Science during the Supposed Pandemic

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light? If you have a personal favorite theory, that is in someway related to the Electric Universe, this is where it can be posted.
BeAChooser
Posts: 1052
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:24 am

Re: Science during the Supposed Pandemic

Unread post by BeAChooser » Sat Feb 05, 2022 3:49 am

I’ll now talk about Social Security like I promised.

First, I’ll list the many lies that FDR and his administration told a gullible American public in order to sell the Social Security program.

First, here’s a pamphlet published by the SSA in 1936 at the very beginning of the program: https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/ssb36.html . It describes how SS contributions will be ramped up the first 12 years of the program, concluding with the following “and finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay.” That's a lie.   LIE #1. They broke that promise in JFK's administration and some folks are now being forced to *contribute* more than ten times that amount in inflation adjusted dollars.

The pamphlet also states that the checks will come to you as a right, "regardless of the amount of property or income you may have.".  What it doesn't say is that above a certain amount, SS payments are taxed.  So although you may get a check, the government may take more than 30% of it back from you ... because you have too much income.  So that's another lie. LIE #2.  

And politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing the notion of making SS even more means tested ... so the wealthy contributors pay more and receive less (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/ ... story.html ).  So that pamplet lied yet again. LIE #3.

Next, the pamphlet states "The law also creates an "Old-Age Reserve Account" in the United States Treasury, and Congress is authorized to put into this reserve account each year enough money to provide for the monthly payments you and other workers are to receive when you are 65."   That's LIE #4.  They never establish anything where the money that was collected from participants was actually placed in it.  As a result, EVERY dollar now paid out comes from taxes on CURRENT participants. 

The pamphlet also says "Meanwhile, the Old-Age Reserve fund in the United States Treasury is drawing interest, and the Government guarantees it will never earn less than 3 percent”. Yet the SSA website states this (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html#a0=2 ) "What interest rate do the trust funds' assets earn? The rate of interest on special issues is determined by a formula enacted in 1960.  ... snip ... The numeric average of the 12 monthly interest rates for 2019 was 2.219 percent." So that's LIE #5. In fact, in 2013, last time I had looked, the 12 month numeric average was only 1.875 percent.

And the pamphlet ends with this bold declaration  “What you get from the Government plan will always be more than you have paid in taxes and usually more than you can get for yourself by putting away the same amount of money each week in some other way”. That’s LIE #6. And I’m happy to prove that to you if you like, jacmac, as I said above.

Six LIES just in one of the pamphlets used to sell SS to an unwitting populace by Fabian Socialists.

And how about these lies by President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) himself?

In 1936, during a speech on Social Security, Republican presidential candidate Alfred Landon charged that it was as if a father took deductions from his children’s wages to invest for their old age, “invested” them in “his own IOU,” and spent the money, leaving his kids nothing but those IOUs. Hence Social Security’s forced savings were “a cruel hoax.” FDR responded to this charge with an outright LIE. He said that Social Security tax dollars “are held in a Government trust fund solely for the social security of the workers.”   There was and never has been a trust fund. The truth is that the notion that there is a “trust fund” was a public relations ploy ... as Social Security Board Chairman Arthur Altimeyer admitted “to allay the unwarranted fears of some people who thought Uncle Sam was embezzling the money”. LIE #7.

Here's a statement from FDR's 7th Fireside Chat on April 28, 1935:

http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3304
 
The program for social security now pending before the Congress is a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the government.  While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are wholly within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources, it is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits for that purpose year after year. We must begin now to make provision for the future. That is why our social security program is an important part of the complete picture.
Tell me how SS has reduced unemployment, as promised, as opposed to people just saving their own money over the years and living on their assets, as in the alternative example that will to post if necessary? The truth is that SS has increased unemployment by reducing economic growth.   So call this LIE #8.

Second, show me how SS has worked to prevent government deficits?   Indeed, SS is now a large part of America's deficit problem.  To try and hide that problem, the government even recently changed the definition of National Debt so that it no longer includes SS.   They took it off the books.   Now they call what used to be termed Public Debt, the National Debt.   And they've dishonestly claimed, based on that changed definition, that we were running a surplus during Clinton’s term.  That’s LIE #9.

Continuing from the 7th Fireside Chat:
 
It proposes, by means of old age pensions, to help those who have reached the age of retirement to give up their jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater opportunities for work and to give to all a feeling of security as they look toward old age.
As you can see, FDR tried to sell SS as a "pension".  But SS is not a "pension" by any conventional definition.   Indeed, the Social Security Administration calls SS "insurance", which is very different from a "pension".  Pensions and insurance are administered and funded differently, and their benefits are designed for different people.   Even the New York Times acknowledged that SS isn't a pension, but that it was sold as one:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/busin ... d=all&_r=0 "Is Social Security a pension plan?  No, but it was sold to the public in the 1930s as if it were one ...".    Even CBS recognized it was not a pension when it stated (https://www.yahoo.com/news/a-rich-retir ... 46001.html) "First, people need to realize that Social Security is not a pension plan -- or even a retirement program." So that LIE #10.  And LIE #11 is that SS is insurance.

And there are two other false promises in the statement by FDR above. One is that SS will move seniors out of the workforce to give the younger generation more work opportunities, and give all greater security.  But what has the SSA done since its inception?  It has repeatedly raised the age at which one can get that "pension", forcing now financially strapped seniors (because they weren't allowed to put SS payments  in clearly better investments) to keep working.  And it is preventing the younger generation from keeping and investing their own money  ... leading to more, not less, feelings of insecurity in the younger generation.  The harsh truth is that most young people today do not expect to see a dime of what they are paying into SS.  They see the program only in terms of taking money from them to give to old people.  And the old people have increased insecurity because they don't actually own anything.  Many are now completely dependent on the whims of Fabian politicians who talk of reducing benefits to keep the program from totally collapsing. So those are LIES #12 and #13.

THIRTEEN LIES … and I’m not done. There are plenty more promises that FDR broke … more lies he told to sell SS to an unwitting nation. For example FDR told a friendly audience (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15212 ) in 1936 that "we have begun to build a system of old-age pensions" (again, falsely calling SS a pension when his committee was investigating insurance).   Later in the same speech he said to this audience of the faithful that SS was insurance (again, false).  But more important, he told the audience that the premiums collected for SS "insurance" would be "held by the Government solely for the benefit of the worker in his old age.". He said "in effect, we have set up a savings account for the old age of the worker".   That is LIE, then and now.   The money collected was never held in any savings account, nor "solely" for the worker. LIE #14.

Furthermore, FDR went on to say this, attacking opponents of the program as unpatriotic:   "These propagandists with allies whom I do not have to describe to you who know them- are driven in their desperation to the contemptible, unpatriotic suggestion that some future Congress will steal these insurance funds for other purposes.  If they really believe what they say in the pay envelopes, they have no confidence in our form of government or its permanence. It might be well for them to move to some other Nation in which they have greater faith.". Isn't it ironic that those "propagandists" were right?  Because that's exactly what a future Congress did.   LIE #15.

So you see, FDR was a very dishonest man. He outright lied about SS in order to sell Americans on his best known social achievement. And if SS were a good system, he wouldn’t have had to do that. Unfortunately even back then, the media was sufficiently in Fabian control the FDR could to rely on them to keep most of the public clueless as to the Administration's lies.

But Society Security was far worse than some confusion about it being a pension or insurance. An honest analysis haveshown it would create MASSIVE unfunded liabilities … to the tune of tens of trillions over time. That's because the money was never going to be invested, as promised, and because in 1950 there were 16 workers supporting each retiree (http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartboo ... hart36.gif). The high returns of the early years (used to sell the program) were only possible because lots of contributors where handing money to a very few retirees. That’s a classic Ponzi scheme … and yes, they knew about Ponzi schemes back them. And even back then Actuary Tables should have told them that ratio was going to drop over time. Now there are just over three people supporting one, and by 2030 there will only be two people supporting one. That is unsustainable. So it's not only a Ponzi scheme, but a Ponzi scheme that is collapsing.

But even that degree of fraud is just the tip of the iceberg.  In the 1960s the government  began raiding the Social Security account to finance general outlays, while leaving behind an ever-rising pile of non-tradable Treasury bonds.   Most inflows were spent immediately on current beneficiaries, a method basic to any Ponzi scheme, and politicians gave it the cute name PAYGO (“pay-as-you-go”).  In a private pension plan or annuity, the beneficiary receives returns based on what he contributes, plus real investment returns, and assets are held in a legally-segregated account which he owns. In contrast, the Supreme Court ruled that “entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right.” Further, if a private fiduciary were to unilaterally alter the terms of your annuity or pension, against your well-being, he’d be prosecuted, fined and/or jailed, and a civil action for restitution could be filed to retrieve your assets. But you can’t sue the Social Security Administration. So it’s worse than a Ponzi scheme.

Unsustainabiltity is a feature of a ponzi scheme and something with $23 trillion in unfunded liabilities ... that was the number as of 2013 according to the SSA ... isn't sustainable. Indeed, the unfunded liabilities as of 2021 are $41 trillion. Even the SSA’s 2013 Trustees report acknowledged that the SS system was 32 percent underfunded, and my suspicion is they looked through rose colored glasses to even get that result. Future generations are paying for the current beneficiaries SS checks. But they will be shafted because there won’t be enough people funding the system to come even close to paying them what they are now promised when their time comes to withdraw from the system. Everyone with any sense acknowledges this. Jacmac claimed near the end of his last post to me that SS is solvent, but what does that really mean in the face of such numbers? What does it mean when they are already talking about cutting benefits to future recipients … and increasing SS taxes?

SS is a Ponzi scheme which is why early SS contributors made out like bandits, being paid far more than they paid into it.  Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times what she and her employer together paid in “contributions”.    The Social Security website boasts about that (http://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html )!  Remember, ponzi schemes want to entice more suckers to join.  But contributors today are unlikely to get back even what they themselves put into it. Just like a Ponzi scheme, SS’s early bounty came to an end and now the collapse is underway.   Sources now say that starting with those who retired in 2000, SS participants get less back, on average, than they put into the system (see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/social-se ... 06538.html , for example). But I think the payback from social security is worse than that and has been for a long time. That’s because the Social Security administration ran simulations (and they should be biased, if anything, towards presenting SS in the best possible light) to find the Moneys Worth Ration (MWR … the ratio of present value of expected benefits to the present value of expected payroll taxes) of the program and the result of those analysis is summarized by this chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... intile.jpg .

As you can see, even before 2000, the middle income earners were barely making back what they put into the program. The highest income earners were only getting about 60% back. Only the lowest earners were doing well and even they were only doubling their contributions (they could have done much better privately). This 2012 SSA publication (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/ran7/an2012-7.pdf) broke the figures from which those curves came down by income levels (Very Low, Low, Medium High and Maximum), year of birth (1920-2004), and whether the recipient is a single male, single female, one-earner couple or a two earner couple. See Table 1 at the linked article for the results.

Look at the Medium income group first. Those are people earning $41,655. You’ll note that single men, regardless of age, consistently get a return under 1 … which means they get less than they put into the program. Women, because they live longer, do better, but most birth years. they still see returns of less than 1 and the few years that didn’t, show returns of 1.01-1.03. That's awful.   One-earner couples do better. They see ratios of 1.48-1.71. But that’s because only one person in the couple is contributing but payouts are for two. Two earner couple do much worse with MWRs most years that are below one and only 1.01-1.02 in the best of years. Those are abysmal returns.  Those people have been robbed by SS. They would have done MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER in The Market.

Next, look at the High income group ($66,648). Single men get a 0.59—0.77 return. Single women get a 0.66-0.86 return. Single earner couples get 1.23-1.42 returns. And two earner couples get 0.69-0.84 returns.  Abysmal doesn’t begin to describe how bad those returns are.

And in the Maximum income group, the one-earner couples barely break even. Two earner couples and single women get back about 60% of what they contributed (as shown in the above linked summary chart) and single men get less than 60% of their contributions back.  These people should be up in arms and would be if Fabians didn’t control the media that a most complacent populace relies on for information.

Only those in the Low and Very Low income group (the Democratic Party’s base) consistently get returns above 1. And even those are nothing to gloat about. The highest returns in the Low group (again one earner couples) is 2-2.25. The others get returns between 1.1 and 1.3.  They could have done much better just putting their money in government bonds. And it would be their money.  Not a debt the government could eliminate at any moment with the stroke of a pen.  

That’s how bad Social Security has been and will be for most Americans.

The SSA in 2012 did those same calculations for several scenarios. The one above was Present Law … in other words, using the taxes and benefits specified in present laws. The other two tables in the link are for efforts to come to grip with the coming bankruptcy of the system.  The first (Table 2) is for an Increased Payroll Tax scenario (payroll taxes increase from 12.4% to 16.89%).  The other (Table 3) is for a Payable Benefits scenario (where benefits gradually decrease after “trust fund” reserve depletion to 73% of scheduled benefits in 2086).   The other scenarios don’t make Table 1 look any better in terms of what the MWRs are for SS’ participants. They look worse. The bottom line is that any recent SS contributor isn’t going to make out like a bandit, but be shafted, like most investors in Ponzi schemes. That’s because NOTHING is really invested and earns interest. Nothing was EVER really invested. It was spent as it came in, despite FDR’s promises.   It was a scam.

Further,  as noted in http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsals ... zi-scheme/ , "(t)he Ponzi status of the scheme is also corroborated by its widening net of victims. In 1935 it applied only to workers in commerce and industry, but in 1939 it was first applied to seamen and bank employees, then in 1946 to railroad workers, in 1950 to regularly employed farm workers, the self-employed, and federal employees lacking pensions, in 1951 to railroad workers, in 1954 to home workers plus state and local government employees, in 1956 to the military, firemen, and policemen, in 1965 to interns, self-employed doctors and tip recipients, in 1967 to clergy, and in 1983 to all federal civilian employees hired after that year, plus Congress, the President, Vice-President, federal judges, and workers at non-profit organizations."   SS is a ponzi scheme and no amount of wiggling or parsing will change that fact.

The HARD truth is that Social Security is intergenerational welfare, disguised as a retirement or insurance program. It is welfare because there is no connection between taxes paid and benefits received. Social Security is welfare because Congress may, at will, change the Social Security benefit schedule at any time. Social Security is welfare because there is no contractual right to receive benefits. Social Security is welfare because it is not an investment with a rate of return. Social Security is welfare because the government can tax up to 85 percent of Social Security benefits. And no amount of wiggling will change these facts either.

Finally, let me point out that I’ve an alternative that is just as safe as SS (indeed safer). To explain it, here’s a little example I provided to a doubter in 2012 of what the middle class could be doing:

------------

Considered a specific example from the SSA website (http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10070.html ) ... that of a person who is born in 1950 and retired at the age of 62 this year. He started work at the age of 18 and worked 43 years. The SSA website shows how to calculate what that person would get on a monthly basis now, based on earnings each year since 1968. Assuming the maximum SS earnings that were allowed in each year, I built a spreadsheet to do the calculation and it turns out that the SS system would pay that person $1874 per month starting at age 62 (this year).

Now, what if that person had taken his and his employer's contributions to SS over those years and instead put them to work in the stock market? To be on the safe side, I would invest each years contributions into the S&P 500 stock index. That's a VERY conservative investment. One isn't allowed to put the money into individual stocks, but must spread the risk out over all the companies in the S&P 500. Now let's face it, if what are basically 500 of the largest companies in America fail, can anything … even the US government … be far behind? For all practical purposes, the S&P 500 over any reasonable length of time is just as sure, just as secure, as the Federal government. Seriously.

Now how much goes into this account. The SS tax rates have varied over the years (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/taxRates.html ). In 1968, the percent of earnings that one (plus one's employer) had to contribute to the SS system was 7.7% of taxable earnings, up to the maximums listed above in the first link. Which means a contribution of $601 in 1968, given the maximum SS earnings at that time of $7800. In 1969 it was 8.4% which meant a contribution of $655 on a maximum SS earnings of $7800. And so forth.

I built another spreadsheet and placed this information in it for each year from 1968 to 2011. I then added to the spreadsheet the historical returns of the S&P index fund for each year over that time (from http://historicalreturns-sp500.blogspot.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500 ). Then I used the spreadsheet to value the account each year marching forward from 1968 to 2011, assuming all losses came from the account and all gains went back into the account. The result is that the account would be worth $1.64 MILLION dollars today! That's my nest egg instead of Social Security. Now let's see if I can retire on it and live as well as the fellow getting a check for $1874 each month from the government courtesy of Democrats.

Here's what I do. I take out $224880 from my nest egg and put it in a local bank's checking account. That way I can write myself a $1874 check each month for the next 10 years, exactly what I'd expect get from Uncle Sam during that time. Heck, make it $449760 in the account so I can live twice as well as that SS fellow.

I take the rest of the money ($1.19 million) and put it in T-Bills. What could be safer? Right,? Afterall, that's where we are told the SS trust funds are *invested*. So I'll just do the same. (It's not what I'd really do, but I'll play along liberal stupidity.) The current 10 year yield for a T-Bill (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center ... data=yield ) is a little over 2%. So that's where the $1.19 million goes.

Now let move forward 10 years. My savings account is now gone. But boy have I been living a nicer life than the poor sucker who is living off his $1874 Social Security check. My 10 Year T-Bill's have reached maturity. They made 2% per year. So that account is now worth $1.45 million. I take $449760 from that and put it in my checking account. What's left ($1.0 million) goes back into a 10 year T-bill. Let's just assume that 10 year T-bills are still getting just 2% (it will probably be much higher since they are tied to inflation and inflation is bound to go up thanks to Obama).

Another 10 years passes and I've been living the life of Reilly (while that sucker on Social Security is still watching every penny). My 10 year T-Bills reach maturity and are now worth $1.22 million. Take another $449760 from that. The rest ($771,000) goes back into 10 year T-Bills.

Another 10 years passes. That poor SS *dude*. I'm still living twice the life he has been living. Better food. Better clothing. Better housing. Better cars. Better vacations. Better everything. And I haven't been stressing about my finances, like him, so I may even live longer. Now my T-Bill account is worth (still assuming 2%) $940,000.

I repeat the same process putting $492,000 back into T-Bills. Another 10 years go by. By now the SS chap is probably long expired due to his subsistence living, but I'm still … well, I'm 102 years old and still enjoying life. But to be honest I probably don't have that many years left. Good thing, because my current nest egg is … let me check … $594,850. Hey … maybe I will live to 112. But if not, my relatives get a nice estate. The SS fellow's relatives get nothing.

And here's the kicker. I can do MUCH better than that and still be very secure. I could, for example, leave half the original nest egg ($820,000) in the S&P Index fund and let it continue to grow for another 20 years at the historical 6.8% after inflation. If I did that, that portion would likely be worth $3 MILLION dollars in inflation adjusted dollars, when I was only 82 years old. Imagine what my life would be like then, compared to that poor, stupid, social security victim? Imagine what my children's lives would be like with THAT as an estate. :D

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And if you don’t trust the above calculation, I have another way that proves one can easily beat SS performance in a safe manner. Ever hear of the Rule of 72? It’s a formula for figuring out how quickly money will double if left alone in an interest bearing account.   You divide 72 by the interest rate and that tells you the number of years needed to make the money double.   We can use that rule to determine what a lower quintile earner (the ones getting the most out of SS) would get back, if he’d put his SS contributions into an S&P Index fund and left it there over the years. 
 
Historically, the S&P has averaged about 10.5 percent since 1926 (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... sp-500.asp ).   So the rule of 72 says that on average, money in an S&P index fund will double in about 7 years on average.   So if our hypothetical lower quintile earners retiring today after working 49 years had left their first 7 years of SS contributions in an S&P Index, that first 7 years contribution would have doubled, and doubled, and doubled, and doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled … so that today, they would get back 128 TIMES what they contributed in that first 7 years. And even their contributions the last 7 years would be worth more than double what they put in.    So you can see how much SS has cheated them over the years.   Made them poorer than they should be now. And this example applies to the lowest earning quintile just as much as the highest earning quintile.   Think about that.  Think about all that has been lost from people's lives because of that. And note that you could protect yourself from temporary downturns in the S&P index in the same manner as the last example.
 
Now if you don’t trust an S&P index fund, then what if our bottom quintile person had just bought 10 year T-Bills (Bonds) from the government?  You would trust that investment vehicle, wouldn't you?   Investment can’t be any safer or easier than that, right?  After all, that’s where the government supposedly put its excess SS contributions. Right? Well, the average return from 10 year T-Bills was been over 4 percent (probably over 6%) before 2008 and avow 2% since then (https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-yea ... ield-chart).   So that lowest quintile earner’s money would have doubled ever 12-18 years up to 2008, then at least held it’s own since 2008 … meaning that in 49 years, the money from that first contribution period would now be worth 3-5 times what it was when contributed.   Not just double.  And even the last 12-18 years worth of contributions would have almost doubled, since the average rise in 10 year T-Bills during that time was 3-4% a year, meaning a doubling time of around 20 years. Again, the lowest quintile contributor to SS, who by far gets more of his contributions back from SS than any other quintile, is clearly being cheated by SS because he’s now going to get back less than double what he put into SS and that didn’t have to be the case.

And unlike a guy who got to invest his own money and still owns it, the SS contributor doesn’t own his contributions.   He is completely at the mercy of the government to give him what are essentially subsistence dollars ... and they can reduce that or take it away at the stroke of a pen.  In addition, the now poorer SS sap also can’t gift the contents of his “account” to the next generation … or give it to charity even. Whereas the person who bought an S&P index fund or T-Bills can. I hope I’ve made my point, folks.

kmcook
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Re: Science during the Supposed Pandemic

Unread post by kmcook » Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:06 am

BeAChooser wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 3:49 am I’ll now talk about Social Security like I promised.
BeAC:
This is not the place for a 4,700 word political/economic 'lecture' from your soapbox.

Read the topic header!
Read the Forum guidelines!

kmc

BeAChooser
Posts: 1052
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:24 am

Re: Science during the Supposed Pandemic

Unread post by BeAChooser » Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:40 am

kmcook wrote: Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:06 am
BeAC:
This is not the place for a 4,700 word political/economic 'lecture' from your soapbox.

Read the topic header!
Read the Forum guidelines!

kmc
Well then, let's just say that at the rate we're going, Science, if not already dead, will soon be, due to a crashed economy. ;)

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Re: Science during the Supposed Pandemic

Unread post by ForumModerator » Sat Feb 05, 2022 4:12 pm

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