Basil Venitis wants to abolish State insurance. You should be free to save and invest your money as you judge best. There shouldn't be State Insurance to seize big part of your income every year and tell you it's for your own good, or someone else's. There should be therefore no funding problem. Whether you want to retire or keep working should be your decision. How much you save for the future should be up to you.
Of course, some people will plan poorly or just won't earn enough to retire on, but the government may not pretend that this is anyone else's fault or responsibility. Those who can't afford to retire must work when they are older, or rely on family or private charity. No one should get the government to coerce others to pay for his retirement.
Social Security is the largest government program in the world, accounting for 23 percent of the federal budget. The Social Security tax is the largest tax the average American family pays. Indeed, nearly 80 percent of Americans pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in federal income tax. And, millions of seniors depend on Social Security for their retirement income.
State insurance is not sustainable without reform. Simply put, it cannot pay promised future benefits with current levels of taxation. Yet raising taxes or cutting benefits will only make a bad deal worse. At the same time, workers have no ownership of their benefits, and benefits are not inheritable. This is particularly problematic for low-wage workers and minorities. Perhaps most important, the current State insurance systems gives workers no choice or control over their financial future.
Social Security will spend more on benefits this year than it takes in in revenue. The program begins to run a permanent cash-flow deficit. Trust fund accounting only obscured the dismal financial truth. It is long past time that politicians faced facts and reformed Social Security, preferably by allowing younger workers to save a portion of their Social Security taxes through personal accounts.
We need to wean people off the state pension game. It's a giant Ponzi scheme that sooner or later will become bankrupt. There used to be five working age people supporting each pension; now there are two, and in the future that number will shrink. It cannot go on.
Venitis notes that in Greece, the most corrupt on Earth, you could easily retire at forty. All you have to do is give a kickback of 3,000 euros to a certifying State physician, who will lie to the State Insurance Organization(IKA) that you are handicapped! Part of this kickback goes up to the general inspectors and examiners. Nobody cares, nobody gives a damn for all this fraud. There are many villages and towns with all inhabitants declared handicapped! IKA grabs half a Greek's salary, but gives very little in return. Graecokleptocrats churn IKA's funds in order to generate commissions and kickbacks!
The Greek government controls the pension funds, the nest eggs of unions, and the Greek Treasury. Venitis muses this is putting the wolf in charge of the chicken! Graecokleptocrats select those money managers and brokers who return part of their fees and commissions as kickbacks to them. This is heightened when large volumes of trades go through consistent law-breakers such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who know how to churn the accounts and generate a lot of commissions and kickbacks.
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