Repub Influencer (Millionaire?) Matt Walsh Calls for Elimination of Social Security Prior to Election, and the Dems Loving it?

[Lightbeamrider]

Generating all kinds of hatred directed at boomers who are considered leeches, Matt Walsh and some prominent Repubs (Ben Shaperio Dana Loesch Peter Schiff) are jumping on the eliminate Social Security Retirement bandwagon so they can keep their 6.2%. 12.4 if self-employed. Politicians include. All Repubs and it looks like the movement is picking up steam in Repub circles. To provide a flavor

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107529492172587213

Started out with a 2% employer/employee split and expanded thru the years to 12.4% employer/employee split. There was

About $1.131 trillion in net payroll tax contributions for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program alone was collected in calendar year 2025 and deposited as cash into the Treasury’s general fund.

I do not know of any politician who would favor eliminating 1.131 Trillion from the General Fund so payers could keep their 6.2%. Do you?

 

[Lightbeamrider]

GROK

Very few elected Republicans have publicly endorsed eliminating Social Security for current elderly recipients. Most party leaders and candidates, including Donald Trump, have pledged not to cut benefits for people already retired or near retirement. Documented exceptions or near-exceptions include:

• Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said in a 2010 campaign appearance that it would be his objective “to phase out Social Security, to pull it up from the roots and get rid of it,” along with Medicare and Medicaid. He has not made this a current legislative priority in the same terms.
• Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has called Social Security a “legal Ponzi scheme” and argued it (and Medicare) should be converted from mandatory entitlement spending to discretionary spending that Congress must reauthorize periodically.
• Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) released a 2022 “Rescue America” plan that called for all federal legislation to sunset and require reauthorization every five years; critics noted this would place Social Security and Medicare under recurring review. Scott later stated he did not intend to sunset those two programs specifically.
• Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has recently described Social Security on the Senate floor as the largest program “wasting our tax dollars” and a “scam.”

 

[Lightbeamrider]

Tone Deaf Matt

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107939024266506457

 

[stilllearning]

I don't think that dog is gonna hunt. I believe it was last week I was reading how there is a bill in congress or committee or some kind of rumor as such. Anyway the bill aims to lower the full retirement age to 60 for folks who have worked manual labor and jobs where you are on your feet. So to me at least it seems like their are some at least who want to go in the opposite direction.

I think every politician is aware that trying to cut or do anything with SS that is perceived as negative is a poison pill. Back in the early or mid 2000's during the Bush admin they were talking about changing SS so that you could self direct SS. Or more or less pick where your money would be invested. I was in favor of that then and I still I am.

I do believe that they would have to have a real debate, because with that large of an amount of money. There is very real chance of fraud going to happen. I would think if we where to do that then we would also need to define what age groups could do so. As well as I would hope that they would make a curriculum for money management mandatory at the high school level.

As well as they would have to put up some kind of guard rails as to what percentage could be invested into riskier things such as bit coin and etc. So anyway I don't think there is anyway we could get rid of SS or would it be wise to. We are a consumer economy and our money is borrowed into existence. We don't teach thrift as a society nor do we truly practice it. To get rid of the barely adequate safety net we have would be utter foolishness. I think they need to make changes so that there is a safety net now and in the future.

The way they set it up back in the day made sense in a manner. As we were a nation pumping out children. However, in the 70's when they decided to murder future generations in the womb. They made the system unsustainable in the form that they had set up.

 

[Squigglylines]

Ken Paxton seems open to cuts also from what he said to lobbyist that was leaked from September in our Texas news. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/1...-federal-benefits-texas-senate-election-2026/

 

[ZNP]

The spirit of Antichrist is a spirit that breaks covenants. This argument ignores the fact that people their whole lives paid money into Social Security because it was supposed to be a government mandated retirement account. The money doesn't belong to the government, they are simply the trustee of money that belongs to those that paid into it. But then the government called it "entitlement" like welfare. So equating Social Security to welfare portrays this as a kind of government welfare for retired people. But instead of investing this money wisely, the government was a deceitful trustee. It used the money for its own purposes until the US government was broke. So now, instead of the average American paying $367,000 into Social Security during their lifetime, having it invested wisely so that it had grown into $1.24 million as a result of matching employer contributions. That in turn would mean they could collect $60,000 a year without touching the principle. Instead the average payment is $25,000 a year, a fraction of what any half decent investment plan would have yielded. So already half of the retirement has been robbed, now they want to take the other half. And it is worse than that. Let's say I collect my retirement benefit for five years and then die. My retirement account should have been worth $1.24 million and I collected 125k which is basically interest on that account. Do my heirs get the $1.24 million when I die? No, the government gets that. How many people die while collecting 0 or a small fraction of that Social Security account? Government gets all that.

Social Security has been a scheme to keep Americans poor and it began during the Great Depression. Let no crisis go to waste. Welcome to the Antichrist spirit.

 

[stilllearning]

This reminds me if folks have two of you living off of SS. It is called the SS Spousal benefit. For those that qualify, what it is if one spouse makes I believe it is 50% or less. Going from memory so check me if you feel that you may qualify. Anyway if you make 50% or less a month for example one spouse makes $1000 and the other $400 a month. The Spousal benefit will bump it up so that lower earner makes 50% of the greater. So what it will do is one spouse will make $1000 and the other $500. So anyway you have to call in or do a in person visit and request this benefit to be able to receive it if you qualify.

 

[stilllearning]

This reminds me if folks have two of you living off of SS. It is called the SS Spousal benefit. For those that qualify, what it is if one spouse makes I believe it is 50% or less. Going from memory so check me if you feel that you may qualify. Anyway if you make 50% or less a month for example one spouse makes $1000 and the other $400 a month. The Spousal benefit will bump it up so that lower earner makes 50% of the greater. So what it will do is one spouse will make $1000 and the other $500. So anyway you have to call in or do a in person visit and request this benefit to be able to receive it if you qualify.

Correction, if you make less than 50% of the greater. 50% or less should be less than 50%.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

I don't think that dog is gonna hunt. I believe it was last week I was reading how there is a bill in congress or committee or some kind of rumor as such. Anyway the bill aims to lower the full retirement age to 60 for folks who have worked manual labor and jobs where you are on your feet. So to me at least it seems like their are some at least who want to go in the opposite direction.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2107869264308773351

I

 

[ZuluKono]

Walsh is a RINO and a clown.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

The leech Ida May Fuller was the first Social Security recipient. Generational theft (according to Matt) and all that.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2108284058522268069

 

[ZNP]

The leech Ida May Fuller was the first Social Security recipient. Generational theft (according to Matt) and all that.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2108284058522268069

The average American pays in $375,000 into Social Security over their life time. Their employer also will pay the same amount. If you figure 8% return as an average rate of return over those 40 years your money will have grown to $5.5 million. That means your investment would be 14 to 15 times what you paid in. That is how investing works. So getting 4 to 7 times what they paid indicates that on average you get 5.5 times what you paid in or a third of what you would have expected had the money simply been invested. Another way of looking at this is that 1/3 of the money you invested comes back to you and 2/3 goes to the government. Or another way to look at it is this, if the money had gone into a 401k when you die your heirs would get $4 million.

But the reality is they never did invest that money. As a result the US economy was also starved of capital. We have about 2.5 million Americans who are retired die each year. Imagine 2.5 million people leaving $4 million to their heirs each year. That money would have been plowed back into the economy.

The US government is like a giant parasite that has sucked the life blood out of the US economy.

 

[ZNP]

The average American pays in $375,000 into Social Security over their life time. Their employer also will pay the same amount. If you figure 8% return as an average rate of return over those 40 years your money will have grown to $5.5 million. That means your investment would be 14 to 15 times what you paid in. That is how investing works. So getting 4 to 7 times what they paid indicates that on average you get 5.5 times what you paid in or a third of what you would have expected had the money simply been invested. Another way of looking at this is that 1/3 of the money you invested comes back to you and 2/3 goes to the government. Or another way to look at it is this, if the money had gone into a 401k when you die your heirs would get $4 million.

But the reality is they never did invest that money. As a result the US economy was also starved of capital. We have about 2.5 million Americans who are retired die each year. Imagine 2.5 million people leaving $4 million to their heirs each year. That money would have been plowed back into the economy.

The US government is like a giant parasite that has sucked the life blood out of the US economy.

Just to be clear, that would have been $10 trillion paid into the US economy each year that has been robbed by the US government. Poor people paying off their debts, their credit cards, their mortgage, their car loans, their school loans, etc.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

The average American pays in $375,000 into Social Security over their life time.

AI has it at 367 K assuming an average overall @ $66,100 per yrs per top 35 yrs. Pays back $2016 per month with yearly COLA increases (2-6%) even if they live to be 100. It never stops or runs out. Medicare Part B deductions from that amount would drop the monthly by $202.90. was never meant to be a full retirement plan

Social Security was never designed or intended to be a worker's sole source of income in retirement. From its very inception under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the program was explicitly designed to function as a safety net or a financial floor to keep elderly Americans out of absolute poverty, not a comprehensive pension program.

The employer/ employee increase has a history of increases.
Decadal Milestones of the 50/50 Split
The Social Security Administration (SSA) Historical Tax Data marks several distinct eras of the program's growth:


[TR]
[th]Era / Milestone Year[/th][th]Employee Share[/th][th]Employer Share[/th][th]Total Combined Rate[/th]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1937–1949 (Inception)[/td][td]1.00%[/td][td]1.00%[/td][td]2.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1950[/td][td]1.50%[/td][td]1.50%[/td][td]3.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1960–1961[/td][td]3.00%[/td][td]3.00%[/td][td]6.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1970[/td][td]4.20%[/td][td]4.20%[/td][td]8.40%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1980[/td][td]5.08%[/td][td]5.08%[/td][td]10.16%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1990–Present[/td][td]6.20%[/td][td]6.20%[/td][td]12.40%

[/td]
[/TR]
(Note: These figures strictly reflect the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) tax. They do not include the separate Medicare Hospital Insurance tax, which was introduced later in 1966 at 0.35% each and is currently 1.45%
----------------------
The graph goes from 2% employer/employee split to 12.4% employer/employee split. It was 1% taken from Ida May paycheck with employer match.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

The yearly COLA increase for Social Security Retirement is projected at 3.4 to 3.6% for 2027. $2000 + 3.5% = $2070 meaning a 70 dollar increase @ 2000. Announce OCT. 14

 

[ZNP]

AI has it at 367 K assuming an average overall @ $66,100 per yrs per top 35 yrs. Pays back $2016 per month with yearly COLA increases (2-6%) even if they live to be 100. It never stops or runs out. Medicare Part B deductions from that amount would drop the monthly by $202.90. was never meant to be a full retirement plan

Social Security was never designed or intended to be a worker's sole source of income in retirement. From its very inception under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the program was explicitly designed to function as a safety net or a financial floor to keep elderly Americans out of absolute poverty, not a comprehensive pension program.

The employer/ employee increase has a history of increases.
Decadal Milestones of the 50/50 Split
The Social Security Administration (SSA) Historical Tax Data marks several distinct eras of the program's growth:


[TR]
[th]Era / Milestone Year[/th][th]Employee Share[/th][th]Employer Share[/th][th]Total Combined Rate[/th]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1937–1949 (Inception)[/td][td]1.00%[/td][td]1.00%[/td][td]2.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1950[/td][td]1.50%[/td][td]1.50%[/td][td]3.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1960–1961[/td][td]3.00%[/td][td]3.00%[/td][td]6.00%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1970[/td][td]4.20%[/td][td]4.20%[/td][td]8.40%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1980[/td][td]5.08%[/td][td]5.08%[/td][td]10.16%[/td]
[/TR]
[TR]
[td]1990–Present[/td][td]6.20%[/td][td]6.20%[/td][td]12.40%

[/td]
[/TR]
(Note: These figures strictly reflect the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) tax. They do not include the separate Medicare Hospital Insurance tax, which was introduced later in 1966 at 0.35% each and is currently 1.45%
----------------------
The graph goes from 2% employer/employee split to 12.4% employer/employee split. It was 1% taken from Ida May paycheck with employer match.

"Even if a worker lives to a hundred it never runs out". Do you realize what you just said? What about people who die prior to taking any Social Security? If that money was in a 401k it would go to their heirs, but instead it goes to the government.

I have already shown that the average worker who collects Social Security (forget those that never collect) that they collect 1/3 of what it should have been worth. So on average the US government collects 2/3 of all the money that went into Social Security never paying it out.

The money was designed to guarantee that people who retired had money for retirement. OK, but the government robbed 2/3 of that retirement.

However, my calculations were "misleading". If your 401k had grown to 5.4 million when you retired you could have taken 5% a year as the interest on that money without touching the principal. That would be $270k a year. Every year, until you died. Then when you died your heirs would have gotten $5.4 million, not $4 million. So in reality Social Security pays out about 1/10th of what you would have gotten from a mandated 401k, and then your heirs lose 100% of their inheritance. Social Security is simply robbery clear and simple and now they want to call it an entitlement as though they were paying these people they robbed welfare. That is adding insult to injury.

The good news is they don't rob everyone, if you don't collect a paycheck you don't have to pay into it. So if you are a business owner, you are fine, only the schmucks that are salaried employees get robbed.

Also the amount is not trivial, as I have also pointed out it is in excess of $10 trillion a year that is being robbed.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

"Even if a worker lives to a hundred it never runs out". Do you realize what you just said?

Yup, and where is this pool of money held in a 401 (k), and how do you know there are no skims? Like Teamsters fund and Vegas and mob skims in the millions?

What about people who die prior to taking any Social Security? If that money was in a 401k it would go to their heirs, but instead it goes to the government.

Yup. So?

I have already shown that the average worker who collects Social Security (forget those that never collect) that they collect 1/3 of what it should have been worth.

And I have shown the other side: Ida May got back 925 times more than she paid in, and SSR was never meant to be full retirement. Even if eliminated tomorrow, there will be a bulk of the elderly who would be destitute. Does your 401K include yearly COLA increases?

No, 401(k) accounts do not have an automatic yearly cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase built into the account balance or payouts. Instead, the IRS updates 401(k) contribution and benefit limits annually based on inflation, according to the Internal Revenue Service: [1, 2]

Got to go. Private sector job means still paying in to SSR

 

[Lightbeamrider]

Do 401Ks ever run out?

Yes, a 401(k) can run out if you withdraw money faster than your investments grow or if you live longer than your savings last. Unlike a traditional pension that guarantees a lifetime monthly check, a 401(k) is a self-funded account that depends entirely on your balance, investment returns, and how much you take out. [1, 2, 3]

 

[ZNP]

Yup. So?

So Social Security was always meant to be a scam. The wealthy understand how making the government the trustee allows them to take the full inheritance away from these people. They could have mandated money to be taken out and put into a 401k type account. In that account you can only purchase certain investments which are similar to ETF's. Because of the incredible size of these 401K's the companies that get this contract could charge the smallest fraction of a royalty since the size is so huge.

Social security collect $138 billion a month. That is huge. So they would have to have large mutual funds of S&P 500, Russel 2000, US Treasuries, etc. You can't put this kind of money into individual stocks. But, you could use it to buy Gold. You wouldn't want them to buy silver since that is an industrial metal. But even so you are investing over $1 trillion a year so you would want that to then spread to foreign companies as well. Imagine instead of "sanctioning our enemies" the US would approve our allies that met certain criteria for Social Security mandated 401Ks. This could easily result in $100 billion in one year going into the Japanese market, or Europe, or some other country.

What Social Security did was siphon off $30 trillion in investment from Americans that could have helped the world's economy. What do you think the US government did with that $30 trillion? Build weapons, bribe people, and cause the rest of the world to hate the US. They have acted as a corrupt trustee.

The penalties a fraudulent trustee faces fall into two distinct tracks:

1. Civil Remedies and Financial Penalties
Beneficiaries can file lawsuits in probate or civil court to halt the theft and recover the stolen assets. A civil judge can order: [1, 2]

• Immediate Removal and Replacement: The court will strip the trustee of their authority and appoint a successor trustee or a neutral third party to protect what remains. [1, 2]
• Surcharges and Restitution: The trustee is personally liable to pay back every dollar stolen out of their own personal pockets, plus the interest or profits the trust would have earned had the money been properly invested. [1, 2, 3]
• Double or Triple Damages: In cases of egregious fraud or "civil theft," many jurisdictions allow judges to award beneficiaries double or triple the amount that was stolen as a punishment. [1, 2]
• Legal Fee Forfeiture: The rogue trustee can be forced to pay the beneficiaries' attorney fees, and they are strictly banned from using trust funds to pay for their own legal defense. [1, 2]
• Asset Seizure and Liens: Courts can freeze the trustee's personal bank accounts, claw back property they illegally transferred, or place liens on their personal home to satisfy the judgment. [1, 2]

2. Criminal Penalties
Because a trustee is legally entrusted with someone else's property, stealing from the fund constitutes embezzlement or criminal misappropriation


. If law enforcement gets involved, the criminal penalties include: [1, 2]

• Felony Charges: Depending on the state and the amount stolen (often anything over a few hundred dollars), trust theft is prosecuted as a grand felony.
• Prison Sentences: If convicted, the trustee faces significant prison time. For substantial trust theft, state laws routinely mandate sentences ranging from 1 to 15 years in prison.
• Criminal Fines and Restitution: Separate from the civil case, the criminal court will impose mandatory restitution to the victims and high punitive fines to the state.

 

[Lightbeamrider]

So Social Security was always meant to be a scam.

What scam when the early contributors were only mandated 1% of their gross with an employee match? 1% of a thousand dollars is one dollar? How is that a scam if all legal? You can have your opinion, not your facts.

The wealthy understand how making the government the trustee allows them to take the full inheritance away from these people.

What is full inheritance for your average Joe who does not plan for retirement?

They could have mandated money to be taken out and put into a 401k type account.

No negatives there. Government mandates. Your suggestion is nothing new. A flavor of potential problems includes, but is not limited to......

Keep in mind old-age SS was designed as a partial, not a full, retirement plan
---------------------------------
What problems could be predicted by alternative scenarios where government mandates money be taken from employees check and put into 401K programs?

..government mandate diverting a portion of employee paychecks into individual 401(k)-style (defined-contribution) accounts—whether as a partial or full alternative to Social Security—would face several predictable structural, financial, and political problems. These draw from the existing U.S. 401(k)/IRA system’s track record, transition analyses of Social Security reform proposals, and outcomes in countries that have tried versions of mandatory private accounts (notably Chile’s AFP system and Australia’s superannuation). Transition and Financing Costs​ Social Security is largely pay-as-you-go: current payroll taxes fund current retirees. Diverting those taxes (or an equivalent amount) into private accounts creates an immediate revenue shortfall for existing and near-term benefits. Closing it requires some combination of higher taxes on workers, increased government borrowing/debt, or steeper benefit cuts for transition generations. Past U.S. proposals and analyses (e.g., from the SSA actuaries, CBO, and academic work) estimated multi-trillion-dollar transition costs over decades. Younger workers can end up funding both their own future accounts and current retirees, creating a “double burden” that is politically and economically difficult. Market Risk, Volatility, and Inadequate Returns.....​ Fees, Administrative Costs, and Leakage.......​ Coverage, Contribution Adequacy, and Behavioral Problems​ Many workers (especially low-wage, part-time, or those with career interruptions) cannot easily sustain high mandatory contribution rates without reducing current living standards. Chile’s original 10% employee-only contribution proved too low for adequate pensions for large numbers of people; the government has had to provide substantial minimum-pension top-ups......

In that account you can only purchase certain investments which are similar to ETF's. Because of the incredible size of these 401K's the companies that get this contract could charge the smallest fraction of a royalty since the size is so huge.

Social security collect $138 billion a month.

If they collect that amount of money into the General Fund what makes you think they will forfeit that amount so you can keep your 6.2%? That is 62 dollars on a thousand? At 1% it was 1 dollar on a thousand and you wrote it was a scam from the beginning? One dollar on a thousand?

That is huge. So they would have to have large mutual funds of S&P 500, Russel 2000, US Treasuries, etc. You can't put this kind of money into individual stocks.

It is a rosy scenario that will probably fall apart and leave many elderly or otherwise unable to work, destitute and you offer no safety net for them. Not all boomers are hot-tub rich with oodles of property and dying off at 7000 a day, which would mean a huge wealth transfer to survivors since they cannot take it all with them. If boomers own all the property, then they also pay the most property taxes. The more property owned, the higher the amount of property taxes. Property taxes on 1,000 acres of land are much higher than on 40 acres.

The top 10% of boomers hold the large majority of that generation’s wealth; lower-education subgroups often fare no better (or worse) than earlier cohorts at the same ages.⁠Boldin This asset concentration (homes, stocks, retirement accounts) is partly a natural result of longer accumulation time, rising asset prices, and demographics. It underpins arguments that the average older household is far wealthier than the average younger one today. Social Security remains critical for many seniors. Official and tax-linked data (preferred over pure self-reports, which can understate other income sources) indicate that roughly 12–15% of those 65+ rely on it for 90%+ of income, with higher figures in surveys and advocacy data (sometimes 25–40%+ for “sole” or majority reliance). For the lowest income quintile it can account for 80%+ of income; for the highest, far less. Aggregate reliance is often cited around 30% of income for those 65+. Average retired-worker benefits are roughly $2,000/month.