Posted on 01/25/2005 5:37:15 AM PST by Brilliant
Edited on 01/25/2005 8:20:29 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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The AARP has basically signed its own death warrant. If they join with the Democrats in bankrupting social security, they won't have much of following.
Don't say DEAD and AARP in the same sentence. I think their lawyers sue for that. (snerk-snerk))
"Just give me mine", say the greedy geezers. "Who cares about anyone after me."
Great investment.
"Just give me mine", say the greedy geezers. "Who cares about anyone after me."
You couldn't have said it better! DH & I have SIX retired parents (four natural, two steps) and they are scared to death that they're going to lose their cash cow, though all are rollin' in the dough from investing wisely for their retirement in the first place.
I cannot convince any of them of the fact that the changes are not going to effect them at all, while benefiting me. And in reality, if we younger generation are allowed to open our own accounts, don't look for more than 4% of your earnings to be freed up anyway. For me, that's not enough! I want ALL of my money invested as I see fit!
As usual, it's the left doing two things; saying there is no crisis (even when they rallied behind Klinton on this exact subject in 1998!), yet making sure they use fear tatics to point the finger at the other guy. Same old, same old.
The AARP is fighting this for only one reason: If people can actually put their retirment money into something with a better return than SS, they will retire comfortably at the worst and rich at best. That would leave an entire nation of well-to-do seniors that will no longer have a use for the AARP.
they should grow up
The AARP had been proven to be a cash cow for a group of liberals. Oreilly exposed them three weeks ago. When most senior members realize this, AARP will fade away.
With rich seniors, no need for an AARP is it.
They are also pretty much an extension of the democrap party, much like the unions and the enviros.
"Dead Set Against"
Try Rigamortissed to protect their cash cow.
Ask your retired parents if they know how much they are paid vs what they paid in. I believe the retirees selfishly don't want to consider what they are getting in SS monies vs what they really paid. I recognize they might have done better in the stock market but the geezers are still getting far back than what they paid in taxes years ago. Most don't want to think about anything but themselves- and have no shame either. I've lost respect for many of them due to their support of the dems and liberal programs and the 'hell with the grand children' attitude.
The AARP is completely right on this one. They better not budge one single solitary inch.
Not only that, but now they want us to pay an additional 4.5% for the same "wonderful benefits."
Yes, I began to discard their mailings because of two events that happened the same day:
1: Two elderly sisters in my town were robbed and beaten in their home. One had broken bones in her face.
2: The AARP came out with a Gun"Control" screed.
Their credibility with me is Rathergrade.
I spoke with an AARP phone solicitor last week, recently turned 50, and he was completely briefed on the party line. My parents use them strictly for the travel discounts, but there has to be an altenative. Could we form a Freeper group to counter-balance them. I know that well over 70% of persons aged 50-65 are conservatives, there would be a huge groundswell of support for an alternative.
Not becasue they care about the plan or whether it may benefit their own constituents, but only because they are against republicans/conservatives.
If any of you are members of AARP, now is the time to resign!
Vote with your dollars and don't support this radical leftist group!
Yeah, the Conservative AARP or "CAARP."
Where can I find the Bush plan in writing? I'd like to review the substance, since apparently the AARP already has....
"If it is any consellation just remember you may be inheriting some of that $$$$ from your 6 parents."
LOL! Funny you should mention that; I am Exector for two of them; the ones with the most cash-o-la! In fact, my Dad just blew close to $5K taking 4 of us to Puerto Vallarta, MX for a week. He wrote one check to cover it all. Yeah, he's hurtin'. Not.
Living well is the best revenge, right? ;)
I'm a geezer and someday you will be one too. I don't pay any attention to AARRP..The old lady and I live on a fixed income within our means here in Pa. Thank God our house is paid for. The school and property taxes are sky high and in order to pay them the old lady has a part time job keeping the books for a small business..
I have cancer and I thank God, too, that he gave me the energy to report to the same job for thirty years ..My pension and medical help out a lot!
I served my country, paid taxes, and never broke the law..
Most of us geezers did the same thing..We did our best!
AARP/Socialist Security = Economic Cannibals.
I'm 47. Unfortunately for you and me, the die is already cast. The President's plan won't let us invest our contributions. It only applies to younger workers.
The only dog we have in this fight is that if nothing is done, then the trust fund will become insolvent and our benefits and our kids' benefits will be cut.
The claim is that the President's plan would drain the trust fund by diverting contributions. That may be true in the short run, although in the longer run, it will reduce the drain on the fund by eliminating payments out of the fund since younger workers will be drawing their benefits from the private accounts.
And you don't solve the problem by leaving things as they are, you only enable further delay. The longer we delay, the bigger and more unmanageable the problem is. Diverting some of the contributions out of the trust fund and into private accounts would force the government to deal with the problem sooner. That might mean a tax increase or a benefit cut to keep the trust fund solvent thru the retirement of the older workers like us, but if that's what we're going to have to do anyway, then the sooner we do it, the better. The worst thing we can do is wait until it's a crisis, and then have no alternative but a huge tax increase or a huge benefit cut.
I don't think they have. It's not been released yet.
I suspect the AARP leadership will fight tooth and nail against fixing what member$ perceive is not broken. Doing so is a lot easier and less risky than attempting to persuade those member$ that it's a good plan.
Whether or not they succeed in stopping the plan, if they can convince their member$ that they're looking out for the member$' best interests, everyone will be happy.
"Let the kids worry about their own retirement (while they pay for mine); keep your politician paws OFF."
Well I would venture without any fear of being wrong that todays generation are inheriting a hell of a lot more money from the dying geezers than those geezers did from their parents .
In fact if anything those geezers had their parents living with them as grandfather grandmothers .
And in addition I am willing to bet those geezers sacrificed a lot more to send the boomer generation to college etc etc
I remember growing up I had to pay board when I lived at home
In conversations with coworkers I found that a hell of a lot of those boomers lived board free once they got out of school etc and went to work
I did some temp work at the AARP's K Street headquarters in Washington D.C. back around 1989. Even back then, 15 years ago, I didn't see one single person there over the age of 40. I've worked in a whole lot of places, and I don't think I ever worked anywhere where the average age was -younger- than it was at AARP. Rumor had it that there was indeed a little old lady doing needlepoint up on the top floor whose face got plastered all over every piece of mail going out the door.
Qwinn
I throw all of AARPs garbage right in the trash never was a member
They are equivalent to the Modern NAACP
Looking for a cause so they can keep power
If they be agin it, I'll be fer it.
Is this, or is this not, a polite way to say that taxpayers will have to pay more in taxes?
"I suspect the AARP leadership will fight tooth and nail against fixing what member$ perceive is not broken."
It's not a broken system if you only paid a FICA tax rate of one percent and get to draw benefits at todays levels.
Now later generations will be getting screwed since they pay a FICA tax that has been raised thirteen times and is 500% higher. What we have here is "Age Warfare".
The true culprit in all this is the politicians that spent the money from the "Trust fund". It's no different than a CEO stealing from his employees pension fund.
All the rest are on some form of public sector funding, which offers a clue as to why the organization is both liberal, and dishonest -- which do NOY represent the 35 million people (including me) who are its members.
Congressman Billybob
Yes, but it looks like we're going to have to do it no matter which course we take. Each year we wait adds $600 billion to the bill. The question is whether we are going to do it now, while the cost is ONLY $1 - 2 trillion dollars, or whether we are going to wait until 2018, when the cost will be $10 trillion.
The AARP is nothing more than a DNC support group and when they first sent me and invitation to join, I wrote where they could stick their letter and sent it back to the liberl loving buch that runs it.
At least your children could inherit your money when you die. How stupid of the previous generation to allow the government to claim themselves the beneficiary of SS accounts! The men on my mother's side of the family all died within a few months of their 65th birthdays, and the government inherited all the money they put in during years of paying in...money their families certainly needed and could have spent much more wisely. I'll trust Wall St. any day over Capitol Hill.
Why in the world would a conservative give a nickel to AARP? They receive government subsidies and then compete with private insurance companies to undercut their rates. NO conservative should be involved with this leftist organization.
Very true, indeed! However, in part it is also now down to simple mathmatics - ratio. That is, the shrinking number of supporting payers versus the number of growing beneficiaries.
But your point is well taken, if a CEO similarly stole all the employee's pension funds to pay for ongoing business expenses he would be in jail for a long, long time. But apparently politicials (and Union bosses) are not bound by this same legal and moral edict.
I'm 62 and I favor the private account proposal. I will benefit from it as much as any of the younger people who will actually invest in the new accounts because creation of those new accounts will result in a vast increase in demand for investment grade securities. Being reasonably well invested in the market, I foresee that increase in investment demand greatly increasing the value of my investments.
As far as the demagoguery about the plan jeopardizing current, or nearly current, benefit levels is concerned, there's no legitimate basis to believe it. That's because anybody actually proposing cuts in current benefit levels will commit political suicide. Thus, this has to be an entirely prospective reform.
FWIW, any Freeper like me that is now getting the AARP solicitations in the mail: send the pre-paid envelope back empty. Costs 'em money, and maybe, just maybe they'll get the hint.
The AARP is on the wrong side of this fight. They either do not understand, or remain willfully ignorant of, the subject at hand.
At the present time, the only effect of diverting part of Social Security funds from going directly to the US Treasury and putting them into an individual investment account, would be a decrease in cash flow to the US Treasury. The money does not disappear. It is simply not available to the Federal government to be spent on non-Social Security purposes. There is not, and never was, a trust fund. Current wage-earners are transferring part of their annual wages for the support of recipients of Social Security, and the remainder is simply being spent as a part of current receipts. There are IOUs on record at the US Treasury, but these IOUs are not interest-bearing, and have no reclamation date.
There is a continuing fear, dating back to the days of the Great Depression, that investments in financial instruments lead to sure ruin, and a total loss of funds. This is assuming that ALL investments are bad, and that the unsophisticated investor shall be making all decisions on the direction of the money. Not so on either count. Over extended periods, the direction of economic change is ALWAYS upward. Individual corporations may fall into bankruptcy, or suffer financial reverses, but the long-term is that the economy will recover, and the losses of one period will be recovered and erased over time. The decisions of the individual participant in this plan is limited as to which mutual fund may be emphasized in the personal portfolio, but a knowledgeable money manager makes the day-to-day decisions, much as the investments under control of AARP.
It is strictly a "top down" organization. The highly paid leaders speak and the members have to listen. It is a total one-way street.
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