www.saveamericanow.us.com

Lindsay Graham appeared on TV the other day and suggested that Social Security benefits need to be cut to keep it solvent. 

Once again, Lindsay is wrong.  

Government spent the money from Social Security on stuff other than the retirements of those who contributed. Now the Social Security savings are gone. The government spent our savings when it used Social Security for other projects.

The federal government used a little noticed line in the legislation to use the Social Security Trust Fund for things other than payments to the contributor.  The government raided the fund.  LBJ and the Democrat Congress of the 1960s were the first to raid it.  They used it to finance the Great Society since most other funds were being used by LBJ for his Viet Nam War.  That act of theft from Social Security funds has been duplicated by almost every administration since LBJ.  

The Social Security System morphed from an annuity program to a ponzi scheme where the current generation of workers pays the retirement benefits for the current retirees.  And since the baby boomers did not have enough children to replace themselves, the decreasing number of workers per retirees must pay more into the fund or it will operate at a deficit.  Therefore, the Social Security Trust fund is close to insolvent today and the solution proposed by the government is too cut back on the benefits to retirees.  The Social Security program became just another tax on people to finance other government programs.

1.  Politicians and economists are discussing how benefits need to be cut back for retirees in order to keep Social Security solvent.  That is not true.  Look at the wages for government employees and the number of them.  Since government employees make 30% more than their counterparts in the private sector, their compensations can be cut to more than offset the deficits in the Social Security trust.  The Federal Government stole the money from our pensions in the Social Security Trust and used it for political projects, so the federal government needs to figure out how to pay it back.  And one way is to cut government employee compensation. A five percent cut to all government workers would provide the $30 Billion per year to keep Social Security solvent with no reductions to benefits to retirees.
2. All legislation, especially legislation like Obamacare, must be inspected closely to make sure that there are no imbedded taxes and imbedded rules that will hurt America in the future like how politicians used the Social Security funds.

Michael Master is the author of “Save America Now!”   It can be ordered at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616235756

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them.  But, ready or not, here they come! 
  
1.  The Post Office .  Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive.  Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills. 
  
2. The Check .   Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business. 
  
3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn’t read the newspaper. They certainly don’t subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services. 
  
 4. The Book . You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about do loading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a   preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can’t wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you’re holding a gadget instead of a book. 
  
5. The Land Line Telephone . Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don’t need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they’re always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call   customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes. 
  
6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It’s the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates simply self-destruction. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies." 
  
7. Television . Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy.  People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they’re playing games and doing all lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV.  Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator.  Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it It’s time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through  Netflix. 
  
8. The "Things" That You Own.   Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing.  Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That’s the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert. 
  
9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy.  That’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google  Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again. 
  
All we will have that can’t be changed are Memories.