[ruiner]

Please stop taxing 6.5% of my check and let me put it in my own account! If that amount equals the max I can have in an IRA, 3k at this time, then at 10% over the next 40 years I'll have 1.5 million.

With inflation, not enough to retire, but a pretty penny at that. I'm already contributing that on my own. To think I could be putting that money back into the economy . . .

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Please stop taxing 6.5% of my check and let me put it in my own account! If that amount equals the max I can have in an IRA, 3k at this time, then at 10% over the next 40 years I'll have 1.5 million.

DALBAR has a long-running analysis of actual investor returns, and it is not pretty reading.

Since 1984 the average fixed-income investor realized an annualized return of 6.08%, compared to 11.83% for the long-term Government Bond Index.

The average equity-fund investor realized an annualized return of 5.32%, compared to 16.29% for the S&P 500 Index.

The average money-market fund investor realized an annualized return of 2.29%, compared to 5.82% for Treasury Bills and 3.23% for inflation.

Money-market fund investors lose money after inflation.

http://tinyurl.com/xru1

(Of course, everyone knows they are going to be the exception.)

This isn't an argument for not seeking higher returns on SS "investments".

But it ought to be pretty sobering reading for those who expect that on the average individuals will do better in control of their own investments - one of the dirty little secrets about SS is that it exists in part as a forced "investment" plan to protect the astute, the well educated and the lucky from having to provide for the foolish, the ignorant and the unlucky. Basically, it's a buy-in with current taxation on a claim against the tax revenues of a presumable much larger later GNP - there is no way that feasible investment plans for the majority of wage-eaners will provide for even minimally secure retirement in any other way.

And if instead your neighbor insists on investing in perpetual motion, apricot-pit cures for cancer and Tech Stocks with a P/E of 70, the rest of us eventually end up picking up much of the tab.