00:01:24.400So they're just lighting the money on fire, essentially, and this is money that we desperately need as a country.
00:01:29.920Social Security is the single biggest line item in the federal budget and a major driver of our national debt,
00:01:36.160and we're distributing this money to millions of people who, in many cases, clearly don't need it.
00:01:42.460This is the kind of waste that, in any other context, would justifiably attract a lot of attention.0.93
00:01:47.200When we learned that Somali daycare owners were buying luxury SUVs with our tax money,
00:01:51.780the vice president launched a fraud task force. The feds raided the leering centers.
00:01:57.800It was a national scandal as well. It should be. But the news that Social Security checks are
00:02:03.540fueling the gambling industry in states like West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the country,
00:02:08.440has been totally ignored. No one's even pretending to care about the implications.
00:02:14.060Now, if your response is, well, these people paid into Social Security so they can spend the money
00:02:18.200however they want. Well, then you're missing two very important points. First of all, no,
00:02:25.040these people did not pay into anything. They paid a tax to the government, which then immediately
00:02:31.840spent their money. The payouts they're receiving in the form of regular checks are coming from
00:02:37.280working taxpayers, many of whom need the money to survive, not to blow it on gambling. And secondly,
00:02:42.700on a related note, Social Security is unsustainable. The system depends on an ever-creasing
00:02:48.380number of workers who have to fund this Ponzi scheme with their tax payments for an increasingly0.65
00:02:55.020elderly population. And yes, Social Security is quite literally a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme
00:03:01.060is a fraudulent investment plan where older investors are paid out from money collected
00:03:07.260from newer or more recent investors. And, you know, this is exactly how Social Security works.
00:03:14.740But there's a problem. Well, many problems, but this is a big one. Fertility rates in this country
00:03:20.100have plummeted. We don't have enough workers paying taxes, and therefore the Social Security
00:03:24.840Trust Fund is set to run out in the fourth quarter of 2032. And once the reserve is exhausted, only
00:03:31.180around 78% of scheduled benefits would be provided. And if the government tries to solve the problem
00:03:36.860by printing money. It will cause inflation, which will ultimately cause social security
00:03:40.780distributions to rise even further since the benefits are adjusted based on the cost of
00:03:44.740living. In other words, whether you want to cut social security benefits or not,
00:03:49.480something has to give at some point. Sacrifices will have to be made. There's
00:03:54.840no getting around it. The only question is who is making the sacrifice and in what form and when?
00:04:02.620According to a recent survey from the Cato Institute that's getting a lot of attention today, a large majority of boomers have decided on their preferred solution.
00:04:13.780They know who should make the sacrifice. And the answer is their children and their grandchildren.
00:04:19.480Listen to this, quote, an overwhelming 89% of Americans over the age of 65 said Social Security benefits should be protected at current levels, even if it means higher taxes on younger workers.
00:04:33.980And it's not only Americans age 65 plus who prefer the solution. Roughly 84% of those aged 55 to 64 preferred higher taxes on younger Americans, while 74% between the ages of 45 and 54 agreed with it as well.
00:04:49.580In other words, the closer Americans get to retirement, the more likely they are to favor protecting today's benefits at the expense of younger workers who will end up paying higher taxes to keep it afloat.
00:05:00.360So that's the plan. They're going to steal from young families to pay the boomers who have0.85
00:05:08.580dramatically more assets. The average boomer net worth is more than 10 times higher than the0.88
00:05:16.140average net worth of somebody under the age of 35. The median boomer household net worth
00:05:20.360is roughly $430,000, while the median net worth of entire households under the age of 35
00:05:25.560is around $39,000. Every single year, individual Social Security recipients are receiving around
00:05:32.700$20,000 on average, which is more than half of the household net worth for 35-year-olds.0.97
00:05:40.680And this is a very important point, so I'll repeat it. We are taking huge amounts of money
00:05:44.840from young families and giving it to older people who, on average, are 10 times wealthier.
00:06:17.100Young families already have to deal with an economy where everything is exponentially more expensive than it was for boomers at the same age.
00:06:24.500Older people clamoring to raise taxes on the young on top of it all is just perverse.0.59
00:06:32.220It's the exact opposite of how these things are supposed to work.0.97
00:06:34.960now personally i would agree to a plan to say phase out social security over the next 25 years
00:06:44.160even knowing that if we put that plan in place right now it would mean that the system will end
00:06:49.680right at the moment when i would start drawing a check the system is broken it's not working
00:06:56.700it's headed for the edge of a very tall cliff something has to be done for the sake of future
00:07:01.700generations. Again, sacrifices do have to be made by someone at some point. There's no way around
00:07:09.280it. And I would rather make the sacrifice myself than force my kids to make it. I would take the
00:07:15.300loss if it meant that my kids and grandchildren aren't subjected to this scam for their entire
00:07:19.700lives. I just can't for the life of me understand or relate to the older people who don't feel that
00:07:25.680way and wouldn't be willing to make the sacrifice for the sake of their descendants. It's a totally1.00
00:07:31.260foreign mentality to me. I find it baffling. Setting my kids up for the future is one of the
00:07:37.180only things I care about anymore. I understand that for a lot of people, it can be a legitimate
00:07:43.000challenge to save for retirement on top of raising a family. But if the choice is between securing
00:07:47.440your own retirement and ensuring that your children have the chance to live in a stable0.87
00:07:50.840country that isn't owned by China, how is that a choice at all? How would you decide when you've0.93
00:07:58.180considered all your options, that the appropriate solution is to raise taxes even further on young
00:08:04.120people, including your own kids. Wouldn't you do everything in your power to make their lives
00:08:09.020easier if you had the opportunity to do so? Or maybe I should ask it this way.
00:08:12.700If you had to choose between making your life harder or your children's lives harder,
00:08:20.240is it not extremely easy to choose the former?
00:08:24.200already social security by itself is an enormous burden on young people to a degree that most
00:08:30.400people don't understand uh unless they're in this position right now so so let's break this down
00:08:36.860okay if you're a young person making say 40 grand a year which is a little bit under the
00:08:41.080average for someone who's 30 and not college educated so a lot of people that are you know
00:08:45.920around this age are in this boat uh so if you you know this is if this is what you're making
00:08:50.160you currently pay around 15.3% for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax or FICA. And that
00:08:57.620breaks down to 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. So in total, you're out $6,120 per
00:09:06.620year for FICA taxes. The employee's personal contribution for Social Security is half of the
00:09:11.900total. His employer, if he has one, covers the rest. So that means every year, the employee with
00:09:18.120a $40,000 salary is paying $2,480 per year towards Social Security. That's basically a month's pay
00:09:30.340after taxes. It's a huge amount of money. Okay, this is not a small thing for a lot of young
00:09:36.680people. This is a major financial hardship for young families. It's potentially the difference
00:09:42.920between being able to afford a house or not, the difference between being able to pay off your
00:09:48.440credit card debt or not, the difference between getting a necessary car repair or not. Social
00:09:55.180security is an incredibly significant financial burden for young working families. And all to
00:10:03.760prop up a system that almost certainly won't be there, at least in its current form, when they're
00:10:08.600older. And all to send checks to retirees who, on average, are much wealthier than they are and who,
00:10:14.520and this is important, are receiving much, much more from Social Security than they, quote,
00:10:19.360paid into it. On average, boomers will get paid more than double what they put in. And that's
00:10:24.760including inflation and interest. In raw dollars, they're getting four to seven times what they put
00:10:29.160in. And the cost for young families, again, is real ongoing financial distress.
00:10:38.600Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive,
00:13:50.460second if you admit that it's a crappy system then you should want nothing more than to fix it
00:13:57.360for the sake of your descendants but instead it you know it sounds like you want to get whatever
00:14:02.680you can out of it and leave your grandchildren holding the bag and meanwhile your generation
00:14:07.060spent decades voting exclusively for politicians who would prop up the very quote system that
00:14:11.940you're now complaining about again where does personal responsibility factor in here
00:14:17.360there was also this response which was less vulgar but still outlandish in its own way and
00:14:22.780i'm reading this because it's fairly representative of the kinds of feedback you get anytime you try
00:14:27.420to talk about solving the social security problem anytime you try to even broach the subject you get
00:14:34.280hissy fits you get temper tantrums from grown people that's what you get and that's what this
00:14:40.800is usually i agree with you and i'm a staunch republican but if you take away my social security
00:14:45.880I'm a Democrat for the first time in my life. I spent my entire life planning for retirement with
00:14:51.440Social Security, a major part of it, and paid into the systems as a young person so the older
00:14:55.300generation could have some support. I'll make a deal with you, pay me back every penny I put into
00:14:59.380it and every penny my employers put into it on my behalf at 5% interest, and you can take away
00:15:04.360the monthly checks. Okay, so he's willing to make a deal as long as the deal involves paying him all
00:15:09.500of his benefits. This is the extent to which many older people are willing to offer concessions of0.68
00:15:13.320Social Security. They'll make a deal as long as the deal involves giving them everything they want0.79
00:15:17.240up front and making sure they have to sacrifice not one single dime. Even while 89% of them are
00:15:23.600saying, absolutely, I think younger people should have to sacrifice their money. It's just a morally0.99
00:15:30.300abhorrent position. I'm sorry, it just is. And if they don't get what they want, as you just heard,
00:15:35.740they'll vote for communists who want to burn down the country that their grandchildren will have to
00:15:40.100inherit? Who are you punishing? You're going to punish your own descendants? You're going to
00:15:47.360elect terrorists who plan to open the borders, release all the criminals, and destroy the United
00:15:51.280States as we know it? Solely to protect your retirement? This is childish and petulant and
00:15:59.380outrageously selfish. Demanding that the government steal from young people the way it stole from you.0.97
00:16:05.180I mean, admitting that it's theft. Well, they took from me. So they got to take from these kids.
00:16:13.240Threatening to destroy everything if they don't do that is such an abhorrent position that I'm
00:16:17.400surprised people aren't too embarrassed to say it publicly, but this is a common sentiment.
00:16:24.700You know, according to this guy, he spent his entire life planning for retirement with Social
00:16:27.640Security as a major part of it. And to be fair, you know, there are probably many people in that
00:16:32.020boat. I get it. This is where I go back to the younger people who have college debt. Yeah,
00:16:38.700you're in a tough spot. I get it. That was a mistake, though. You should not have planned
00:16:43.140your whole retirement around a government program. That was a mistake. You shouldn't
00:16:47.560have done that. It was a very foolish decision. There was never any guarantee that Social Security1.00
00:16:54.760would remain solvent for any significant period of time. Everyone knew it was a government program
00:16:59.500administered by incompetent government bureaucrats. And no matter how much you paid into the system,
00:17:06.040you were never allowed to log into any account and see your balance. That should have been your
00:17:10.680first clue. Okay. That was your big clue that in fact, you had not paid into anything. Your money
00:17:16.760was gone. And the moment you realized that you should have started planning for your retirement
00:17:21.280on your own without depending in any way on social security. And before you start ranting
00:17:25.920that it's unfair. I agree. But this is exactly the position that young people today are in.
00:17:32.480They are having their money taken from them for a system that they know probably won't be there
00:17:38.060for them. And that if you're an older person, you also know, you damn well know that this probably
00:17:43.500won't be here for the younger people. But you're not going to be around when that happens.
00:17:49.700And so younger people, they know that they have to plan for their retirement separately.
00:17:55.920How can you expect young people to do that for themselves while at the same time getting angry when younger people ask you why you didn't do that for yourself?
00:18:03.120And if you did do that for yourself, well, then again, why should younger people be forced to finance a retirement that you already financed?
00:18:12.160Now, yes, it's wrong for the government to steal your money and give you an IOU in return, which is basically what Social Security is, but that's what happened.
00:18:21.500And if you pretended otherwise, then you made a very serious mistake.
00:18:26.800The question is, who should have to pay for that mistake?
00:18:30.780Should a young worker making 40 grand a year have to pay for it, for your mistake?
00:18:36.380And when you consider that collectively, the older generation spent many decades voting exclusively for politicians who would prop up this failing system,
00:18:44.680it becomes hard to see them as a victim of it.
00:18:47.540You could have fixed the problem, or at least tried to fix it, but you didn't.
00:18:54.160I mean, in fact, like for decades, if any politician has even mentioned a word about making any changes to the system, you screamed at them and voted them out of office or threatened to.
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00:34:03.360signing an amnesty bill that granted a pathway
00:34:05.480to legal status for millions of illegal aliens.
00:34:08.000He claimed it would ultimately reduce illegal migration,
00:34:10.600but of course it accomplished the exact opposite result.0.53
00:34:13.740Foreigners realized the US government0.93
00:34:15.160would reward them for invading our country that, you know, we didn't have the willpower to deport1.00
00:34:19.640them. So in just a few years, low-income Mexicans took over large portions of California, which as1.00
00:34:23.760a result, will never again elect a Republican like Ronald Reagan. In addition to permanently0.97
00:34:29.900changing the landscape of American politics, this demographic transformation put millions more
00:34:36.480people on our welfare rolls and the deficit continued to grow. Ronald Reagan would then
00:34:41.900become, of course, deified by future generations of Republicans and disgust among conservatives
00:34:47.420with the same reverence we have for George Washington, even though the fact is he helped0.89
00:34:51.860to bankrupt the country and he kick-started the illegal immigration crisis that has destroyed0.95
00:34:56.460countless lives. As Christopher Caldwell writes in his book, The Age of Entitlement, quote,1.00
00:35:02.160from an actuarial and from a human capital perspective, the quarter century after Ronald
00:35:06.360Reagan's election should have been the easiest time to balance the budget in the history of the
00:35:10.100public. The entirety of the vast baby boom generation, making up 38% of the population,0.95
00:35:14.760was in its productive years. There were relatively few retirees and dependent children to tend to.
00:35:19.000The country was, until the Iraq war after 2003, at peace. It set the rules for the global economy,
00:35:24.400but since baby boomers were due to leave the workforce between 2010 and 2030,
00:35:28.240big obligations for Social Security and Medicare loomed. These would go unmet. Instead of meeting
00:35:34.240those obligations, the boomers and Reagan Republicans chose the path of least resistance.
00:35:38.500Quote, the borrowing power of the baby boom generation was invested in avoiding the choices that the confrontations of the 1960s had placed before the country.
00:35:47.620We should understand the great society as the institutional form into which the civil rights impulse hardened.0.79
00:35:52.800They transfer from whites to blacks of the resources necessary to make desegregation viable.0.84
00:35:57.040Desegregation was the most massive undertaking of any kind in the history of the United States.0.99
00:36:01.080Like any massive undertaking, it required endurance, patience, and prohibitive expense.
00:36:05.340Almost everyone who did not benefit from it was going to be made poor by it.
00:36:09.060The best evidence we have is that it was too much for most Americans from the beginning.
00:36:13.560The rhetoric that brought Reagan to landslides was, among other things, a sign that Americans were unwilling to bankroll with their taxes the civil rights and welfare revolution of the 1960s and the social change it brought in its train.
00:36:26.540So the boomers simply enacted tax cuts without cutting entitlements and government spending.0.61
00:36:31.700The tax cuts, Caldwell writes, provided a golden parachute for the white middle class,0.81
00:36:35.960allowing it for one diluted generation to recreate with private resources a Potemkin version of the old order.0.88