The vast majority of people don't get it. And it is not a matter of intelligence; it is about being wedded to a mythology and relying on mass cognitive dissonance to defend it. It is the primary source of nearly all economic problems in the world today or at least their resolution. Grasping it leads to a much deeper understanding of the world today..... and it can be very very profitable.
It also makes what most people have to say in heated SS arguments, whether supporters or detractors, simply laughable.
My mass cognitive dissonance prompted me to re-characterize my business into a sub-s corporation back in the mid 1980's.
I was able to cut payments into the Ponzi scheme of SS by taking a smaller salary and receive much of my business profits as corporate dividends which are not subject to SS.
That saved money represents my talents, my work, my skills and my life, which YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO CLAIM.
HAVE YOU ever really thought about THAT honestly with an open mind?
That saved money was invested into real estate & rental property.
With the invested savings in just the first year, I have now received about a grand a month for 25 years already!
That's $300,000 in my pocket ALREADY, PLUS appreciation on the property, PLUS the yearly savings on SS payments.
Additionally my heirs will actually have an inheritance.
Wow, you are an amazing patriot! And you haven't even mentioned how your wealth accumulation has not only provided incomes for many, many others but you've even provided shelter for either households or businesses and I'm sure at a fair price. Much to be admired here.
I would just note a couple of things -
- Who and what mechanisms enforces all your contracts, leases, deeds, mortgages, banking accounts, brokerage accounts? If you had to rely on your own guns and ammo, how long do you think you would last? Even if you could hold out, what do you think would happen to our society, economy? How valuable would your holdings be that you could hold onto? How much quality would your life have?
- You keep talking about dollars - most of that is in electrons, some of that is in paper-and-ink - who and what mechanism gives that value? What would happen to your worth if those dollars where worthless? How much would you pay to keep those dollars worth something? If keeping your wealth depended on someone making a claim on a relatively small portion of if (as well as others' wealth) would you continue to whine about it as much?
Talk to me about reality not mythology.
I just did - if you were paying attention.
But lets go further down the rabbit hole if you're willing to take the "blue pill" -
.... Social Security essentially transfers money from working black men and women (who die earlier) to older white women who live the longest.....
How exactly does that work? Do you think the govt has some big warehouse where all the dollars (in either paper-and-ink or electrons) go to be stored after collection and then 'transferred' to someone else when the time comes? You know about the special SS Trust bonds held in a single file cabinet in some backroom of an out-of-the-way SS office in Ankron, Ohio - do you really think Timmy goes down there with the magic key and picks one of those $100 million bonds up and takes it over to big Ben to cash before sending checks out to grandma?
If you gave it some thought, you would likely conclude that this does not (and will never) actually happen. Something else is going on than a 'transfer' but folks insist on entire heated arguments based on such mythological 'transfer.' It's called cognitive disassociation.
John Galt shrugged, outsourced to Red China and opened a hedge fund for unregulated securitized credit derivatives.
If the world didn't suck, wouldn't we all just fly off?