Posted on 01/08/2008 7:59:45 PM PST by tralfaz7
The exit polls have shown, the Democratic primary is turning into a battle between the people that pay for Social Security and those that collect it.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstfriday.wordpress.com ...
While true, it’s MORE of a battle between the DC Democrat Establishment, or “Shadow Party”, and the rest of America..
Those that have become dependent on Gub’ment money, from Welfare recipients, to Social Security recipients, to “Non-Profit” 527’s and Democrat “Issue Groups” knows that they can coount on Hillary for more “Free Stuff”..
I disagree. For one, marginal tax rates before Reagan have been in the area you speak of - around 70%. He took them down to the 20%’s. We’re still in the same area, and, there’s lots of us out there like me, making it in the real world, with only our skills and entrepreneurial drive that keeps us running.
While that exists, America’s soul is alive and well.
Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, and not everyone can take the risks. But as long as there are those of us that will, the American Dream lives. And from where I stand, it’s doing quite well.
Yah, and when your’e 62 and have paid into SS for all those years you will have someone half your age saying the same things you are saying now. They will be whining and blaming you for not stopping SS and a whole slew of other things that may be the hip gripe of the time.
Grow up kid and stop blaming your parents and grandparents. You want to get rid of SS, fine, good luck with all that.
I am one who has paid into Social Security for my entire working lifetime, and maxed out each and every year since 1960.
I reached my full retirement age in the middle of 2007 and started collecting benefits. So, I sould be among the best funded participants in the system. Still, I will have collected all the contributions of myself and my employer plus interest, by the time I am 72 1/2.
Now, I assume that most SS participants will reach full payout a bit faster than me.
In my case, time to payout break-even is about 5.5 years, but my understanding is that for most it is closer to four years. That means that most people currently 69/70 years old have already recieved in benefits all their contributions, their employer’s contributions, and interest and are into the dessert portion.
My figure of “probably” 75 percent is just a wild-*ssed guess on my part of the proportion of SS benefit recipients older than 70 years. I think it could be MORE than 75%, but I don’t have the figures to back that up.
I am confident of the core truth of what I am saying.
And I know you will just shred it.
With all due respect, sirs, I don’t believe it’ll be there (and I doubt you do either), and, furthermore, should it be there by some miracle, whatever that may be will be insignificant compared to the rest of the holdings I am planning for right now.
I won’t shred it, it’ll go to a charity of my choice.
A mere $200 a month is 2.5M 35 years from now, in today’s dollars. If I need any kind of assistance from the govm’t by then I’ll consider myself a failure. I don’t care if one is making a minimum wage, with proper budgeting and sacrifice it’s quite possible to individually save for retirement. I know, I was there. I lived on $3 a day in college.
And - my parents/grandparents didn’t live in in this country. I’ve got no one to blame, nor I do. I just object to the imposed responsibility while I expect none in return. And, again, I consider all of this a *voluntary* expenditure on my part. I could easily take vast majority of my income offshore, and not pay a dime in SS or taxes. But I don’t. For now. I do expect something to be done eventually.
I get kinda ticked off when, for example, my property taxes triple, and I’m paying more in escrow than my mortgage payment is, as is the case now, as the local county govm’t is spending whatever it wants to spend. That whole attitude makes me nuts. When/IF things go south social security and taxes-wise in the same manner, I’ll arrange my financial matters in such a way as to not incur said liabilities. And - let me assure you, I’m by no means
all that smart either. If I can figure it out, tons more will too.
Furthermore, you sir, should (here’s hoping you’re in good health), live far into your 80s-90s. Advancing medical technology will see to that.
The problem is that the return on the money invested in SS was so bad (barely breaking inflation, if that), that the current system requires more and more working folks to support the viability of the system. Considering the demographics, reality is the system is untenable, and will require a compromise between us ‘kids’ and the current beneficiaries of the system.
Social security and Medicare are generational Ponzi schemes. The greatest generation paid much lower payroll taxes. The boomer generation and later generations have allowed the greatest generation to steal part of their retirement. I do not understand why boomers and later generations did not demand privatization a long time ago. The greatest generation with their lock step voting and entitlement mentality have ensured that their benefits were high in comparison to their payroll taxes.
It is too late to fix entitlements. It is only a matter of how benefit cuts are made. I prefer the solution offered by Bush and now by Thompson. Increasing payroll taxes and the earnings ceiling should be off the table. Increase the retirement age and provide incentives for seniors to work by eliminating payroll taxes after retirement age as long as benefits are not taken.
Pretty much 100% agreed - as I’m advocating in this particular conversation thread, and, willing to finance the transition myself.
The fallacy in your thinking and the thinking of others is that they do not expect to receive benefits. Politicians will never vote to curtail benefits although they may vote to reduce benefits through the retirement age. I would join you in not receiving benefits in exchange for a reduction of my payroll taxes. However that solution, essentially partial privatization, does not seem feasible in the current political situation.
The rat solution involves a series of massive tax increases. The rats will begin with lifting the earnings ceiling, or at least a substantial increase in the ceiling. The rats may also try to reduce payroll taxes for lower wage workers. Lifting the earnings ceiling will not provide enough revenue so the rats will seek additional massive tax increases. Eventually, the rats will just declare that there should not be any relationship between payroll taxes and benefits. The tax increases will have a devasting impact on the economy over time especially when combined with all of the other rat spending ideas.
In the worst case scenario, your benefits will be worth much less due to inflation and tax increases on other parts of your earnings and savings. This indirect way of cutting benefits will be much worse than simply forgoing the benefits. However, the rats are in charge so the benefit cuts will be largely indirect and unpredictable.
Had to search for the old boring piece at: Move Over Boomers -- Gen-X And Gen-Y in the Coming Decades
Sure looks like it from the polls and recent primary results.....Huckabee, Obama, Clinton, McCain. If any of those make it to prez SS will be a minor annoyance compared to the full blown socialism that will be all the rage.
Don't count on the x and y gen to do any better than the boomers, and as it stands now, they are looking to take the country to its final socialist doom. And boy are they going to get their arses blamed for it too by the Z generation.
Let me explain this to you in simple words.
I started collecting Social Security about 3 months ago. I would rather that I did not collect it. I would much rather have invested the money myself. But, the government took my money and paid it to someone else older than me.
Now that it is my turn to collect, I realize that I will never get back the true value of all they took from me, but I will fight to the end to keep getting something, because it was promised to me when they took my money in the first place.
Go ahead, call me lazy and stupid. I voted against SS every time I could, but I was still forced into the program under threat of imprisonment.
Where were you when I was fighting a lonely battle against this screwjob?
Now that it is my turn to collect the miniscule (and for most people, negative) return on what was taken from me, you want to claim SS is "screwing the next generation". Fine lets quit. Give me back a lump sum payment for the amount I put in, plus interest for the past 40 years.
You are completely correct. The system is absolutely unsustainable as presently structured.
My Dad is still going strong at 93, collecting SS and medicare benefits. If I last as long as he has, my SS payout, not including Medicare, will be about $1,050,000 assuming a 3% annual cost of living adjustment, and that is very conservative. I think the actual payout would be more like $1,250,000.
This is a commitment that I think will be very difficult for the government to make good on.
I think you are dangerously naive.
For the past century, the compound average growth rate for money invested in the stock market has been 12 to 14 %. I don't know how you do the calculations, but I use MS excel and know how to calculate compound interest and internal rate of return.
I will never reach break-even in getting back the money I have had stolen from me.
If you have just started receiving benefits, you are likely to get back everything you paid, your employer paid, and all the accred interest within 5 years of the start of benefits. You are likely to receive FAAAAR more than you ever paid in, that is until the whole thing collapses into bankrupt rubble.
See my other posts.
Obviously, I am NOT using stock market rates of return. Why on earth would I? These kinds of calculations are normally done using something more like the prime rate.
I used 5%.
But I agree, if you assume that you could have invested both your contribution and the employer’s contribution and achieved a compounded return of 12 to 14%, you get a result very different from what I describe.
They’ve been doing that for decades. No one listened or cared until our familiar cry was at their back door. That and it didn’t matter much when they had 10 workers for every recipient. Now I will work yet another 20 years or so and contribute to more and more recipients that should have saved there money in the first place.
Wonder what $200,000 in SS payments over the past 35 years be worth today?
Nor will I.
I’ve been paying since I was 16 and I really doubt that that 60+ years of payments are disposed of by 48 months at $500 a month or so, even discounting inflation and COLA, but maybe its close enough for the purpose of showing the utter failure of the setup, and one that was openly seen and predicted back in the 70s, at that.
Allowing me to opt out of this government fraud, and mandating a private account for those monies would mean that I would probably be worth closer to a million bucks on that alone.
I suppose that my views on these socialist thefts are closer to libertarian viewpoints.
And I do understand that the money was spent, but what control do we have over money once they reach into our pocket and take it from us?
Actually, I could get angry at the whole concept just writing this, but its too early in the morning. :)
I never did think that there was some fund that the payments went into. - Its just another government tax that you pay or else.
Given the present state of education and politics in this country, how do we get rid of it especially when most of the illegals are politically leftist?
They will vote sooner or later, and the democrat's class warfare will continue.
I'm very pessimistic. Thank you for the post. - Bill
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