Posted on 05/15/2008 7:13:09 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus Reagan
The Social Security program was established in 1935 to provide retirement income to certain workers. The program was later expanded to cover most of the workforce. Prior to the program's development, individuals were completely responsible for funding their personal needs both during their working years and during retirement. If an individual failed to save and invest, that individual could not retire from the workforce. Like any large, complex government program, there are many components to Social Security. Ten common questions about the program are addressed below.
More at Yahoo Finance..Investopedia.com
forget about questions: don’t count on it.
That’s sane advice.
Holland over the Last 60 years have one of the Most comprehensive Gov’t Social services networks (Not That I Agree)theyt invested their Government pension contributions in the USA Stock market all that time..and continue to reap the rewards..
The 1986 reform act allowed employers to opt out of the Social Security System. The Texas School Teachers and many municipalities opted out. Since Texas has very strict banking laws they legislated that these investment accounts would be "safe". Harrison County Texas opted out in 1986 and when the first retiress began to draw their retirement checks they averaged (gulp) $106,000 per year compared to the $25,000 for Social Security retirees. Not only that but these retirement accounts can be passed on as inheritance unlike SSI's $400 death benefit!!!
There is no trust fund and there never has been. Social security is the biggest myth in American History. Every dime taken from wages for social security just goes into the general fund, like any other tax. It was never intended to be anything other than mere income tax under another name. The mere fact they “earmark” a percentage of the intake to pay back the amounts that retirees’ put in (leaving aside what for years was a huge net gain to them on account of the natural attrition rate) is irrelevant. It’s no different than if they just increased your taxes and spent the money on someone other than you (i.e., at best, it’s welfare for the elderly). The only legitimate defense might be that “it’s not a tax, it’s a pyramid scheme,” because that’s what it would be in any other industry.
Worse, for decades, social security “benefits” have been adjusted based on the CPI, but the feds have altered the way the CPI is calculated so many times so that recipients of benefits are making an incredibly low rate of return on their “investment”. So basically, it’s like I take $1,000 from you and promise to use that money to fix your roof, but when that time comes, it now costs $2,000 to fix the roof, but I only have to pay you back, say, $1,250. I had all the enjoyment of that loan. You get to a hole in the roof that you can’t afford to fix whereas you would have been able to if you had invested the money yourself. Except with SS, the loan is forced through the barrel of a gun (literally—see what happens if you fail to pay SS taxes; you go to jail).
The problem they face now is that the boomers are retiring so fast, the intake of SS is or shortly will be less than the payout. So instead of using SS taxes to cover deficits in the budget, they now have to find ways to steal money from other parts of the budget to cover deficits in SS. The “saving grace” is that not only isn’t there a trust fund, the “benefits” are not guaranteed—and they never were. In fact, the only way the Feds were able to have the entire system upheld by the S.Ct was by admitting several times that payment of benefits can be changed, suspended, or eliminated at any time for everyone.
It’s never been a safety net—it’s a trap created by FDR for the sole purpose of raising revenues without telling people he was just increasing their taxes. There is no fix to social security. It is nothing but a fraud that should be eliminated entirely.
We've come full circle. Most workers under 50 are now essentially responsible for their own retirements since any payout from SS will be very meager. The irony is we're far worse off than before (SS) because we now have to pay for current retirees on top of trying to save for our own retirement.
david stockman...wasn’t he the one who really wanted to cut spending and taxes and the stinking Rats howled like babies?
govt workers get it all....
its a double whammy....
tell the young people ...WORK FOR THE GOVT IN SOME WAY....
That's not all. Remember that the folks in Congress were using Social Security tax payments to cover increased spending. Do you really think that the politicians are going to slim down on spending, now that the "surpluses" are no longer around? The chickens are coming home to roost. The foreseeable future holds a combination of significantly increased taxes, reduced government services, and a weaker dollar. The alternative is reduced government spending coupled by reduced taxation and borrowing, but folks are too busy pigging it out at the Federal trough that they won't approve.
We will pay for the current retirees and the increases in Federal and State spending, especially if they grant amnesty to the illegals. Whatever is left over, after the dollar slips some more, is for your retirement. But, just remember, the Federals can always impose wealth taxes at a later date to make up for even greater revenue shortfalls.
Triple whammy, since this generation is heavily indebted to finance its education.
GenX/GenY “we’re getting screwed by Social Insecurity” ping!
The problem with Justice Robert's swing votes for SS and other New Deal programs is that Roberts was essentially the father of the USSC's perverted, 10th A.-ignoring interpretation of Sec. 1 of the 14th A., in my opinion.
In order to understand Roberts' folly, let us first consider his interpretation of the relationship of the 1st and 14th Amendments from the Cantwell v. Connecticut opinion.
"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws." -- Cantwell v. State of Connecticut 1940. http://tinyurl.com/bvoc3There is a major problem with Justice Roberts' interpretation of the 14th Amendment, however. Despite Roberts' "profound insight" into the 14th A, it so happens that John Bingham, the main author of Sec. 1 of the 14th A., had clarified that the 14th A. was to take no rights from the states. See for yourself.
"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2rfc5dAs you can see, Justice Roberts' interpretation of the relationship between the 1st and 14th Amendments totally contradicts Bingham's clearly stated purpose for the 14th Amendment. So with Roberts on the bench, the states never had a chance when the USSC tested 10th A. protected states powers against FDR's constitutionally illegal Social Security. In fact, Roberts' foolish interpretation of the 14th A. subsequently let to the Court's unlawful limiting of our religious freedoms in religion-related state power cases."No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired..." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/2qglzy
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe http://tinyurl.com/y3ne4n
In other words, if we take Roberts' scandalous interpretation of the 14th A. out of the picture, the states have the constitutional power (10th A.) to authorize public schools to lead non-mandatory (honest interpretation of 14th A.) classroom discussions on the pros and cons of evolution, creationism and ID, as examples, regardless that atheists, separatists, secular judges and the MSM are misleading the people to think that doing such things in public schools is unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that the USSC is long overdue for a peaceful overthrow because of Roberts and other justices who have been following in his footsteps, putting special-interest agendas ahead of their oaths to defend the Constitution. Lincoln put it this way.
"We the People are the rightful master of both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." --Abraham Lincoln, Political debates between Lincoln and Douglas, 1858.Finally, this post (<-click), while addressing taxes, helps to explain how 10th A. protected state powers were wrongly politically repealed by the USSC when FDR established his constitutionally unauthorized New Deal programs.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Do you have a good source - I’d like to read it to have available when a-holes start spouting off about the saving grace of SS.
its a double whammy....
HUGE Point here! A good chunk of Baby Boomers will be retiring from companies and collecting pensions along with SS. I have a relative that is in the Retirement window. He was not wealthy during his working life. But he is collecting on one pension already (police). He already has a second pension that he is going to be receiving when he retires in a few years. And he will be getting full SS benefits after that.
I used to worry about how he and his wife were going to make it when he is too old to work. Then he explained it to me. I hope I can retire that comfortably some day.
Thanks for the ping.
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