyone except a couple of loners who one is dead and the other in jail, probably forever. I am ashamed of my own lack of courage to break from my personal world to wage sufficient resistance other than contributing and voting. We should be storming halls and compounds and ending this epochal madness, yet here I am and I am sorry and pathetic.
At 72 I’m prepping, as fast as my body lets me, to leave a safe self sustaining place for my family and grandkids.
If my Social Security and Medicare, that was taken from my earnings all my life, are stolen I will have nothing better to do than to go get it back.
I can survive the default of Social Security, but it will provide me additional incentive to emigrate, unfortunately millions of my fellow oldsters can't and will starve to death and die for lack of medical care.
But I take a wee bit of solace in the knowledge that Senior MAGAt idiots, will also find themselves without income. As my Mammy would say, they got their "come upance"
Buyers remorse is spreading over this land like a dense fog, I can almost smell it.
What can be done? That which has been destroyed overnight, can't be put back together. Humpty dumpty is shattered beyond repair.
If there were a successful popular overnight revolution, it would take a decade to put it all back together again and it wouldn't look like pre Jan 20th.
Can it get worse, you betcha? Will it get worse? No doubt.
There is one hero that showed up Al Green of TX, while every other Rep and Senator sat meekly by, some dressing comically in magenta and others holding silly signs, yet none getting out of their seats and defending Al Green, or showing real resistance by mimicking him, Nay, the spectacle of 300 milquetoasts.
Now we find out 10 Dem Reps voted with the GOP to censure Al Green.
Every Democrat in the chamber should have, one at a time, stood up and challenged a Trump lie, waited for the Sergeant of Arms to escort them out, then another should’ve stood up and shouted out a challenge to a Trump lie. This should’ve gone on until the entire Democratic representation in that chamber were out in the streets. This would’ve taken over a couple of hours. Trump would either had to have given up with the fiasco or talk to half empty chamber.
10 Democrats who voted with Republicans to censure Green were: Ami Bera of California, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Laura Gillen of New York, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Tom Suozzi of New York.
10 MAGAts in the Democratic caucus. I hope that they are primaried in 2026. I know they will be primaried in 2026.
I know of Marie Gluesenkemp, she represents a district just south of Seattle, and lives in Kent, WA, she is in fact a right wing Democrat, anti abortion, anti gay, anti immigrant, she beat out Joe Kent, a more radical MAGAt, which Trump appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Agency.
I am not in her district but will contribute towards her primary opponent, as Trump would say "mightily"
Is the cap supposedly due to a limit on how much someone can eventually collect?
Robert Reich sometimes points out that SS would have been fine (payments would not need to be reduced in the near future) if middle-class wages had continued to grow with the economy. But of course, Neoliberalism has doomed us in many more ways than one.
As a disabled 84 year old whose only source of income is Social Security, what do I have to do to survive when my money is gone? I can’t work, besides no one will hire someone my age. Between my ex husband and myself, we paid into the fund for 117 years. That money belongs to me.
Daniel, the immediate problem is not the trust fund, but the personnel cuts.
From WAPO
"Dudek has announced plans to slash 7,000 jobs, a cut of more than 12 percent. He has moved to close regional hubs and field offices that serve the public, eliminated entire programs and consolidated departments.
An exodus of senior executives on his watch — some voluntary, others forced — is fast depleting decades of expertise. And this week, the long-struggling disability benefits system came under threat as backlogged state offices that review claims were told there would be no more overtime or hiring.
Yet it’s still not clear what Trump and Musk have in mind as an endgame for Social Security, which has long been a political third rail in Washington."
Cutting staff means that new claims will not be processed or the processing time slowed down (this affects my wife who filed for Social security months ago)
It could also affect benefit disbursement. Mine is direct deposit, so that shouldn't be affected but who knows, with a cut of 7,000 and more coming.
What they couldn't do via legislation (privatize social security) they are doing via Executive order, by starving it.
Thank you, Professor Hartmann. This is extremely upsetting to me personally, even though I’ve known it’s coming since musk ascended from the depths of hell. Bad as it is, I need to know. You really have the ability to make complex, convoluted schemes clear and obvious. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Enough of the rightness and wrongness of Social Security. This has gone beyond theory. I paid with every check I ever earned. What is needed is direct, massive rebellion against its demise from all who receive what they paid for, utilizing all legal (lawyers) backing and everybody whose Social Security is threatened to take to the streets with unending resolve to stay there until the threats are ended. Cops will be there to arrest demonstrations, as they always have, to support corporate interests. If cops start shooting, shoot back. Your very lives are threatened. Defend your rights and your lives.
We keep expecting a call to action, but at what point is this going to happen. I wonder every day what it is going to take. Most people don't pay attention to what is happening, or they pay attention to bad information. People probably think that Trump is going after fraud and waste because that is what they keep hearing.
I joined Indivisible in December, but a monthly meeting isn't cutting it and the few meetings that we had haven't gotten us far except a daily reminder to call our legislators. Through the group, I learned of 1 weekly protest in a small city. I showed up to this last Friday and was dismayed to find only 16 people, but it was supposedly up from 7 or 8 the week before. I hope that it can keep growing at this pace.
What I am seeing is most of these people lived through the 1960s even though I was born in the 1970s. People that don't know about the 60s have little perspective about protesting and social upheaval.
Yes, at this point I am concerned about Social Security and so much more. People may be ready to take to the streets, but it probably won't be until something officially happens to most everyone's Social Security. Social Security Advantage won't be that point as long as people believe they still have something.
I like this post Gerald. Only problem is that by and large liberals are "allergic" to guns (there are exceptions) but in the main liberals are unarmed, while the right wingers have personal arsenals.
But if push comes to shove, we have the example of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
It started when one man knocked a cop over the head, took his pistol, then used that to take more pistols from more cops, then the people ran into the forests and back yards, dug up the rifles that they had buried when the communists took power (swathed in cosmoline and wrapped in canvas and oil cloth).
he National Sheriffs Association represents over 3,000 elected sheriffs nationwide and has a membership of over 22,000. Its headquarters is in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Constitutional Sheriff and Peace Officers Association claims a membership of 400. Seriously understated, and if they aren't members they are allies.
Somehow we need to reach all of the maga cultists who have been totally brainwashed. They need to know that they will be the ones who are most affected by these drastic cuts. Bernie is doing a good job on his tour but we need more. Democratic congressmen-women need to step it up and emulate Bernie. Get off your damn hands and do something! Disgusting that you all watched Al Green being carried off and did nothing.
Chris, your desire to reach the MAGA cultists is as fruitless as trying to convert a Muslim to Christianity or a Christian to Islam.
Though I have met more than a few converts to Islam, but not converts to Christianity, except maybe an animist i n the Amazon jungle of jungles of New Guinea.
Are you certain only 25% are hard core. I've been reading of federal workers who voted for Trump, saying such as, they are disappointed, they were all for getting rid of inefficiences (translated Joe the shitbag that hangs around the copier all day), but believe that Trump, whom they still like, just made a mistake,or maybe blaming it all on Musk, rather than Trump)
Some of those federal employees were hired because they were right wing. Black Republicans, female Republicans, Hispanic Republicans, etc.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, most hires were Cuban Americans or other minorities. My wife and I were in a small minority of English speakers when we went to the Little Habana SS DO in January...I'm sure the staff were virtually all bilingual. I'm sure they are all toast.
Not too many would reject collecting their hard earned benefits.
In an earlier generatikon, every fed was CSRS -- did not pay into SS. After Reagan that ended. Current federal mployees all have their tits in the wringer...even members of Congress.
The government pension offset: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf
If you receive a retirement or disability pension from a federal, state, or local government based on your own work for which you didn’t pay Social Security taxes, your Social Security benefits may be reduced. You may not receive any payment at all. This fact sheet answers questions you may have about the reduction. For more information visit See how your pension may affect your benefits | SSA. *Public Law 98-21, Social Security Amendments of 1983, approved April 20, 1983.
The offset can amount to two thirds of your pension.
Yep. It is time to make the super rich pay all taxes as it was before WWII when a war tax of 25% was imposed to pay for the war. It worked but they never repealed the tax as they wanted to build needed schools and hospitals. That was useful at the time but the war tax has to go and get the employers to pay the total 50 to 60 percent just as Europeans do and do away with the tax industry. Once you do the same as all sane democracies do in single payer healthcare, free education, cheap housing & food, no taxes on working income on the first $20 million in estate, the only way to get the income to run the nation is on the billionaires who would finally cut the overhead of the military budget whose defense contractors live the life of luxury and pay off the Congress persons to do harm to the nation.
What phenomenon, state of being, condition or recognition of some personal need drives the actions of certain groups of humans to tenaciously hoard 'things' that might represent personal security? For centuries, humans have been manipulated by so-called leaders into believing or practicing a form of addiction that hoards currency, manufactured personal property, land, animals, other human's labor, attention/adulation/devotion/servitude from others, as the pinnacle of human power and 'wealth.'
Logically, if an observer quantifies actual needs of any human to achieve personal security - habitat, forage, concealment, bodily coverage from the elements, sexual gratification, sleep/rest, and a reliable means to maintain these necessary things - what other deficiencies actually exist that would impede or deny these reasonable needs? They are core, primal, interwoven into biotic survival on a planet that can provide said phenomena.
What is missing? What has constantly driven humans to behave so irrationally and violently for millennia in the pursuit of conditions and objects that far exceed these primal necessities?
It is apparent to most that these needs, quantitatively met, lead to a 'quality' of life that should elicit tranquility, calm, pleasure, a sense of security, time and energy to 'contemplate' the essence of their existence. These conditions are not only logical and reasonable, they generate emotional satisfactions on many levels of human needs. I would refer readers to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
What is missing? My observation is that there is an emptiness, a void, a terror inside the bio-chemical aura of 'mind' that is so debilitating that it creates a panic, a paranoia, a FEAR so immense that it must be assuaged by hoarding anything and everything available in the biotic and physical world of Earth. This 'need' is so overwhelming that it creates a psychotic break, an insanity so powerful that it defies actual reality itself.
This has created, across human time, much misery among humans, since this hoarding results in the actual needs of most others going unmet. Enter Social Security and other 'assistance programs. Capitalists love insurance, they thrive on it, protect themselves with it, manipulate it to their own selfish advantage. It also keeps their fears at bay by reducing anxiety. Yet their fears are so gigantic that the same insurance, a socialist mechanism, that keeps others from demanding assistance from them at a very visceral level. And still, that is NOT enough.Their paranoia and emptiness is so huge that they now would 'steal' this insurance that actually protects them from others who have almost nothing, and hoard it too for themselves.
I have no answer for understanding their madness because it is so obviously false, phony, ridiculous and pathetic that my somewhat sane mind must reject it as a visceral threat to my own existence. There are 'real' threats to existence in the biotic world, emulated for a billion years by all the biota that have come before humans, and along side them for maybe 100k years of 'modern' humanity.
But the hoarding terror of this gaggle of maniacs is not sustainable, and never has been. This is why our planet and its living beings are falling off the precipice and into oblivion. If there ever was a recogniton by humans of their biotic nature that these 'empty creatures' are a primal and live threatening danger, NOW is the time to rid ourselves of these malignant cancers, using any and all means, at any cost.
There are so many real things on Earth that are far more precious than maintaining the zombie hoard.
To survive well it is necessary to have enough and certainly pleasant to have a bit more, though there are studies that show one soon reaches a level of happiness not improved beyond that. And it is no secret what really matters: good family, good friends, the pleasures of learning and giving, taking care of oneself. These are positives which to one extent or another most plutocrats seem to lack. And that endless hoarding of money, power or just things certainly seems to be a sickness.
Maybe at bottom Trump, Musk, Bezos and the rest of them are no different than the mumbling old person pushing a shopping cart down the street, filling it with trash. Read about the Collyer Brothers for just how bad this can get, or see the example of poor Howard Hughes. And the Earth certainly can't take an endless amount of such behavior. As Gandhi said, “The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.”
There is a point at which you attain a certain level of comfort, happiness and well being, beyond that you enter the realm of fear and paranoia. The more you have the more you can lose.
We are social animals, some of us are pack animals, munching the grass with one eye on the rest of the herd, lemmings that will follow the leader to their doom, others are pack animals vying for social primacy, always looking over their shoulder, being challenged and driven to a lower ranking in the pack.
Is this not an apt description of our own society?
Ah you found me William. But some of us don’t care about social groups and rankings.
Anyway countries have been roughly ranked on their degrees of happiness, something Thom has alluded to. The happiest ones are generally peaceful and very comfortable places for their people but not where the purpose of life is to gain power over others or grab more and more stuff. They usually have high taxes but give a lot back in services to their people. It's what is disparagingly called "Socialism", though if most Americans understood how this worked I think they would rather pay the medical bills in Canada or Norway than the U.S.
These places have very different social views than what is generally defined as “success” in America. I am sure those people whose sole purpose in life is to amass as much money as possible have no real understanding of these societies. And maybe they don’t want to. After all, maybe that would mean that they really aren't "winners".
Well we are kin of a kind. I am neither a herd nor a pack animal, as I choose to be the master of myself and my destiny, but I know how to don the clothing, the uniform, the camouflage as necessary. One can be in a group, and not be part of the group, and not get called out. I will be 86 soon, and have never been in or met a group that has my interests at mind, rather groups are like crabs in a pot.
I know what you mean about socialism. I was a pre teen and a teen during the McCarthy era. communism, particularly atheistic communism was the big scare, and (in retrospect)it didn''t take much to equate socialism with communism, and even NAZIism because Hitler used the word in National SOCIALIST German Workers Party, which was no where near socialist.
The word socialism first appeared on 13 February 1832 in Le Globe, a French Saint-Simonian newspaper founded by Pierre Leroux.
In fact a socialist society, promotes a healthy and productive population, take a look at Denmark, Norway, Sweden.
As compared to an exploitative society run by plutocrats.
In terms of all markers, from health care, longevity, maternal and child mortality, inequality, education, happiness Denmark, in fact Europe (save for England which is and has been in the grip of conservative exploiters), ranks head and shoulders above America. The one are in which we lead all countries, save Russia and China is in the incarcerated and executed.
There is a fraud on the American people being played. Distracting us with hundreds of line item veto “ex post facto” savings, all of which are illegal. I call for Musk’s certifying the cost and pricing data. That must be required. I call for Musk’s testimony under oath before Congress. I call for him to divulge the truth of what he found. Spare me the BS braggadocio crap. I don’t buy crap when we are talking about a $4.5 trillion tax cut. I say Musk’s ploy is all a fraud founded on a bag of smoke and mirrors and a “bury you in paper” con job. Let us see it. Empty the DOGE bag.
One of President Biden's last acts in office was signing the Social Security Fairness Act for retired government employees. I received my first check yesterday. Biden was a leader who sowed love for the American people. He ended war, we invested in inrastructure, he expanded health care and more. The current occupant of the White House hates the American people. His followers share that hate. His agenda is retribution and destruction. We must stop the circullar firing squad among Democrats and unify to win an overwleming majority and stop the madness. Unity is another way of expressing love. I am maing calls, working on voter protection, and yes, made a donation to our church for Lent and the DNC with the retro check Please help.
I was waiting until I hit 70 to start my Social Security; I am now 65.8 years old and wonder if I have screwed myself out of any benefit of waiting or if I will be able to collect at all. My dilemma now is do I try to get it started immediately or wait and hope someone saves our country from the racist oligarchs? Are we completely fucked or only partially fucked?
It's hard to fathom how it is that the people with the greatest fortunes in the world are the most angry about paying taxes like everybody else. Maybe they are, at their core, antisocial; maybe they were never raised right. Spoiled brats are annoying, but spoiled brats with money and lawyers are dangerous to civilization.
They are addicted to money like others are addicted to drugs.
There is a huge correlation between psychopathy and great wealth.
How about sociopathic?
Today's Mass OT reading from Amos the prophet should strike a respondent chord:
"Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!
'When will the new moon be over', you ask, 'that we may sell our grain, and (when will) the sabbath (be over), that we may display the wheat (for sale)'?
'We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating!'
'We will buy the lowly for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!'
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
'Never will I forget a thing they have done!'".
Amos 8:4-7
Something to think about... Eternity is out there somewhere.
This, right here from Hartmann:
"But the rightwing billionaires hate it for several reasons.
The first and most important reason is that it demonstrates that government can actually work for people and society."
Everyone should tattoo this on their brain. Success stories involving democratic governments are not allowed - they are to be snuffed out.
1. The billionaires want the trillions in the trust funds. It is solvent, but could "default" by 2033 or 2034, at which time, benefits will come from FICA taxes..
2. The idologues hate it because it is "social insurance" and it is the most successful anti poverty program in US history. It also provides for widow(er)s and orphans, family dependents.
3. So far, the trust funds have never missed a payment. I do not have any affiliation with him, I do not know him, but if you are concerned and need to protect youself, please watch Ed Weir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y6NQ_CxogU&t=906s
4. As to reirement, if you are in. pay status, your benefit check comes from the trust fund and not from bugetted funds.
More immediately. FICA and the Trust funds represent billions if not trillions that they could use to speculate on the roulette wheel which is the stock market, and meanwhile investment bankers would scrape off their commissions..
Musk wants to get rid of it, because he believes that all of the money being paid out to seniors could be redirected into his Occupy Mars Project,, just as he believes that by shutting down all government agencies and projects that don't benefit him, means that the money can be re directed to his Occupy Mars project.
Trump simply wants to destroy America because most of us don't like him and think he is wonderful., and he wants to split the world between himself and Putin.
Both are meglomaniacs. Both are greedy. Both are connected to Putin.
Heard. Agreed, what's new?
Yep. It’s right wing propaganda.
The GOP knows that its long-desired dream of cutting Social Security through legislation will never happen because voters will not re-elect anyone who votes to cut or eliminate it. The GOP and its oligarch bosses can't accomplish what they want through democratic legislative processes.
So, they are using cruel corporate practices: "downsize" the staff and sell off assets of the business, like SS offices and land. Once the staff is gutted and SS's buildings are sold off Social Security will be weakened to ineffectiveness and easy pickings for the oligarchs.
Looks like IRS, the VA, the US Postal Service, etc., are all set to get the "oligarch gut." Democratic government has kept them from getting their desired "legislative cut."
I've already contacted my Representative about this & a number of other things. I call so often they recognize my name. In fact I had plans to bring cookies to the office to introduce myself but now with Social Security so much at risk I don't want to spend the extra cash or energy to make them (Energy-natural gas for the stove,electricity for the mixer, gas for the car to deliver them. By the way the last utility increase to PG&E made my bill go up by $30-40/month)
I wrote to Ace Hardware Corporation to tell them that this is the time of year I like to buy plants for my yard but that I won't because my finances are at risk. Target already knows what's happening.
So just think how my pull back of spending times the number of seniors in my position & that will be an economic factor.
Just because those rich bastards won't feel it doesn't mean it won't hurt.
If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
https://www.ssa.gov/agency/donations.html
Ask your rep why doesn't SSA advertise that donations can flatten the curve and extend the default date beyond 2034?
No, I will not donate to save SS, when the most obvious solution is to raise the income limit subject to SS tax. Both Dem & Republican administrations have failed to implement this easy fix.
Currently, everyone who makes more that $176k per year stops paying into SS as soon as they hit that amount of earnings. Raise that cap to make ALL earnings subject to SS withholding, and the trust fund will be solvent for many more years.
BECAUSE OF THE COUP, WE CAN NOT LEGISLATE.
Remember the prophets...doom is nigh.
There’s no time to piss around. Putin has been and is in control of our country, with or without Trump, Oligarchs and all the traitors(Maggots) and is destroying everything everywhere at astonishing speeds. The heads have to be cut off, period, or there’s no hope.
Our Democratic Representatives are weaklings too inept at anything close to mounting a minuscule front to Putin’s control of our country. We haven’t seen anyone except a couple of loners who one is dead and the other in jail, probably forever. I am ashamed of my own lack of courage to break from my personal world to wage sufficient resistance other than contributing and voting. We should be storming halls and compounds and ending this epochal madness, yet here I am and I am sorry and pathetic.
At 72 I’m prepping, as fast as my body lets me, to leave a safe self sustaining place for my family and grandkids.
If my Social Security and Medicare, that was taken from my earnings all my life, are stolen I will have nothing better to do than to go get it back.
Impeach the bastards. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/p/remove-impeach-impeach
I can survive the default of Social Security, but it will provide me additional incentive to emigrate, unfortunately millions of my fellow oldsters can't and will starve to death and die for lack of medical care.
But I take a wee bit of solace in the knowledge that Senior MAGAt idiots, will also find themselves without income. As my Mammy would say, they got their "come upance"
Buyers remorse is spreading over this land like a dense fog, I can almost smell it.
What can be done? That which has been destroyed overnight, can't be put back together. Humpty dumpty is shattered beyond repair.
If there were a successful popular overnight revolution, it would take a decade to put it all back together again and it wouldn't look like pre Jan 20th.
Can it get worse, you betcha? Will it get worse? No doubt.
There is one hero that showed up Al Green of TX, while every other Rep and Senator sat meekly by, some dressing comically in magenta and others holding silly signs, yet none getting out of their seats and defending Al Green, or showing real resistance by mimicking him, Nay, the spectacle of 300 milquetoasts.
Now we find out 10 Dem Reps voted with the GOP to censure Al Green.
Every Democrat in the chamber should have, one at a time, stood up and challenged a Trump lie, waited for the Sergeant of Arms to escort them out, then another should’ve stood up and shouted out a challenge to a Trump lie. This should’ve gone on until the entire Democratic representation in that chamber were out in the streets. This would’ve taken over a couple of hours. Trump would either had to have given up with the fiasco or talk to half empty chamber.
10 Democrats who voted with Republicans to censure Green were: Ami Bera of California, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Laura Gillen of New York, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Tom Suozzi of New York.
10 MAGAts in the Democratic caucus. I hope that they are primaried in 2026. I know they will be primaried in 2026.
I know of Marie Gluesenkemp, she represents a district just south of Seattle, and lives in Kent, WA, she is in fact a right wing Democrat, anti abortion, anti gay, anti immigrant, she beat out Joe Kent, a more radical MAGAt, which Trump appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Agency.
I am not in her district but will contribute towards her primary opponent, as Trump would say "mightily"
Let’s hope there is an election in 2026
Is the cap supposedly due to a limit on how much someone can eventually collect?
Robert Reich sometimes points out that SS would have been fine (payments would not need to be reduced in the near future) if middle-class wages had continued to grow with the economy. But of course, Neoliberalism has doomed us in many more ways than one.
SS uses an algorthm that favors low wage earners, so high earners get compaatively less.
IMHO absent a revolution, there is no way any legislative fixes are practical.
As a disabled 84 year old whose only source of income is Social Security, what do I have to do to survive when my money is gone? I can’t work, besides no one will hire someone my age. Between my ex husband and myself, we paid into the fund for 117 years. That money belongs to me.
Btw, my ex died before he could collect SS.
Even if the trust funds "default" you will still be entited to some of it. Estimates range between 83% and 67%.
Daniel, the immediate problem is not the trust fund, but the personnel cuts.
From WAPO
"Dudek has announced plans to slash 7,000 jobs, a cut of more than 12 percent. He has moved to close regional hubs and field offices that serve the public, eliminated entire programs and consolidated departments.
An exodus of senior executives on his watch — some voluntary, others forced — is fast depleting decades of expertise. And this week, the long-struggling disability benefits system came under threat as backlogged state offices that review claims were told there would be no more overtime or hiring.
Yet it’s still not clear what Trump and Musk have in mind as an endgame for Social Security, which has long been a political third rail in Washington."
Cutting staff means that new claims will not be processed or the processing time slowed down (this affects my wife who filed for Social security months ago)
It could also affect benefit disbursement. Mine is direct deposit, so that shouldn't be affected but who knows, with a cut of 7,000 and more coming.
What they couldn't do via legislation (privatize social security) they are doing via Executive order, by starving it.
Thank you, Professor Hartmann. This is extremely upsetting to me personally, even though I’ve known it’s coming since musk ascended from the depths of hell. Bad as it is, I need to know. You really have the ability to make complex, convoluted schemes clear and obvious. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Enough of the rightness and wrongness of Social Security. This has gone beyond theory. I paid with every check I ever earned. What is needed is direct, massive rebellion against its demise from all who receive what they paid for, utilizing all legal (lawyers) backing and everybody whose Social Security is threatened to take to the streets with unending resolve to stay there until the threats are ended. Cops will be there to arrest demonstrations, as they always have, to support corporate interests. If cops start shooting, shoot back. Your very lives are threatened. Defend your rights and your lives.
We keep expecting a call to action, but at what point is this going to happen. I wonder every day what it is going to take. Most people don't pay attention to what is happening, or they pay attention to bad information. People probably think that Trump is going after fraud and waste because that is what they keep hearing.
I joined Indivisible in December, but a monthly meeting isn't cutting it and the few meetings that we had haven't gotten us far except a daily reminder to call our legislators. Through the group, I learned of 1 weekly protest in a small city. I showed up to this last Friday and was dismayed to find only 16 people, but it was supposedly up from 7 or 8 the week before. I hope that it can keep growing at this pace.
What I am seeing is most of these people lived through the 1960s even though I was born in the 1970s. People that don't know about the 60s have little perspective about protesting and social upheaval.
Everybody social security is the common denominator.
Yes, at this point I am concerned about Social Security and so much more. People may be ready to take to the streets, but it probably won't be until something officially happens to most everyone's Social Security. Social Security Advantage won't be that point as long as people believe they still have something.
I like this post Gerald. Only problem is that by and large liberals are "allergic" to guns (there are exceptions) but in the main liberals are unarmed, while the right wingers have personal arsenals.
But if push comes to shove, we have the example of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
It started when one man knocked a cop over the head, took his pistol, then used that to take more pistols from more cops, then the people ran into the forests and back yards, dug up the rifles that they had buried when the communists took power (swathed in cosmoline and wrapped in canvas and oil cloth).
he National Sheriffs Association represents over 3,000 elected sheriffs nationwide and has a membership of over 22,000. Its headquarters is in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Constitutional Sheriff and Peace Officers Association claims a membership of 400. Seriously understated, and if they aren't members they are allies.
These are the enemy.
Somehow we need to reach all of the maga cultists who have been totally brainwashed. They need to know that they will be the ones who are most affected by these drastic cuts. Bernie is doing a good job on his tour but we need more. Democratic congressmen-women need to step it up and emulate Bernie. Get off your damn hands and do something! Disgusting that you all watched Al Green being carried off and did nothing.
Chris, your desire to reach the MAGA cultists is as fruitless as trying to convert a Muslim to Christianity or a Christian to Islam.
Though I have met more than a few converts to Islam, but not converts to Christianity, except maybe an animist i n the Amazon jungle of jungles of New Guinea.
Mostly "lumpen." Only about 25% are hard core.
We need a full court press.
https://act.commoncause.org/call_campaigns/tell-congress-stop-the-musk-budget/?source=03062025_Congress-Budget-Musk-Calls_FS&link_id=1&can_id=c21edc35afceb939e29222ede000e0fb&email_referrer=email_2645008___body_3155659&email_subject=update-end-musks-hostile-takeover
Are you certain only 25% are hard core. I've been reading of federal workers who voted for Trump, saying such as, they are disappointed, they were all for getting rid of inefficiences (translated Joe the shitbag that hangs around the copier all day), but believe that Trump, whom they still like, just made a mistake,or maybe blaming it all on Musk, rather than Trump)
Some of those federal employees were hired because they were right wing. Black Republicans, female Republicans, Hispanic Republicans, etc.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, most hires were Cuban Americans or other minorities. My wife and I were in a small minority of English speakers when we went to the Little Habana SS DO in January...I'm sure the staff were virtually all bilingual. I'm sure they are all toast.
Not too many would reject collecting their hard earned benefits.
In an earlier generatikon, every fed was CSRS -- did not pay into SS. After Reagan that ended. Current federal mployees all have their tits in the wringer...even members of Congress.
The government pension offset: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf
If you receive a retirement or disability pension from a federal, state, or local government based on your own work for which you didn’t pay Social Security taxes, your Social Security benefits may be reduced. You may not receive any payment at all. This fact sheet answers questions you may have about the reduction. For more information visit See how your pension may affect your benefits | SSA. *Public Law 98-21, Social Security Amendments of 1983, approved April 20, 1983.
The offset can amount to two thirds of your pension.
Biden eliminated it in January. My wife retired in 1997...eligible now.
Yep. It is time to make the super rich pay all taxes as it was before WWII when a war tax of 25% was imposed to pay for the war. It worked but they never repealed the tax as they wanted to build needed schools and hospitals. That was useful at the time but the war tax has to go and get the employers to pay the total 50 to 60 percent just as Europeans do and do away with the tax industry. Once you do the same as all sane democracies do in single payer healthcare, free education, cheap housing & food, no taxes on working income on the first $20 million in estate, the only way to get the income to run the nation is on the billionaires who would finally cut the overhead of the military budget whose defense contractors live the life of luxury and pay off the Congress persons to do harm to the nation.
I pulled my SS statement last night. They owe me $300k if they stop disbursing from the trust fund. I will sue.
What phenomenon, state of being, condition or recognition of some personal need drives the actions of certain groups of humans to tenaciously hoard 'things' that might represent personal security? For centuries, humans have been manipulated by so-called leaders into believing or practicing a form of addiction that hoards currency, manufactured personal property, land, animals, other human's labor, attention/adulation/devotion/servitude from others, as the pinnacle of human power and 'wealth.'
Logically, if an observer quantifies actual needs of any human to achieve personal security - habitat, forage, concealment, bodily coverage from the elements, sexual gratification, sleep/rest, and a reliable means to maintain these necessary things - what other deficiencies actually exist that would impede or deny these reasonable needs? They are core, primal, interwoven into biotic survival on a planet that can provide said phenomena.
What is missing? What has constantly driven humans to behave so irrationally and violently for millennia in the pursuit of conditions and objects that far exceed these primal necessities?
It is apparent to most that these needs, quantitatively met, lead to a 'quality' of life that should elicit tranquility, calm, pleasure, a sense of security, time and energy to 'contemplate' the essence of their existence. These conditions are not only logical and reasonable, they generate emotional satisfactions on many levels of human needs. I would refer readers to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
What is missing? My observation is that there is an emptiness, a void, a terror inside the bio-chemical aura of 'mind' that is so debilitating that it creates a panic, a paranoia, a FEAR so immense that it must be assuaged by hoarding anything and everything available in the biotic and physical world of Earth. This 'need' is so overwhelming that it creates a psychotic break, an insanity so powerful that it defies actual reality itself.
This has created, across human time, much misery among humans, since this hoarding results in the actual needs of most others going unmet. Enter Social Security and other 'assistance programs. Capitalists love insurance, they thrive on it, protect themselves with it, manipulate it to their own selfish advantage. It also keeps their fears at bay by reducing anxiety. Yet their fears are so gigantic that the same insurance, a socialist mechanism, that keeps others from demanding assistance from them at a very visceral level. And still, that is NOT enough.Their paranoia and emptiness is so huge that they now would 'steal' this insurance that actually protects them from others who have almost nothing, and hoard it too for themselves.
I have no answer for understanding their madness because it is so obviously false, phony, ridiculous and pathetic that my somewhat sane mind must reject it as a visceral threat to my own existence. There are 'real' threats to existence in the biotic world, emulated for a billion years by all the biota that have come before humans, and along side them for maybe 100k years of 'modern' humanity.
But the hoarding terror of this gaggle of maniacs is not sustainable, and never has been. This is why our planet and its living beings are falling off the precipice and into oblivion. If there ever was a recogniton by humans of their biotic nature that these 'empty creatures' are a primal and live threatening danger, NOW is the time to rid ourselves of these malignant cancers, using any and all means, at any cost.
There are so many real things on Earth that are far more precious than maintaining the zombie hoard.
To survive well it is necessary to have enough and certainly pleasant to have a bit more, though there are studies that show one soon reaches a level of happiness not improved beyond that. And it is no secret what really matters: good family, good friends, the pleasures of learning and giving, taking care of oneself. These are positives which to one extent or another most plutocrats seem to lack. And that endless hoarding of money, power or just things certainly seems to be a sickness.
Maybe at bottom Trump, Musk, Bezos and the rest of them are no different than the mumbling old person pushing a shopping cart down the street, filling it with trash. Read about the Collyer Brothers for just how bad this can get, or see the example of poor Howard Hughes. And the Earth certainly can't take an endless amount of such behavior. As Gandhi said, “The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.”
You have a point docrh Weil.
There is a point at which you attain a certain level of comfort, happiness and well being, beyond that you enter the realm of fear and paranoia. The more you have the more you can lose.
We are social animals, some of us are pack animals, munching the grass with one eye on the rest of the herd, lemmings that will follow the leader to their doom, others are pack animals vying for social primacy, always looking over their shoulder, being challenged and driven to a lower ranking in the pack.
Is this not an apt description of our own society?
Ah you found me William. But some of us don’t care about social groups and rankings.
Anyway countries have been roughly ranked on their degrees of happiness, something Thom has alluded to. The happiest ones are generally peaceful and very comfortable places for their people but not where the purpose of life is to gain power over others or grab more and more stuff. They usually have high taxes but give a lot back in services to their people. It's what is disparagingly called "Socialism", though if most Americans understood how this worked I think they would rather pay the medical bills in Canada or Norway than the U.S.
These places have very different social views than what is generally defined as “success” in America. I am sure those people whose sole purpose in life is to amass as much money as possible have no real understanding of these societies. And maybe they don’t want to. After all, maybe that would mean that they really aren't "winners".
Well we are kin of a kind. I am neither a herd nor a pack animal, as I choose to be the master of myself and my destiny, but I know how to don the clothing, the uniform, the camouflage as necessary. One can be in a group, and not be part of the group, and not get called out. I will be 86 soon, and have never been in or met a group that has my interests at mind, rather groups are like crabs in a pot.
I know what you mean about socialism. I was a pre teen and a teen during the McCarthy era. communism, particularly atheistic communism was the big scare, and (in retrospect)it didn''t take much to equate socialism with communism, and even NAZIism because Hitler used the word in National SOCIALIST German Workers Party, which was no where near socialist.
The word socialism first appeared on 13 February 1832 in Le Globe, a French Saint-Simonian newspaper founded by Pierre Leroux.
The father of socialism was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen, A textile manufacturer (capitalist), philanthropist and social reformer.
Hardly a communist.
In fact a socialist society, promotes a healthy and productive population, take a look at Denmark, Norway, Sweden.
As compared to an exploitative society run by plutocrats.
In terms of all markers, from health care, longevity, maternal and child mortality, inequality, education, happiness Denmark, in fact Europe (save for England which is and has been in the grip of conservative exploiters), ranks head and shoulders above America. The one are in which we lead all countries, save Russia and China is in the incarcerated and executed.
There is a fraud on the American people being played. Distracting us with hundreds of line item veto “ex post facto” savings, all of which are illegal. I call for Musk’s certifying the cost and pricing data. That must be required. I call for Musk’s testimony under oath before Congress. I call for him to divulge the truth of what he found. Spare me the BS braggadocio crap. I don’t buy crap when we are talking about a $4.5 trillion tax cut. I say Musk’s ploy is all a fraud founded on a bag of smoke and mirrors and a “bury you in paper” con job. Let us see it. Empty the DOGE bag.
https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/empty-doges-bag?r=3m1bs
What did the IGs have on him? Putin?
One of President Biden's last acts in office was signing the Social Security Fairness Act for retired government employees. I received my first check yesterday. Biden was a leader who sowed love for the American people. He ended war, we invested in inrastructure, he expanded health care and more. The current occupant of the White House hates the American people. His followers share that hate. His agenda is retribution and destruction. We must stop the circullar firing squad among Democrats and unify to win an overwleming majority and stop the madness. Unity is another way of expressing love. I am maing calls, working on voter protection, and yes, made a donation to our church for Lent and the DNC with the retro check Please help.
I was waiting until I hit 70 to start my Social Security; I am now 65.8 years old and wonder if I have screwed myself out of any benefit of waiting or if I will be able to collect at all. My dilemma now is do I try to get it started immediately or wait and hope someone saves our country from the racist oligarchs? Are we completely fucked or only partially fucked?