Posted on 03/26/2017 5:30:43 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
That's a little harsh, please rethink it. Lots of these seniors don't deserve to suffer. But yes, lots of them were stupid by cashing our their equity and having enormous debt with no savings. Stupid people can be broke and have difficulty getting by. Suffering is a whole different bag. I know people that got hit with illnesses that devastated their ability to hold onto money. In their 50s, then their nest egg is depleted by serious illness and lots of debt. And insurance doesn't cover what they're going through. I've given money to people I know in that situation, not as a loan because they'll never recover from debt. I'm lucky enough to have saved and prepared for my retirement, like you, and feel fortunate. We have serious health issues but excellent insurance that takes care of all the expenses. I feel bad for those who are sick and in debt.
The answer is to import millions of illegals and give them SSI and state benefits that Americans either pay into by working for many years or cannot get.
THX
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But the next financial crisis that rocks America won’t be driven by bankers behaving badly. It will in fact be driven by pension funds that cannot pay out what they promised to retirees.
This is part of “leadership behaving badly”. They have taken the money that they were suppose to safeguard and carefully invest and blown it.
If this was a company pension fund in a small company or a small union it would be easy to track down who had committed this betrayal of trust and punish them.
But in the world of Mega-corp, mega-union and mega-government their very size is their protection. How do you go after everybody?
Who is innocent and who is guilty?
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Guilty? Easy, govt. PERIOD.
Only in govt is such conflict of interest “legal”. The $$ (stolen) was never *theirs* to ‘safeguard’, let alone ‘invest’. It is, as you say, a $$-laundering scheme.
No citizen, regardless of ‘promises’, is beholden to another for personal gain. We did away w/ slavery (officially) over 150yrs ago. The economic version we have today is no different, aside from the willful ignorance of the populace and blind-eye of govt (whom is supposed to defend/protect our Rights).
>>If they were that irresponsible for their lives they deserve to suffer.
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That’s a little harsh, please rethink it. Lots of these seniors don’t deserve to suffer. But yes, lots of them were stupid by cashing our their equity and having enormous debt with no savings. Stupid people can be broke and have difficulty getting by. Suffering is a whole different bag. I know people that got hit with illnesses that devastated their ability to hold onto money. In their 50s, then their nest egg is depleted by serious illness and lots of debt. And insurance doesn’t cover what they’re going through. I’ve given money to people I know in that situation, not as a loan because they’ll never recover from debt. I’m lucky enough to have saved and prepared for my retirement, like you, and feel fortunate. We have serious health issues but excellent insurance that takes care of all the expenses. I feel bad for those who are sick and in debt.
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But the younger generations should be enslaved to the older because the older feels entitled to the promises and illegality??
Great about your CHARITY; and that’s exactly what they should be relying upon in those situations (family, church, community). Not the heavy\lethal arm of GOVT to rob others.
Once the retirement shift REALLY kicks in, I’ll be happy to see the youngins’ fighting for their emancipation from SS\etc. It’s not going to be clean/quick.
If this was a company pension fund in a small company or a small union it would be easy to track down who had committed this betrayal of trust and punish them...
Why is it that I knew about this problem 40 years ago, saved my own money and prepared for retirement and others didn't even know it was coming?
You realize that every single baby boomer retiring now or soon was alive 40 years ago. The magazine articles (remember them? printed on paper they were) I read way back then showed the fallacy of SS and most retirement plans. I looked on SS exactly the same way the Supreme Court did -- it is a tax, not a promise to pay a certain benefit. DW and I saved, invested, and then saved and invested some more.
Today we may be some of the few boomers who are OK. Now, losing SS would not be any fun, but it would not kill us either.
This is not an unforeseen problem, it is a problem brought on by believing politicians. Maybe the guilty are those who believed the lies.
It is basically money laundering of taxpayer money.I don't think that's quite right. To launder money, you first have to have the money. The public pensions don't have the money to launder. The politicians made promises that wouldn't have to be fulfilled until well after their political career was over, and they didn't bother to set the requisite money aside. Public pensions are more like sinecures ... money for nothing, compliments of working, taxpaying suckers.
You pretty much nailed it. So many of these pension plans were raided, not funded, borrowed against and managed by people that probably couldn’t run a lemonade stand. How many municipalities elect people, who in turn give jobs to their buddies, who have no clue. Not to say that the scumbags on Wall St are any better, but, those guys have a vested interest in the funds performing. Some clown in the mayors office, gets paid either way.
You realize that every single baby boomer retiring now or soon was alive 40 years ago. The magazine articles (remember them? printed on paper they were) I read way back then showed the fallacy of SS and most retirement plans. I looked on SS exactly the same way the Supreme Court did -- it is a tax, not a promise to pay a certain benefit. DW and I saved, invested, and then saved and invested some more.
Today we may be some of the few boomers who are OK. Now, losing SS would not be any fun, but it would not kill us either. "
You said it better than I could. We've always assumed that SS would be broke and unavailable to us by retirement. We've saved and invested through all the ups and downs of repeated job losses. We've both had to re-make ourselves in the job market, seek additional qualifications, and take lower-paying positions to keep an income stream. Throughout all this we've managed to save, raise two kids, and put them through college without debt. We're approaching retirement age, and although we'd hate to do without SS, we should be able to manage as long as the idiots in DC don't find a way to confiscate our savings. I expect they'll try.
We've seen a lot of our peers take expensive vacations while we shared a place with friends, went camping, or visited family. They bought expensive new cars while we bought used, ran them until they died, and hubby did all the repairs. We've lived in an older home which he also repairs. He taught our sons how to fix things. It used to be the American way, and for some of us it still is. Self reliance. Hard to achieve when they're taxing and regulating it all so heavily but not impossible either. We worry for our kids, but we also know that we've given them the best start we could, and we have their backs as they get started on their adult lives.
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