I am 54....started working at 14...that would be 40 years of paying into the system.....now that i am so close I can taste it, I got a group of self centered ignorant arrogant people calling me greedy....for wanting, no, DEMANDING nothing more than what I paid in...I would bet not a one of them has paid a third of what I have into the system...
Let me correct myself. The correct word to describe you is not “greedy”. It is “thief”.
I am having a hard time figuring out how you came up with your $350,000 in alleged contributions into SS even including the employer share. The numbers don't compute. Below are the taxes and wage caps by year since SS was instituted. And I doubt you were paying up to the wage cap at age 14. In 1971 the combined share of SS tax rates (OASDI) was 9.2% on a wage cap of $7,800 or a maximum of $718. Your 40 years of working contributing $350,000 works out to $8,750 a year.
In 1990 the cap was $51,300 and the combined OASDI tax rate was 12.4% for a total contribution of $6,361. In 2000 the cap was $76,200 and the combined tax rate was 12.4% for a contribution of $9,449. There is no way you could average an annual contribution of $8,750 a year for 40 years, especially since you started at age 14.
What you and others are demanding is that we,and our kids, pay up to three times more than you put in.
Simply put, demographics are going to crush SS. When the Boomers start retiring, there will not be enough people working to pay the taxes to keep them all on the level of benefits promised. They didn’t have enough kids, and are living much longer.
But I will compromise. I will pay for you, and will expect not to receive one red cent from SS. But it ends with my generation. Tax everyone over 35 (I will 36 soon), but leave my kids out of it.
All my life I had to shoulder the burden for those who could or would not. That is my lot in life. But I will not stand by and let others saddle the next generation with crushing debt because they were lied to. It has to stop.