Social Security is more bankrupt than we thought. A few months ago I wrote a post, Weapon of Mass Wealth Destruction, where I explored how social security is a terrible investment. The Social Security Trustees Report came out today, and we found that the condition of Social Security and Medicare is worse than expected. Americans certainly didn’t need this reminder that government sponsored entitlement programs are disastrous failures at a time when Obama is trying to get things rolling with his plan for universal health care coverage. In order to help Obama out, I am going to provide my best ideas for rescuing these toxic entitlements from failure. I call this program to fix social security the Toxic Entitlement Relief Program, or TERP.
- Enact punitive taxes on those who have abortions. Since Roe v. Wade passed in 1973, there have been 49,551,703 abortions in the United States. This massive reduction in the labor force is certainly partially responsible for the projected shortfalls of social security. Where legal maneuvering might have enabled women to have the ability to escape the moral consequences of their sex drives, like smoking and alcohol, we should punish this negative behavior with excessive taxation. I propose a tax code where the mothers and fathers of each aborted baby must pay the equivalent of one wage earner’s contributions to social security and medicare split between the two of them for the rest of their lives.
- Lottery Retirement System. Many states run lotteries as a way to tax stupidity. Anyone who has ever been to a casino knows that they are flooded with old people squandering away their nest eggs. Since old people like gambling so much, let’s make gambling part of retirement. Every year you can buy a social security lottery ticket for a fixed sum. Every year a certain number of winners will be chosen to retire at different ages. For example, 100 lucky winners can win the right to start claiming full social security benefits at age 40. 1,000 lucky winners can retire at age 45. 5,000 lucky winners at age 50. 10,000 lucky winners can retire at age 65. If you never win one of these lotteries, then you don’t get to start claiming benefits until you are 77. However, if you win a the age 40 lottery at age 70, you will receive a lump sum payment of 30 years worth of retirement benefits. This would be a great way to get the majority of Americans to accept a later retirement age, and it would bring in a much needed infusion of cash to the trust fund.
- Base benefit payments on the number of offspring that you have and also the income levels of your offspring. In order for social security to work, you have to have a steadily increasing population. Therefore, the people who replenish the system with new laborers should be duly rewarded. If you have 5 kids that all fall into an income bracket level over $80,000 dollars, your benefits should be higher than someone with one kid earning $25,000. If you have 6 kids that are all on welfare or in jail, you don’t get any social security, Sorry!
- Punitively tax Warren Buffet. He deserves to have his wealth confiscated by the government for supporting Obama in the last election.
- Repeal child labor laws. The problem with entitlement programs is that they produce generations of entitled brats. Just as social security is a backwater idea from a different time, so are child labor laws. Now that chimney sweep is a dead career, and coal mining will soon be an extinct profession, there are lots of jobs that kids can safely do. Kids also tend to be pretty naive when it comes to taxes, so you could probably tax them at a higher rate for several years, and they would never know the difference. We need to expand the taxable labor pool as quickly as possible, and enabling children to work could happen with the stroke of a pen.
- Start gambling with the trust fund. If I can expect to lose $.22 on the dollar for every dollar that I put into social security, then putting this money in a slot machine would actually be an investment. Payout odds for most slot machines are in the mid 90% range.
- Tax energy consumption more. I think any excuse we can find to tax energy more is a good idea that ought to be pursued.
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This is funny stuff. Very clever ideas. One thing you haven’t taken into account though is, now that more women are working, there’s not an issue with replenishing workers. Look at the unemployment rate, too. People want to work, but there aren’t any quality jobs available. My opinion is, tax people who have children so that the one’s who don’t won’t have to pay as much for other people’s kids. I don’t have kids, but I have to pay taxes to fund programs such as: education, WIC, food stamps, and other programs that other’s who have children take advantage of. Some women who have children avoid marrying the father because they would miss out on the benefits since they would have income from the husband if they did marry. Crazy stuff! Our system is flawed in many ways and will eventually catch up to us. Still, you have some very funny ideas here…thanks.
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I agree that people without kids shouldn’t have to pay taxes to fund education. The obvious solution to this problem is to privatize eduction. As far as WIC and food stamps, I can’t believe you would be so uncharitable with public money. I have had employees reject receiving a raise because the raise would disqualify them for benefits, and they were getting more money from the benefits than they would get from the raise.
Of all my ideas, I like the lottery one the best.