This has been going around via email (below). I wrote back to the person who sent it to me as being the perfect argument for privatizing social security...
BENEFIT CHECK OR ENTITLEMENT? I PAID INTO THE SOCIAL
SECURITY INSURANCE PROGRAM FOR NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS!!!
SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED ‘FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT/ENTITLEMENT’
Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a “Federal Benefit Payment”? I’ll be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.
Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This isn’t a benefit - its earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did
too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact).
And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65). I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. But is it our fault they misused our investments?
And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn’t mean that our investments were a charity!
Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government - Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This isn’t a benefit - its earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.People on SS today will receive far more in benefits than they made in contributions. Why SS is a Ponzi scheme
The current FICA payment is 6.2% each for the employee and employer or 12.4%. This rate has been in effect since 1990. The SS rates have been changed many times since its inception.
The SS benefit is not computed on the basis of contributions.
"Social Security benefits are based on your lifetime earnings. Your actual earnings are adjusted or “indexed” to account for changes in average wages since the year the earnings were received. Then Social Security calculates your average indexed monthly earnings during the 35 years in which you earned the most. We apply a formula to these earnings and arrive at your basic benefit, or “primary insurance amount” (PIA). This is how much you would receive at your full retirement age — 65 or older, depending on your date of birth."
Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.You "earned" it with a big taxpayer subsidy and putting the tab on your children and grandchildren.
This graph shows that the average man and woman (average defined in the study as average income over their working lives and living to the average life expectancy) who start receiving benefits in 2010 get over 3 times more in benefits than they pay in to the system! Of importance, the study accounts for inflation by calculating all past taxes and future payments in 2010 dollars to provide an accurate comparison. If the notion that Medicare recipients are simply "getting back what they paid in" is false then where is the money coming from? Simply, the excess received is being borrowed from younger generations and the cost is more than we can bear.
The premiums collected for Medicare Parts B and D pay for only 25% of the costs for those programs. By law, the General Fund must pay the other 75%. In FY 2011 this amounted to $222 billion. These costs will continue to increase as 10,000 people a day retire for the next 20 years, which will double our population over 65. It is why Medicare will consume the entire federal budget if not reformed.
They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. Oh yes they did! You (not you Twotone, the writer) were just too stupid to notice and didn't pay attention.
Every time you voted for a democrat or a RINO, you gave them carte blanche to do what they did. Collectively, you could have stopped it by flushing Obama, but you gave him another 4. So don't cry to me when that knife in your back gets twisted even further.
But not to worry about it! You won't NEED Social Security when the Death Panel does its job.