Posted on 12/08/2012 4:42:06 AM PST by IbJensen
Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”This isn’t a benefit – its earned income!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.
It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.
Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact).
And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.
And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. But is it our fault they misused our investments?
And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments were a charity! Let’s take a stand.
We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government –
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.
We're not constituents to these big shots, rather we're just some bothersome thing whose comments they do not hear and whose letters they do not read.
So much for your claim that Social Security is not an entitlement.
I wonder why they did that?
Friend, you and everybody who gets a SS check are going to have to get used to the fact that you were taxed all your working life, and there is no return on that tax paid.
You now get an entitlement check from the government, which will continue until they can’t pay it anymore. After that, you won’t get it anymore because we’ll be out of money
Plan accordingly.
It’s issue, actually, is something they we might be able to cram back down Congress throat....
This issue...
Now any effort to cut entitlement spending will be reported as an effort to cut Social Security. That sounds like a public relations win for the far left.
Be careful about calling it “earned income” They may charge you an additional medicare tax on it.
“It’s issue, actually, is something they we might be able to cram back down Congress throat....”
A social security check by any other name is still an entitlement.
Folks seem to not understand that we are out of money, and that SS is not going to be paid as folks are expecting or planning. Enjoy each check as it comes. The next one might not. We are that broke!
The goal is to enslave a permanent majority of Americans on the ‘Rat EBT welfare-slave plantation.
You can call a shaved goat a bulldog if you want, but it’s still a goat.
They ought to call it what it actually is - a ponzi scheme.
Well said.
The SS revenues were confiscated years ago to be spent in the general fund. It’s all IOUs in the SS pot now. People in the private sector are in jail for such shenanigans.
Funny thing. This is the exact complaint government workers have regarding their pension plans in individual States. In many states it is the same Ponzi scheme. State government workers paid into their pension funds for years, and for years the central State government robbed those pension funds using them as a piggy bank for their pet projects and favorite welfare programs. And the workers get screwed.
SS=Schutzstaffel
I live at the end of a half mile long dirt road that serves seven houses. One of the owners collects money to have the road chlorided in the summer for dust control. It's a microcosm of a typical government program:
Two of the home owners don't pay because they are old, and on pensions. A third owner refuses to pay. The four of us remaining pay the whole bill. I receive zero benefit, because I'm on the end, and no one drives by my house. I pay to "do my duty" for harmony in the community. The houses receiving the most benefit don't pay anything. The remaining three get a little benefit. Their attitude is that "it really doesn't cost me that much". (It's a hundred bucks a year.) I presume they think it is cost effective.
This is just a 7 household VOLUNTARY program. Imagine multiplying it by 300 million.
"..at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved!"
They were never going to get a return of 12.68%/yr. - doubt you would either as an average over 40 years.
However, the point is a very valid one - you would have been lots better off, and the country would have grown much more, had that money been invested in relatively safe investments rather than being in the hands of the money grabbing baboons that are in Washington, and the irritating hyenas that devotedly cheer them on!!!!!
Entitlement? After all these years I thought it was a “social contract” ...
“It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment. “
Sorry, I’m not able to calculate the same numbers. Not even close.
Try this saving calculator and post your numbers:
http://www.calcxml.com/calculators/savings-calculator-growth?skn=#calcoutput
Thanks
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.