Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500..
If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt.. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you’d have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you’re 95 if you retire at age 65) and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you’d have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever had.
Entitlement my ass, I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn’t make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Congressional benefits —— free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that’s welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement entitlements?
We’re “broke”!
In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile , and Turkey And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
Our retired seniors living on a ‘fixed income’ receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government pours Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$’s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries and lazy Americans who have never worked a day in their lives!!!!
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when it’s time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave ‘US’ TAXPAYERS, the same support they give to other countries.
This is called “bait and switch”. People are barely able to get by now, thanks to energy and food prices skyrocketing. The last thing that any elderly person needs to hear is that they may be getting LESS money to make ends meet. To me, this proposal sounds daft. Talk about cutting any government agency, but not SS! Bob
Not good.
I never believed that he could win, but that no longer matters... Santorum JUST LOST.
He is apparently both dangerous and stupid.
Gee, I missed where he said he would abolish all government pensions too.
Harold Stassen - “It’s Now Or Never!”
Hey - the dead guy beat Ashcroft!
Dumb move, and I had hopes Santorum would sustain and build upon his success in Iowa.
It’s puzzling that everyone wants to pick on SS, a program retirees have paid into for decades, while saying nothing about the far more expensive welfare programs such as medicaid, housing programs, food stamps and all those programs where the recipients of benefits never paid a penny into them, and most likely paid little if anything in federal income taxes.
Not impressed with just one more politician picking on SS while ignoring more expensive welfare programs which have no dedicated funding source.
First boot the illegals, the immigrants who never paid into the system, the dopers, druggies and other addicts, the too-fat-to-get-off-their-asses, the scammers and moochers, the brood sows and pimps, and the mysterious back injuries that go away as soon as the disability checks start rolling in.
Then do another analysis of the program and determine its viability before cutting people who actually paid into social security their entire working lives.
This won’t make me popular but I read somewhere that more Gen Xers believe in UFOs than they will get SS. I am one of them. The system is completely broke and the best way is to give people an opt out option, don’t pay in, don’t collect no matter what.
SS does need to be cut, but this wasn’t a wise move on Santorum’s part. Too many people believe they deserve it, because they were FORCED into paying into it. They were scammed. It isn’t sustainable in the least. Nevertheless, it is a sacred cow for both sides.
Massachusettes Willard the Lib will counter Santorum by pandering/promising to RAISE benefits.
We are Greece. Eat, drink, and be merry! Borrow more from China, print more dollars, and screw the future generations!
In Washington speak if the rate increase is reduced, that is called a cut. If the rate is held the same, that is a deep cut. Yawn.
Who believes a word from a vile Dem party operative
Named Charles babbington.
This creature is a dedicated Dem liar and fraud .
So the big spending “compassionate conservative” that helped push Bushs’ Socialist lite agenda wants to make homeless or starve all the seniors that where forced to pay 15% of their income into their government “retirement fund” huh. Why was not this BIG SPENDER worried about SPENDING when he was in Congress? I will never vote for this hypocrite, fool. He is the worst of all by far.
Social Security has always been self-supporting until those smarmy politicians on Crapitol Hell got their nasty, slimy, corrupt hands on it and raped it clean for other things that they considered more important! Pay it back, leave it alone and DON’T expect people to save for their old age themselves.....most WON’T. I despise forceful taking of one’s money but after a lifetime of paying into it I don’t think it’s asking too much for my Hub and I to collect whatever he’s paid into it all his working life!! Dammit, go after gooberment WASTE and FRAUD before even thinking about overhauling Social Security!!! I’m talking to Demonrats as well as Republicans......you sorry bunch of morons!!
Many modern conservatives think that you should be dishonest if not doing so means that you might lose an election. There are aspects of SS that need to be cut. All government programs need to be cut, because the moment we can’t borrow anymore money then we are going have a way bigger cut. That is a mathematical reality. Who is responsible for this. Well our leaders who already spent the Social security fund of course. Rick needs to point that out constantly. Congress stole the money.
I am not an expert on how much needs to be cut and to whom. But I do know that I see people on SSI all the time that are perfectly able to work. And I am talking people in their teens and Twenties who just don’t want to work. Many of them never having worked a day in their lives.
After you’ve completely cut ALL federal government spending except for defense, then we can talk about Social Security...
You’re right, he should lie to them like every other politician.
Pray for America
