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Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 73,096
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 73,096 |
I too have had the same experiance in the land of retirees, Florida. Any time I have gone into the office I have been out numbered by folks YOUNGER than my children!
The guy that lost his limp.............Same guy probably has a handicap permit for his car and makes ME walk halfway across the supermarket parking lot because he parks in the HC parking place. I see it all the time here, most of the permit holders are much younger than me and look pretty damn healthy to me, mahaps they are mentaly handicapped!
I used to take a non handicap parking place if there was a regular pretty close in case someone in more need than I came along, NO MORE.
George Orwell was a Prophet, not a novelist. Read 1984 and then look around you!
Old cat turd!
"Some men just need killing." ~ Clay Allison.
I am too old to fight but I can still pull a trigger. ~ Me
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 47
Campfire Greenhorn
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Campfire Greenhorn
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 47 |
The Liberals have been talking about the failed S.S program for years, Al Gore ran on that very issue. What is the down side? Personal accounts work fine for our Goverment officials, why not us? The problem is just this, the Democrats do not want Bush to have a win on this period. What is wrong with being able to invest your own money for retirement and then being able to pass that on to your family as opposed to the Goverment keeping it? BTW, Chile has been using this very system for years and by all accounts it is the most successful retirement program going. Their accounts have earned an ave. of over 10% through the years.
"This means the greatest threat to your Social Security retirement funds is Congress itself. Congress has never required that Social Security tax dollars be kept separate from general revenues. In fact, the Social Security �trust fund� is not a trust fund at all. The dollars taken out of your paycheck are not deposited into an account to be paid to you later. On the contrary, they are spent immediately to pay current benefits, and to fund completely unrelated federal programs. Your Social Security administration �account� is nothing more than an IOU, a hopeful promise that enough younger taxpayers will be around to pay your benefits later.
This unconscionable system allows Congress to raid Social Security revenues for every conceivable pork spending project. Unless we change the spending culture in Washington, your retirement dollars will never be secure. At the very least, Congress needs to pass legislation requiring that Social Security revenues be spent only for payment of benefits."
Sothrdnk
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 30
Campfire Greenhorn
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Campfire Greenhorn
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 30 |
What is getting overlooked is the employer tax that makes up a full 1/2 of the amount paid in for each worker. What YOU paid in is 6.2% of wages. Medicare is another 1.45%, for a total of 7.65% of your gross income. The employer contributes another 7.65% for a total 15.3%. Now, what you paid in has increased as your earnings. What about someone who only earned minimum wage his/her whole life? Yours and your employer's contributions are subsidizing the benefits of lower earning members. No member ever contributes the level of benefits they receive. On average, if you live three years past retirement, you've taken what you've paid in. If you got 5% annual interest on those contributions, it would be longer, but the bottom line is there are too many people taking benefits beyond the level of their contribution for too long. So, if you really want to help make the SS system last, you'll do the decent thing - earn lots of money for higher contributions, and then die young.
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Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 16,000
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 16,000 |
I will be sixty-two years of age in a couple of months, so I signed up for Social Security a week ago. The experience was a real wakeup call.
I was the only retirement-age person in the place. The other fifty or so were anywhere from teenagers to folks in their thirties. And they are getting Social Security? As it turned out, they were.
Having to wait until my number came up, I sat in a seat near the SS interviewers. I have wonderful Starkey digital hearing aids, so I punched them on "high" and evesdropped.
I listened to the tales and woes of about thirty applicants. Jeez, what a racket. If you have been slightly injured, have lotsa babies or have any sob story, you are a candidate for Social Security.
When my number came up, I asked the nice lady about the demographics. Heck, I thought Social Security was only for old folks. Her only response was to slowly shake her head and say, "It's the law."
Obviously, she knew precisely what I was talking about, but it was a job and she was just going by the rules. As I left, she said to me, "You know, it's really nice to serve a gentleman who has paid into the Social Security system for forty-seven years and who is strictly looking to suppliment his retirement income. It is refreshing....and thank you."
As I left, the thirty-something guy who limped into the office and got served slightly in front of me suddenly lost his limp and walked briskly to his sports car.
I have never read the original Social Security charter, but I have always had the opinion that it was supposed to be supplimentary income for oldsters. Apparently not; it is for just about anyone who knows how the bleed the system, the professional "takers."
If the system were "clean," I could see a point for denying Social Security privilages to any retiree who has enough income and investments that they do not need the additional income. I fall into that category and I've been retired for thirteen years. In fact, I came very close to not applying because I really don't need it.
After seeing how the system is being abused by the young, however, I'll proudly take the money. Hell, I paid into it since 1958, I might as well see some good out of the money I paid into a rotten system.
One thing for sure. If I had been able to invest the money that I paid into Social Security, as I did my personal retirement funds, the amount in my account would have been fifty-fold what I'll EVER draw out of my SS payments.
But then, I've always saved a large percentage of my income, invested in a shrewd fashion and reinvested the dividents and profits, so what do I know?
Steve roughly similar to my experience when i turned 62, the office was full of minority people speaking spanish, typically 20's and 30's. I saw the attraction, a federal brochure on the snap program. Supplemental nutrition assistence program. Even said in the brochure, you can't get it if you are illegal, but if you squirted a kid on U.S. soil the kid qualifies, and we will not report your status to immigration. Now my wife is ten years older, so right now i am 65 and she is 75. She didn't make much money, small check when she turned 62. When i turned 62 she was entitled to half mine which was about three times in her case what she was getting. Problem is i was limited to about 14,500 in income, or they started deducting, both from hers and mine. Went about nine months in one case without a check. Now i probably have gotten 15letters from them, some only weeks apart. All different on what they were going to do. I went into social security a few months ago and paid them back about 5k to keep the checks on line. This was suppose to take care of it. It didn't and they still cut the checks down when paid even tho i paid them back in essence my own money they had previously paid me. Three letters, now not one answer on the difference. Last time i was in there a couple of months ago noticed a young mexican woman very early 20's, two kids in tow, and about 8 1/2 months pregnant. Speaking spanish. Most of the brochures were in spanish too. Welcome to Amerika.
THE BIRTH PLACE OF GERONIMO
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Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 10,084
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 10,084 |
By the time they "means Test" us many of us will never get what we put in.
We need it for the "disabled"
Snake
That which does not kill us makes us stronger
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 29,383
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 29,383 |
Let's see, ....... The Democrats' solution for Social Security is: 1.) Raise taxes 2.) Cut benefits, and .... 3.) Raise S.S. eligibility age <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> Establishing personal S.S. accounts, as favored by President Bush, is the best idea I've heard, by far. They would be voluntary, for starters, so what's the beef? Those that want to "play it safe" could fill their personal accounts with T-Bills. The smarter ones would have an opportunity to see their accounts really amount to something. Either way, you would OWN the account, and could pass it on to your kids. Leftists hate it when the "little people" begin to think for themselves and gain just a little independence from the Federal Tit, especially if it was George Bush that got 'em thinkin' in the first place. PS - China needs us more than we need them. Not to worry. How do you open a private SS account with no money? 
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Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 31,231 Likes: 10
Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 31,231 Likes: 10 |
This thread started 8 years ago. The only thing different today, is the Dims found an additional way to rape the fund, by "evolving" disability into a mainstream welfare program.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
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Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 5,188
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 5,188 |
This thread started 8 years ago. The only thing different today, is the Dims found an additional way to rape the fund, by "evolving" disability into a mainstream welfare program. For years I blamed Democrats (mostly LBJ) for moving the SS fund into the general fund and spending it. All LBJ did was count the SS fund as part of the general fund to make his budget numbers look better so he could get Congress to fund his "Great Society". In reality the SS fund has no actual value, it's on the Fed's books as both an asset and a liability. The SS fund has never had any money in it and never will because that's the way the law was written. SS taxes are just another income tax on our wages. Your SS taxes go straight to the Treasury, just like your income taxes. The Treasury replaces any money left over after SS recipients are paid with IOU's (Treasury bonds) and spends the SS money. Nobody has ever had a SS account with money in it. They only track your SS taxes so they'll know how much to take from current SS recipients when you become eligible to draw SS. When you start drawing SS the money for that check does not come from your nonexistent SS account but from other current SS payers. You can't fix a Ponzi Scheme which is exactly what SS is. FDR should have been impeached for creating it.
Last edited by victoro; 11/11/13.
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Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 7,967 Likes: 5
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 7,967 Likes: 5 |
When FDR created SSI very few would have lived long enough to get ANY benefits. That is what they counted on. Most people would have paid in their entire lives and not gotten a cent. The ones who did collect would have probably only gotten benefits for 4-5 years on average. The problem is that they never anticipated so many people living for so many years after starting to collect. We now have the vast majority living long enough to get something, and many for 20 years or more.
It was designed as an insurance policy. The difference is that insurance companies constantly look at data and modify their rates and policies to reflect current trends. SSI is still using 1930's data nearly 80 years later. No insurance company would still be in business if their car insurance policies and rates were based on 1930's data.
Most people don't really want the truth.
They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.
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Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 5,188
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jul 2009
Posts: 5,188 |
"It was designed as an insurance policy." Not really. A year after the Social Security Act's passage, it was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court, in Helvering v. Davis. The court held that Social Security is not an insurance program, saying, "The proceeds of both employee and employer taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way." http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/20...cial-security-and-medicare/?subscriber=1
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