[Cheerio]

oney was TOO taken out of the SS trust fund. Further, the money was never put in there. Husband’s 401K plan invested the money, didn’t spend it, and it grew to great amounts. Us boobs out here in la-la land understand this.

Try this little exercise as I did years ago. Take the peformance chart for a stable conservative mutual fund that has been around since the first day you started work. Make a spread sheet and using your SS earnings statement put those SS moneys in every year and calculate the performance of the MF against your SS money (your money to start with). Unless you were a very low wage earner, you more than likely would have more than a million dollar next egg today AND it would pass to your heir when you die.

In my case I started investing in funds about 8 years after my first job at age 17. Today I would be a multimillionaire if I also had been able to invest my SS funds in the same funds that I invested in on my own, so there is nothing hypothetical about it. Instead I get $1500 per month and it stops when I die.

The argument from the left is "But you wouldn't have the discipline to save for retirement, therefore you need the Nanny State to do that for you".

[9YearLurker]

To be fair, only successful mutual funds are around long term and if you had SS gazillions dumped into mutual funds, the returns for everyone would dive.

But yes, there’s certainly an argument for the successful being much better off without participating in SS.

[Fishtalk]

You get a standing ovation Mr Rice Krispies.

Social Security is one of the worst retirement plans a person would ever choose, not that, heh, anybody chose it save the politicians.

I’ll fine tune your argument since you’re not going on about T-bills and such. There really ARE people who wouldn’t be prudent enough to save for their retirement.

Just like there are folks who live from paycheck to paycheck or buy houses they can’t afford or charge up credit cards to the moon. Comes the time when no money for food, no funds for rent, society has no choice but to take care of them, although a real argument can be made that the private sector charities would do a better job.

Get a bunch of old people, unable to work, who never saved a damn dime and now what we gonna do with them...well hey, that was the original argument for SS to begin with.

Still, the private 401K/IRA system gets heavy participation albeit from people who actually WORK, and us silly boobs out here in la-la land got real wise real quick.

Like just how much the politicians took from us by absconding with my money...buying T-bills evidently, AND my employers match....total almost 12.5% of my salary for God’s sake.

Got to a financial advisor and ask how much you should sock away for a decent modest retirement and they’d probably suggest a 10% paycheck investment into a mutual fund, like you suggest, should provide a quite comfortable retirement.

This is what we’ve learned out here in la la land and it’s why the politicians, especially the Democrats but Repubs too, are so scared of touching SS....they don’t the silly populace-401K wise by now, rising up and asking what the hell they did with our money.

While I’m at it, let me throw out another awful fear the politicos have. They are terrified that the American public might get in a sniff and demand that from now on ALL money withheld from people’s paychecks for SS/Medicare be TRULY put aside, like the 401K’s, in a separate account, be turned over to an independent caretaker, a CPA firm maybe,...and NOT BE TOUCHED.

the politicos fear this as much as anything. Imagine how much money all the withheld and matched SS and Medicare money pulled from the economy would cause? It would be a fiscal disaster and yet the gubmint wouldn’t allow Sears, my husband’s employer, to go spending his money withheld from his paycheck.

What have the politicians not messed up? Immigration? ONce we gave a blanket amnesty and went back to carrying the country on our back. We look up and we got a nation filled up AGAIN with illegal immigrants, now murdering us and marching with the politicos calling us nasty for having expected them to protect the borders, silly us.

How about the mortgage thing? Hey, lookit, the gubmint tries to encourage buying a house. Homeowners make good citizens. You don’t go running around robbing and killing people when you got rooms to pain and lawns to mow. We get tax deducts for mortgage interest and this is how the gubmint can encourage behavior in citizens that they like.

But the politicians, doing what politicos do, went and gave anyone with a pulse a mortgage they couldn’t afford and now they’re desperately trying to hide how they really messed things up and their little social plan didn’t quite work out like they’d have liked. If you complain they call you mean for why can’t meth-addicted Crystal and her murdering pimp have a house just like the rest of us?

And so they did with SS and Medicare and the politicians, as in castigating us for complaining about immigration and scolding us for demanding that mortgage holders be fiscally disciplined and credit-worthy, now attack any political party that wants to fix the problem and if they can, maybe they can talk the population into attacking the retired and elderly sick cause that’s a good political tactic, get them attacking each other.

Politicians generally do not look out for the greater good. Given a choice they’ll go chasing their next vote and they’ll do it with OUR money.

It’s why the tea party scares the hell out of them.