Ryan's Roadmap

I’m up there now. I retired from one career after thirty two years (no retirement- another dumb believer). But at 59 years old, it occured to me that I could have another 20 years in the work force and went back to college. I have no intention of taking SS. I won’t do that to my children.

I have one suggestion:

Take the Social Security benefits. And give them directly to your children. It will be the only way that your children will get any benefit from your decision.

If you don't take the benefits, the money will just be squandered on something else.

I was planning to do exactly that until the mortgage meltdown (which was largely created by the same cast of characters) forced a change in my plans.

The issue is someone, in this case YOU, determining what others do and do not NEED. There are things about peoples circumstances that you have no way of knowing. To you, maybe 50K sounds like a lot, but you don’t know if those families have medical bills, are supporting elderly parents or handicapped kids, etc. I don’t care if Bill Gates collects a SS check every month.

I see the willingness to accept SS, as well as Medicare, as being of two thoughts.

1) “I paid into it, so I want my money back.”
2) “It’s free money.”

And, truthfully, there are lots of people who paid into it, thinking it was like insurance, and now, do need their money back. This is why they should still be able to take the cash. However, those still earning income also need a motive to surrender their SS, and this is where the deduction comes in. And this is a “turnabout is fair play” situation.

When people paid into the SS system, that money was immediately spent on other things. But if they take a tax deduction, instead of the cash, their tax deduction will come out of general tax revenue income to the government, *not* SS, which will have *more* money available to it to pay other people.

So every person who takes the deduction both makes the SS system more solvent, *and* reduces the tax revenue going to the Treasury.

This really hits home once the Treasury can no longer borrow money. It means both that there *has* to be a balanced budget, and that this balanced budget has to be *less* than it currently is.

Ok, my last post to this thread...

Ryan has some great ideas and I hope everyone takes a look at his website. As much as I might long for them, even the “good” republicans are going to be too afraid of the grumpy, greedy old bas^@~ds who declare “I paid in! I want it! Gimme!” to ever means test. Too bad.

But time can allow the rest of us to educate our kids and each other about tax funded Ponzi schemes. I just hope we can do that before the economy spirals into hell.

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