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October 4, 2012

The biggest Ponzi scheme

The Norman Transcript

NORMAN — Editor, The Transcript:

The Sunday 9/23/12 Transcript editorial page included a letter from a Dean Everett, reportedly of Norman. He demonizes an earlier letter that criticized the modern Democratic Party.

His diatribe ended with the notation that one of the greatest achievements of the Democratic (sic) Party was passage of the Social Security Act by Roosevelt and his Democratic Congress in 1935.

What has happened to Social Security since 1935?

When Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program in 1935, he promised that:

· Participation in the program would be completely voluntary (now mandatory).

· Participants would only have to pay 1 percent of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the program (now 7.65 percent on the first $90,000).

· The money the participants elected to put into the program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year (no longer).

· The money the participants put into the independent “trust fund” would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program and no other government program. (Under Johnson and his Democratic Congress, the money was moved to the general fund and spent as it has been every year since. There is nothing left in the SS trust fund but government IOUs.)

· The annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income (Under Clinton and Gore and their Democratic Congress, up to 85 percent of your Social Security benefit is now taxed.)

All of these changes were instituted by Democratic presidents and Congresses.

In addition, Jimmy Carter and his Democratic Congress voted to allow immigrants to receive SS payments from the SS Trust Fund, even though they paid in nothing.

It is a well-known fact that a SS recipient would be very lucky just to live long enough to recover his investment in SS (nevermind the taxes paid and ruinous inflation). Nobody would voluntarily sign up for an investment program that actually lost him money.

The Social Security program is completely financially unsustainable and is predicted to collapse of its own weight within 20 years. Fact is, it is the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world.

Sorry, Mr. Everett, facts can be sometimes downright inconvenient.

JOE WINDES

Norman

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