Perry calls Social Security 'monstrous lie'

Houston Chronicle ^ | August 28, 2011 | PEGGY FIKAC, AUSTIN BUREAU

[GregoryFul]

Simple fact. People collect far more than they ever paid in.

You are simply wrong on this. Take your annual report, add up your contributions, and your employer's contributions over the years (your compensation for your labor). Apply a 5% compounding interest to the accumulating fund (an easy risk-less return on investment over the past 30 years), and check out what that fund would have accumulated to. Then check with SS to see what the benefit you receive would be. I'll bet you that it will be less than 5% annually of the nest egg the SS has accumulated from you over the years.

[DB]

First of all there is no SS fund or “nest egg” to be invested and accumulate interest. Only a small part ever went into treasures. To argue otherwise is to deny reality. You can complain that the government shouldn’t have spent the “nest egg” money and it isn’t the peoples fault. Well I disagree. These people were the voters running the government at the time, in addition they got the benefits of all that spent “nest egg” money during their lives. Not so good for those who come after and are stuck with the bill.

Second, seniors right now on average are collecting much more than they paid in. I’m talking what they paid in while they worked and what they collect until they die. People both live far longer and benefits have expanded far beyond what the “plan” started as. In addition these seniors did not pay nearly as large of a percentage of their income to SS when they worked than we do now.

[GregoryFul]

You are right, I'm trying to exemplify the fraud, the "monstrous lie" of SS. No private "nest egg" has been set aside to fund the retirement income that a similarly funded private plan would have easily and much more generously provided. The money was stolen from us seniors over our working lives, eh? And now it is being stolen from the people who are working for wages. Those are the facts.

On the other hand, full faith and credit, interest bearing sovereign obligations were issued to the SS Fund for the borrowings - debt on an equal footing with US bonds and notes.

As an oldster, I dispute that we "got the benefits of all that spent 'nest egg' money during our lives." Much of the government expenditure will provide for long duration benefits, infrastructure, defense, civil society, education, scientific advances, & etc. that will certainly outlive our consumption of such, and yield benefits for generations to come - if at all managed properly, that is the question, and right now our present government is squandering that legacy wildly. Hence the Tea Party movement, which if supported with sufficient vigor, will restore a beneficial fiscal policy.

Your second point is preposterous. Seniors are not collecting more than they paid in, except perhaps in nominal dollars; it is a preposterous assertion that they should be sanguine with a significantly less than 0% ROI. The simple fact is that the money collected from most workers can cover their benefit forever, and ultimately leaves the government, and future citizens, with the "nest egg" to spend or invest as they see fit.