By AWM
Lefty loons and Democrats (but I repeat myself) often tout the signature “accomplishments” of two Democrat icons: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson. FDR’s “accomplishment was the New Deal and LBJ’s was the Great Society.
Included in FDR’s New Deal was Social Security, which was implemented in 1935 and lingers until today. To be blunt, Social Security provides a TERRIBLE “investment.” As the linked 2022 article (see below) from the Social Security Administration itself explains and shows, the internal rate of return of your SS taxes are ABYSMAL, compared to what has been the historical return of money invested privately. But it gets worse. The government plays “favorites.” If you’re one of the “downtrodden,” you deserve more from your fellow citizens. And even the return received by the “downtrodden” is abysmal, compared to what private returns have been. For example, the internal rate of return of SS money paid to a hypothetical couple born in 1985 who are categorized as receiving Very Low earnings was 4.99% (see page 6 of linked ssa.gov article). Another example: High-earner couples received an internal rate of return on their SS money of just 2.19%. Conversely, the average annual return on money invested in the S&P 500 between 1985 and 2023 was 11.23%, or a cumulative return of roughly 6,022% (see linked article below).
SSA article citing internal rate of return for SS: an2021-5.pdf (ssa.gov).
S&P 500 return: S&P 500 Returns since 1985 (officialdata.org)
Brief segue: As noted in the link below from two UCLA economics professors, FDR’s New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by 7 years. What’s ironic is one of the conclusions reached in the research paper: government-encouraged collusion between and among businesses resulted in prices being higher than they should have been, prolonging the Depression. Remember “collusion” that lefty loons screamed about regarding Trump and Russia? Irony. The paper is a good read.
New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis on JSTOR
Now let’s dissect LBJ’s Great Society, whose purported purpose was to “end the war on poverty.”
The War on Poverty After 50 Years | The Heritage Foundation
Excerpt from link:
In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time (2014 article), U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.
Let’s repeat part of that again… with emphasis added:
“U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution.”
As noted, FDR implemented the SS monstrosity. LBJ’s Great Society implemented Medicare in 1965. So, the $22 trillion spent on the “War on Poverty” does NOT include SS or Medicare, which includes generous spending for the poor. If we continue down the path of spending like lunatic drunken sailors*, we’re going to fall into a bottomless abyss of debt from which we cannot and will not recover.
*As a former lunatic drunken sailor, I mean no disrespect