Social Security: Brazen Theft
"Politicians are like rats. What they steal for themselves is miniscule compared to what they destroy getting it." -- unattributed
# JPFO Alerts - Build Your Own Gun, Save 10%! - Richard Celata is now offering a 10% discount to anyone who mentions JPFO when they order an 80% AR-15 or 1911 receiver from KT Ordnance. If you've got the skill and the time, this is a pretty good way to build a gun off paper. [jpfo]
# Bill St. Clair at The Libertarian Enterprise - Open Letter To President Bush on the Signing of the REAL ID Act - Ken printed my letter. It's also on my web site here. [tle]
# Ron Beatty at The Libertarian Enterprise - A Police State? - travel restrictions are slowly being put into place. Once they can track our movements and require us to ask for permission to travel, the U.S. will be a full-fledged police state. Is it a police state already? Maybe. [tle]
# Charles Stone, Jr. at The Libertarian Enterprise - Galveston, Oy Galveston - five minutes with a spreadsheet will show anyone with grade-school math skills that Social Security is brazen theft, providing less than you could make by saving the money yourself, in a low-interest account. Galveston County, Texas has proven it, in spades. [tle]
An employee of 40 years, making $20,000 per year, would have a lump sum of over $380,000 in his retirement account. He might choose to take monthly payments of $2740 per month for life as opposed to $775 per month from Social Security.
An employee of 40 years, making $50,000 per year would have some $950,000 in his account or he could take monthly payments of $6843 per month compared to $1392 per month from Social Security.
The disability part of the plan would provide the injured worker 60 percent of his salary up to age 65, at which time he would switch to the retirement plan. Social Security provides a sum determined by the workers S/S earnings. Even at the $20,000 salary level, the amount would be about equal to the Social Security Disability stipend.
There is also a life insurance component to the Galveston plan which would provide from $50,000 to $150,000 compared to Social Security's $255 restricted death benefit.
# Adem Kupi at A Pox on All Their Houses - "Better" won't make your life better... - nice analysis of the death of the American society. We've eaten most of our seed corn. We must change, radically, or die. [jomama]
We have to learn that risk is ok. Race car drivers face a lot of risk, but probably die less frequently in auto accidents than everyone else, because they adapt to that risk.
We have to accept the fact that we cannot guarantee jack shit to anyone, but we can make conditions as favorable as possible to everyone, and trust them not to utterly fuck up. And that's it.
Bad things will sometimes happen to people. People will do bad things to each other. Guess what? Bad things are happening to people now, not only despite Control and Security, but more often, because of them. A certain amount of BAD is inevitable. But the way to minimize it is to let go of trying to control it. That sounds nuts to modern Merkins, but it is really the only way.
The rest is up to us as individuals to adapt and figure shit out on our own.
# Wayne Madsen at Online Journal - Galloway hounded by AIPAC cell within U.S. Congress; Bolton tied to same cell - Why John Bolton should not be approved as U.S. ambassador to the CommU.N.ists. [grabbe]
There is ample evidence of a major foreign intelligence penetration of the United States State and Defense Departments, as well as U.S. intelligence agencies, involving Franklin, AIPAC officials, Mossad agents, and leading individuals in the neoconservative network operating from inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the U.S. Congress, and think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hudson Institute. Bolton is a central figure in this cabal.
