Posted on 01/02/2005 9:41:12 AM PST by qam1
-"I would say do not privatize it," he said. "Don't mess with it at all, and put the money you stole from it back in it. If they would leave it alone, there would be plenty of money there. It's not going in the hole. It's the way they manage it."-
YOU IDIOT! "It's the way they manage it" is the ENTIRE KEY. We want to manage our own money!!! Nobody's going to take away your $1.65 lunches - how dare you try to dictate how future generations use their money. How dare the gubmint tell us we can't keep what we earn! AAAAAAAAAARGH!
He's a lazyass.
Families aren't going to hold together very well if they've got 5k in credit card debt and $800 social security checks coming in.
These people didn't plan very well.
Can't put it back? BUT they can give $350M out in charity to a foreign country??? Makes no sense to me. Take Congress' retirement as payment--they stole from the fund.
No, it was designed as a supplemental 'retirement' fund.
Perhaps, but check this article that was printed in Money Magazine a few months ago:
Let's say that in January you'll turn 62 (the age at which every worker who qualifies for Social Security is entitled to begin taking benefits), and that you will qualify for $13,500 a year immediately or $18,000 if you wait until your full retirement age of 66. (Both amounts are in 2005 dollars and would be adjusted each subsequent year for inflation.)
Given those figures, you'll have pocketed $54,000 by the time you reach your 66th birthday. Holding off until 66 will boost your payments by $4,500 a year, but it would take 12 years of those bigger payments for you to break even.
What do these people not get about 1) it wuld be optional and 2) it would not effect seniors currently receiving Social Security? Apparently they haven't been paying attention.
I got an enrollment form from AARP the other day in the mail with a card with my name on it and wanting me to enroll.
I drew a hugh black line through the whole page and wrote a note in big print telling them that they could take their AARP and shove it because I would never enroll or pay dues to an organization that would spend those dues on full page ads denouncing any program that would go against an attempt to put more of my children's and grandchildren's money under their own control.
Thankfully, they included a postage-paid envelope so I didn't have to waste a stamp on that scam organization.
Not gonna happen, but good idea
AARP has many more members under the age of 60 than over the age of 60. Membership age starts at 50 and AARP is being run by the younger members.
Probably followed the now honored tradition of screwing the system for a disability retirement.
I agree with you. I don't think it does any good to talk to AARP members, though. I read my dad the riot act about being a member of AARP the other day (as is my wont) and he reacted more fiercely than he ever has in the past. This is the email he sent me:
All good points. Do something about it, get involved and help your generation. Personally, I can stay in one, nice hotel room for one night and more than recover the cost of belonging to the old-timer's club for a year. How can you fight it, son?
Yes, it's an issue but only one of many. Your Mother and I will be out of work soon because, for reasons I can't understand, politicians of both parties are allowing this country to lose it's identity. They're allowing our once industrial base and what was once industrial dominance to go to third-world or emerging countries. God forbid, if we should ever be faced with a nation-wide challenge as was forced on us that Decenber in 1941, there is no longer a place for Rosie to go rivet!
Just a perspective: My company just past three years without a lost time accident. Of the 139 Federal-Mogul plants World-Wide, we have the best Quality record, we have had the lowest scrap as well as the lowest ppm of all but one of those 139 plants. We have visitors in our plant, weekly, to review and take to their plants our 6S, 6-Sigma, TPM, Lean Manufacturing initiatives and so on an so on because we're known as, no shit, "the show place of Federal -Mogul!" Oh, did I mention our machinery is going to Mexico and China? Remember the "x" in Mexico is pronounced like a "h."
Remember how your Mother and I would correct your English? Suggestion. Learn to speak Spanish. I don't know, I'm just past the point of really caring any more. If the two Johns had won the election? OK, the people that voted for them deserve what the get but, truly? I'm bitter, they are all the same and see both parties having an agenda that suits their platform. AARP? Turn 50 and join. You'll save money and our government will be the same with our without them.
See #27 for that answer.
The system HAS to be fixed, or there will be nothing at all when my kids retire. I have no problem with folks being able to put money in a private account. It will be theirs to pass down to their families when they die, without the constraints that come with their Soc. Sec. benefits. Given the long term economy, their money will grow, something that DOESN'T happen with Soc. Sec. unless some future Congress decides to 'bless' folks with an increase.
Instead of bitching and trying to scare old folks, AARP ought to either shut up, or get on board and do something constructive!!
Well sleuth, I've been an AARP member for quite a few years. NOW I'm considering dropping my membership. I think it is a stupid thing for them to do those ads. I think all of my children are in favor of being able to invest some of their own SS money. And I don't believe my share will be affected one bit. AARP just has to have a "cause" to keep up their membership and pay their well paid Staff. I think I can do without their Rental Car Discount from now on.... that's about all I get from them.
I think that the "greedy geezers" are going to last a lot longer than you may realize.
Today's Social Security benefits are being paid from Social Security contributions by employees. There is apparently a net surplus beyond what is required for present benefits. That surplus is then loaned to the Federal government in exchange for these special-issue bonds. The government then spends the cash, every thin dime of it.
This has been going on long enough to have built up a "Social Security Trust Fund" consisting of 1.5 trillion dollars in bonds. There is no cash in this "fund".
It sounds as if much of the public national debt is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund.
At some point in the future, contributions to Social Security will be less than benefits being paid, and it will be necessary to begin redeeming the bonds in the "Trust Fund". To do this will require taxing the public at a higher rate than otherwise to pay off the bonds, or selling some other debt instrument to raise the cash.
The important point is that every single dime which is paid from the Social Security Trust Fund must be raised by taxes or creation of some other debt. There are no dollars there. The only "assets" are bonds, which are just government IOUs.
The liberals are careful to downplay the significance of the fact that public employees are NOT participants in Social Security. And that any private company which created a program, funded the way Social Security is, would be guilty of criminal conduct.
Wasn't it an insurance? Old Age Security Insurance? Can't remember.
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