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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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.
Ther's the big problem with the AARP. It's a very successful business because it offers a lot of travel, insurance, and medication discounts. Once it gets members thorugh that legitimate route, it claims to represent those members politically, althoug many of its members disagree with its politics.
They're just an insurance company. Like the Farm Bureau, they think they're something more, but they're not.
Is this, or is this not, a polite way to say that taxpayers will have to pay more in taxes?
This is like having a leaking pipe behind the wall. You can pay to fix it now, or you can pay to fix it later when more damage will have to be repaired and you've wasted a lot of water. The only advantage of the second path is that you can pretend that the bill won't come due. In fact if you pretend long enough you might be able to sell the house to some sucker in the future and not have to worry about it yourself at all.
It is. Those of us unlucky enough to have been born in the wrong year will get to continue pay the extra SS taxes they've had in place since the early eighties, then we'll get to pay the "supplemental" taxes that will be required to get us over the "hump" of retiring greedy boomers. We'll be lucky if we ever manage to collect 20¢ on the dollar.
Of course. The selfish bastards don't give a rats ass about the future as long as they get theirs without having to cut back on winter vacations and greens fees. Oh yeah, give em free meds as well. Disgusting.
Why would a left-wing organization that makes a living by collecting money from SS beneficiaries to lobby our gov't to raise benefits and increase their share of gov't goodies accept a change in SS that allows the beneficiaries to keep a portion of their own money to invest on their own? That would be cutting their own throat and they are hardly suicidal.
"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"
Karl Rove should be beating the Dems over the head with the Bob Byrd death windfall. Black males (Dem base)have a 6 year shorter life expectancy than white males and get systematically punished under the current system.
Gosh, I thought that most seniors voted for Bush. Am I wrong? They sure did in our State--something like 70%. As for the corrupt AARP, they are nothing more than a huge leftist lobbying outfit, making a whole lot of money off of seniors with their insurance and other scams. Please tell me how they get away with this with the IRS, considering their tax-free status?
Amen and amen, Diana!
What trust fund? There is no such thing, but people keep referring to it as though it is a factual and safe input in the budget. All SS funds go directly into the General Fund, and are spent liberally, thanks to RAT Congresspeople three admins ago.
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