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General » Unemployment Insurance
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
Could someone explain this to me? Employers pay into unemployment insurance to cover workers when they do become unemployed. Where did this money go? Into the general coffers like Social Security? If it did, why isn't there an uproar about this like SS. |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
For starters, Social Security doesn't go into the 'general coffers'... It goes into a separate Social Security Fund. Employers pay a payroll tax which funds the state unemployment plan. There is also a portion of payroll tax that funds the federal unemployment pool. States provide benefits to the unemployed using their own percentage of the payroll tax -- the fed portion is set aside for loans to the states and for backup in periods of high national unemployment. |
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
Then if the money is still there, why the big argument about "funding it". It's already been funded, unless it's been spent on other things. |
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Brooklyn 1 year, 6 months ago |
Because the money is not there. Social Security hasn't been in a lock box since the Eisenhower admin. Federal unemployment ins. is just like S.S. it's just another ponzi scheme. |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
Not necessarily, Gil. It's funded by a certain percentage of tax on payroll. Periods of very high unemployment may cost more than what was collected... Are you suggesting that the state/fed should have just collected more when they had the chance? You know, to prepare better for times like these? |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
LOL... It's funny how the Right has seized on the term 'Ponzi scheme' to describe a program that will run for more than a century and help hundreds of millions of Americans with retirement... You people seem to criticize a lot of ideas while never coming up with your own... You're the equivalent of this country's fat, unemployed brother-in-law... |
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
If the money you invested in SS had been placed in a mutual fund instead of the government "Ponzi Scheme", more people wouldn't be surviving on eating dog food and would have enough money in investment to live on for the rest of their lives. Plus the excess when that person leaves this earth could be rolled over to their heirs creating a larger pool of investment, creating wealth. Unfortunately if that happened, the left wouldn't be able to control people and change the rules (increase age, lower benefits, etc). They might actually have to live and control their own lives. |
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
Remember when SS was created, the life expectancy was about 55, so the government expected very few people to actually collect any money from SS. That was the scam. Then like all ponzi schemes the base got smaller than the top due to more people living longer and collecting and since it IOUs were being put in instead of the actual money, things went bad. With mutual funds, the average increase is 4-8% even during the Great Depression that would have been a mild recession except for the New Deal that helped contribute to it. |
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Heidi 1 year, 6 months ago |
OH BROTHER...MARNIE IS THE ONLY PERSON LEFT ON THIS PLANET WHO STILL THINKS THE FEDS DON'T SPEND SS $$$ |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
"the base got smaller than the top due to more people living longer and collecting and since it IOUs were being put in instead of the actual money, things went bad." Not true at all... the Social Security Fund is still solvent today, although the Trust will need to be tapped soon and should only last another 27 years at current levels. |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
"MARNIE IS THE ONLY PERSON LEFT ON THIS PLANET WHO STILL THINKS THE FEDS DON'T SPEND SS $$$" I guess that means that I'm the only one who knows how the program works then? |
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WidowMaker 1 year, 6 months ago |
Social security is in the black this year. Solvent huh? |
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WidowMaker 1 year, 6 months ago |
I mea in the red....oops. |
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Slammer 1 year, 6 months ago |
It’s a pocket “A” and pocket “B” issue. The Government mandates that SS is taken out of your paycheck by your employer and sent to the Social Security Trust Fund (pocket “A”) which indeed has restrictions on what can be done with it. Under the restrictions the Government can lend/invests the funds back to the Government (Pocket “B”). Once the funds are in pocket “B” the Government can spend the funds in pocket “A” where the restrictions no longer apply. |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
Social Security IS in the black this year... Income from payroll taxes, taxes on Social Security Income, and interest earned on the Trust fund covered last year's expenditures. As time goes on, it is expected that recipients will outnumber contributors, and Social Security will begin the tap into the Trust to pay SS benefits. Until the Trust itself runs out, somewhere around 2037, Social Security is solvent... |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
The Social Security Trust Fund must, by law, loan any surpluses to the Federal Government. What the Federal government does with the money has nothing to do with the Social Security system, which is protected by their holding of the government treasury bonds. If the Social Security system needs to begin drawing off the Trust, the Federal government must give back the 'loan' -- even if they have to borrow the money to pay back SS... |
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
marnesdad, one thing about what you are saying. We are the federal government. The federal government only generates money through taxes, so basically we are paying back our own money that we technically never borrowed in the first place. |
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marnesdad 1 year, 6 months ago |
The Social Security Administration is a separate entity altogether... Last year, 51 million Americans received $672 Billion in SS benefits. We took in $805 Billion in revenues. Social Security benefits represent about 40% of the income of the elderly in this country... If you want to argue the 'premise' of the system itself, I'd only offer that while you, me and maybe a good part of the population could do better without a Social Security system, a large segment of society would just 'suck' at preparing for their own retirements... Does this society have the stomach for poor penniless elderly people? Not so much. Pay now, pay later.... |
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crossofcrimson 1 year, 6 months ago |
The argument that I would make, if I wasn't primarily concerned with the primarily ethical arguments, is that if your aim is to help older people prepare for their retirement, there are other ways the system could be implemented that make far more sense. If it's a worry that people cannot be trusted to handle their own money properly (which makes one wonder about the efficacy of a system in which those people choose their political representation) then it would seem to make more sense, at least politically and ethically, to have the SS system look and work like something more similar to a mandated savings account. This way you are actually forcing people to save - and it looks and feels like less of an egregious action to make someone save their own money than to steal from today's worker to give to yesterday's. It also makes the tax-paying demographic less consequential in terms of funding. If, on the other hand, we are going to leave it as somewhat of a wealth redistribution program, then I think it should be scaled back and modified so that we achieve that goal more efficiently (some kind of means-testing would seem appropriate). While it's true that current payroll revenue to the treasury exceeds expenditures, SS still remains an economically unsound program (to a greater or lesser extent) that will likely end up in us dipping heavily into general funds to supplement it or ratcheting payroll taxes - either of which is never really great news to most of us. |
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Gil1957 1 year, 6 months ago |
Plus had it been a mandated savings account, the return would have been better and it could have been passed on through the years to heirs creating wealth, rather than enriching the government to waste money. Think how many people early on who paid in and never saw a penny, yet had it been in a mandatory savings account, the so-called penniless elderly people would not exist due to the accounts being passed down. |
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