“Spoken like a true bureaucrat.”
I’m just trying to set people’s expectation correctly—the government has no obligation to pay anything. This has been tried in court and there is no legal agreement nor ownership of the money you’ve paid into SS.
Now, my solution is to 1) don’t spend the surplus money that SS is now collecting; 2) means test SS benefits—don’t pay out if the person has income in excess of -——— (pick a number). I’d say less that a million, more than $200,000. 3) Allow people to devote up to 2% of their SS tax to a personal IRA account. They may select any stock or mutual fund. It defaults to an index of the top 3000 stocks. The money this generates goes into their account. 4) Freeze SS benefits. No more inflation adjustments. 5) Any deficit that occurs (between payouts and income) will come from the general fund, funded by spending cuts. 6) Once the people with the retirement accounts retire, the government no longer has to pay SS nor tax for it, since the benefits from the accounts will exceed the SS benefits. People will still “have” to save 2%, but not the 6% plus the 6% of the company they work for. 7) The incredible increase in savings in the US will greatly benefit the economy. I’m not sure how Pres. Bush failed to sell this before.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
“I’m just trying to set people’s expectation correctly—the government has no obligation to pay anything. This has been tried in court and there is no legal agreement nor ownership of the money you’ve paid into SS.”
This is a fact. The government could say SS has ended tomorrow and there is not one thing anyone could do about it. That was one of the arguments for privitization. You legally own that portion of your retirement savings. Its property. You can will it to your children. Not so with all the money you fork over to the government as a SS tax. Its just another tax. It goes in with all the other money you pay out and like piss is a swimming pool you cant seperate it out.