Posted on 11/26/2007 3:00:11 PM PST by Delacon
Older Americans tend to think of Social Security as something we ought to be able to afford. Indeed, many seniors tell themselves that when Washington pours extra cash into the New Deal pension program, the action is something like investing in a new Volvo. The purchase may look extravagant but is, in reality, deliciously necessary. This attitude is also held by some of our most respected pension officials. The longtime Social Security Administration commissioner Robert M. Ball wrote on this page recently that "it's the essence of responsibility, in my view, to insist on no benefit cuts" ["A Social Security Fix for 2008," Oct. 29].
Ball is partially right. American retirees can have a Volvo. There is a way to keep Social Security with no benefit cuts. It is the upgrade that's the problem. There is no way the country can afford a newer model for each new cohort of retirees. Not when the economy grows at a rate of 1 percent or 2 percent or 3.9 percent -- the rate it expanded in the third quarter this year. The reasons for this trace not as much to the New Deal as to postwar authorities, including Ball himself.
Franklin Roosevelt explicitly limited Social Security's commitment, saying in August 1935 that the goal of the new program was not a total pension but "some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family." I.S.C. 9, the legendary pamphlet that laid out the program, likewise delineated a ceiling on Social Security payments through the decades. "You and your employer will each pay three cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever have to pay," it said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I agree. I just wish you Xers would assert yourself now so that I don’t have to pay taxes between now and the time I reach 65 in 15 years for the benefits I will never receive anyway. But if I’m reading the polls right, the Xers are by and large Democrats.
BINGO...
You are correct.
If the amount you paid in (plus the employer’s portion) over the last 30 odd years had been invested and not pi$$ed away by the crooked politicians, your account would be worth millions now.
Your money and everyone else’s money was stolen.
THE MINIMUM!”
I think you are wrong on this... She would get 1/2 of his benefit. If he had had 3 wives married to each for at least 10 years, each would get 1/2 of his benefit.
The hell we didn’t. It was those that first entered that did not pay. I paid for over 40 damned years. Tell me I didn’t pay for mine!!!
My dad said she should’ve argued with the SS. But she didn’t. She’s been dead a long time now.
But one thing we should keep in mind is that the difference between max and min keeps getting larger as time goes on. The top tier for pay-in has changed too.
You are soooooooooo correct. I could retire at 50 with a few million but now I will be lucky to retire at 65 with maybe enough to live a decent life. No millions. The .gov stole my FREEDOM.
We had a built in population of approx 9 million that were 65 or older. by the time 1940 rolled around.
If you were born in 1900, your life expectancy was approx 48 years.
If you were born in 1950, your life expectancy is approx 66 years.
Seems to me the dead was suppose to pay for those who continued to live.
Probably would have worked too, except they turned SS into a bazillion other things unrelated to pure retirement.
Now, with that said, my life expectancy, after having attained my current age, is,. approx 73 years...
so...all you youngsters...get back to work !!
Lord aren’t we sounding like a bunch of govt addicted liberals. “I paid in, I want whats mine!”. Believe me I do speak with the sanctimony of someone who was born on the cusp of the boomer generation and who knows that all the boomers who have sucked SS dry will have mostly died off and all the resentfull Xers and younger generations will hold a political block that will make sure that whatever changes that havent already happen will screw me to the wall when I reach retirement. That said, the first thing a con should be thinking is how we can break ourselves from the SS system entirely, NOT how we can get out what we paid in. Our best objective as cons is to aspire to leave a legasy of good government. Thats what cons do.
“The hell we didn’t. It was those that first entered that did not pay. I paid for over 40 damned years. Tell me I didn’t pay for mine!!!”
No, you paid for the New Deal, and the Great Society. You fools allowed your govt to take your SS tax money and the tax money from the companies you worked for and let it get spent on everything else BESIDES a retirement pool. We fools are allowing our govt to do the same thing and spend MY SS taxes on other things. I propose we change that even if it hurts my retirement AND yours.
“I agree. I just wish you Xers would assert yourself now so that I don’t have to pay taxes between now and the time I reach 65 in 15 years for the benefits I will never receive anyway. But if I’m reading the polls right, the Xers are by and large Democrats.”
Not an Xer. I am caught in the middle. Believe me just as soon as enough boomer/hippy/libby/(need the govt to pay for everything) 60s teen scumbags have died off to make a disenfrancised minority, you will see Xers become fiscally responsible.
What are you gonna do for that last year? You don't qualify until after your 66th.
I’m more in favor of confiscating all money, property and goods of the crooked politicians and bureaucrats that stole the SS money and then bringing back slavery and making these crooks work for the victims until they dropped dead. And after they dropped dead I’d hang them.
But that’s just me.
I’m also in favor of digging up FDR and hanging him, too.
No jackass, I didn’t allow the government do it. No one here did. All those years, everyone was under the impression that the SS money actually was going into some type of account for SS. That is what we were lead to believe. But, it was put into the general fund and paid for their other socialist programs. I paid for my damned SS. If I had been allowed to put that money into an account and invest it myself, I would have a hell of a lot more money now in that account that the damned government is going to pay me over the next few years, and when I die, my family would have had that money. The idea and hope of the stinking government is that we die before we draw too much of it. But, I paid for it. I have the pay stubs to show it. What you paid for in your country, your remarks seem to point to that, that is your problem. Not mine.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if FDR were alive today his plan to “fix Social Security” would include government-run health care and mandatory euthanasia.
My goal every year is to substantially increase the portion of my income that is not subject to payroll taxation (Social Security and Medicare). It's working very well, thank you.
You go to a store and pay money for a TV. The clerk pockets the money. You still paid for the TV. I go to work and I pay money for SS, the govt spends it, I still paid for it. When I got my SS the govt sent a paper that listed how much I paid, then it said that because I paid a given amount I would get so much a month. I paid for that, what the govt does with the money I paid for SS is beyond my control, but I still paid for it.
To read........
“All those years, everyone was under the impression that the SS money actually was going into some type of account for SS. That is what we were lead to believe.”
Under the impression? Lead to believe? Whose the jackass then?
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