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.
Historically the various currencies baced by silver or gold varied in value, so you'd need conversion tables to figure out what you had.
People were dealing with this back in the time when there were no computers!!!! Today you have telephones that cash checks!
As long as they collect for SS under the payroll tax, benefits will be paid. They will just be reduced to fall within the revenues collected.
SS is a pay as you go program, i.e., today's workers pay for today's retirees. SS has been running in the red, i.e., benefits paid out exceed revenue collected, since 2010. The shortfall has been made up by cashing in the non-market, interest bearing T-bills in the SSTF, which current contains about $2.6 trillion. The SSTF will run out of IOUs around 2042. At that time, by law, benefits will be reduced to reflect the revenue collected. Hence, there will still be SS checks issued but in reduced amounts by about 25% less. It would happen immediately.
SS will run in the red from now until 2042 when all the T-bills in the SSTF run out. SS has an actuarial problem, not a money problem. Even if the SSTF contained "real money," it would not be enough to save SS as currently structured. In 1950 there were 16 workers for every retiree, today there are about three and in 2030 there will be just two. And in 2030 one in five in this country will be 65 or older--twice what it is now. SS will have to raise taxes and/or reduce benefits to deal with the changing demographics.
There's an assumption that folks will be cooperative ~ alas, out in the horse country you have these billionaires who decide what kind of fence to build, so they build it and send you a bill for half ~ usually costing more than your land is worth.
One such situation went to court and the guy was forced to pay the billionaires price. Later on he and the billionaire had words and the billionaire shot and killed him. He walked.
The lesson is that when your neighbor comes to you with the idea of building a fence you should draw down on him then ~ not later!
Also, if the guy's building an expensive fence and hasn't talked to you about it, take whatever action you need to take then, not later. The courts will strip you bare.
Hard to believe people are surprised by any of this. My only surprise these days is that people on a forum like this are still surprised.
Post after post people are shocked that the country and its citizens and its politicians are what they are, and have become what they have become, and are heading in X, Y or Z obvious direction.
I understand coming here to get news, and I understand reacting to it with outrage or fear or cynicism, or, at best, steely determination. But I just don’t understand why anyone is still surprised.
The Communists telegraphed all these punches endlessly over the past century. They sowed seeds, and they are reaping their harvest because people thought the weeds they sowed looked pretty, or were too thorny to deal with, or the people were too busy doing something else, and therefore didn’t pull them or spray them with Round-Up before they took hold and took over.
It still isn't, whatever word games DC wants to play.
If I call a rock a dog, will it water fire hydrants?
Changing what you call something really doesn't change the facts.
We've been robbed.
That's a regular long term feature of life in North America ~
bump
Oh, I understand that we are out of money. I also understand that I will be expected to pay more in to SS again this year, as I have been doing since I was 14. If I don't the b@stards will come and take all I own to sell to some crony for pennies on the dollar to "pay my debt". Yet when it will be time for the money to flow my way, I'll not get so much as the lint out of the Federal Pocket. My money will have been diverted to buy the votes of illegal aliens, the shiftless, and the lazy. Others who earned and paid that money in will be just as screwed as I, but there is little solace in not being alone in that.
In the meantime, the Government employees (our employees) will likely still get their retirement.
Now, pray tell, what is wrong with that picture that some thieves hanging from lamp posts wouldn't fix?
No, that is not the way SS and the SSTF work. The revenue was never confiscated. Here is how it works:
SS is a pay as you go system. When SS was running a "surplus," i.e., revenue exceeded benefits paid out, the "surplus" was put into the General Fund and Treasury issued non-market, interest bearing T-bills, in the amount of the "surplus" and deposited them into the SSTF. These T-bills represent the full faith and credit of the USG to redeem them in much the same way that they guarantee payment of publicly held T-bills,e.g., such as those held by China. SS has been running in the red since 2010 and will continue to do so permanently. When the T-bills run out to make up the shortfall, SS will have to reduce benefit payments based on revenue collected.
Sorta like how when budget cuts are called for in any local or municipal government, it's the duty police and firefighters who are first in line, never the swarms of office pukes...
All government employees hired since 1983 must join SS. This was part of the Faustian bargain Reagan struck with Tip O’Neill in 1983 when SS was running in the red. They increased taxes and reduced benefits, including raising the retirement age for full benefits from 65 to 67.
Excellent point.
Why are we paying taxes on earned income? Sounds like double taxation to me.
You are correct about it being an exposed ponzi scheme.
But usually when a ponzi scheme is exposed, the victims stop putting money in it.
What we have with SS is a government forcing the victims to continue to pay into the ponzi scheme, with both parties knowing full well what is happening.
No thanks. I'm the white sheep in the family.
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!
By what convoluted logic do you arrive at the premise that monies earned by me and taken from me and my employer with promise to start repayment at date certain, all of a sudden becomes an entitlement just because corrupt government officials have embezzled the funds?
The gold standard does not require the government to keep a certain quantity of gold for each dollar it issues. It requires the government to maintain the convertibility of the dollar to gold at a certain price.
One of the owners collects money to have the road chlorided in the summer for dust control.
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Ran into that quite a bit while in paving business.
There would be 6 or 7 homes on a ‘private lane’ (sometimes referred to as a pipe stem) and quite a few times the guy at the end of the road would refuse to contribute saying he liked the ‘rustic look’ of the dust and stone.
What he would then do is when the original job was finished, contract to get his portion done AND the worst thing would be they wouldn’t call (me or the original) to do his portion.
That is one reason it doesn’t pay to be first to bid a job - especially with people who don’t really have a clue as to what they want done.
The first guy basically holds ‘school’ for the potential customer and he knows (or thinks he does) what to ask and not ask the next guy.
Inevitably the person has absolutely no clue as to what the cost is and when the first estimator gives him a price he is ‘shocked’ and by the time he refers to your parentage etc he has insulted you so bad that if he later finds out yours was the best price, he would almost always be to embarrassed to call you back.
Of course, ‘we’ came up with little tricks but a lot of it was ‘reading’ the guy right off the gitgo.
Now I was estimating back in the days when a woman couldn’t (well it wasn’t accepted practice) sign the contract and if she did get her name on it you also got his signature.
And you would only go ‘after’ her as a last resort in the case of non or slow payment....
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