Social Security Ponzi Scheme Rant

[garbhead]

 From my wife's aunt in KC:

 

 
WHO DIED BEFORE THEY COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY
CHECK!!!

 
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO
DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!

 
WHERE DID THAT MONEY
GO?

 
Remember, not only did you
and I contribute to Social Security but your
employer did, too. It totaled 15% of your income
before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your
working life, that's close to $220,500. Read that
again. …..

 
Did you see where the Government paid in one
single penny? We are talking about the money you and
your employer put in a Government bank to insure you
and I that we would have a retirement check from the
money we put in, not the Government. Now they are
calling the money we put in an entitlement when we
reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the govt. pays on the money
that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd
have $892,919.98. If you took out only 3% per
year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would
last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you
retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid
on that final amount on deposit!

 
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn.

I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own
social security. Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S all their lives.

 
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN
BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.

 
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!

 

 
Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days. Now that's
welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social
security retirement payments entitlements?

 

 
We're "broke" and we can't help our own seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless. Yet in the last few months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile and Turkey . And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!
Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed S.S. income' receive no additional federal aid nor do they get any financial breaks, while our government and religious organizations pour hundreds of billions of $$$ and tons of food to
foreign countries!

 
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the
government borrow from it in the first place? It was
supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the
general fund. Sad isn't it?

[vabeachman]

Social Security is sitting on 2.7 trillion dollars of US bonds, non-negotiable.  The present debate is about the Government having to repay its debt to the SSA.  The Government doesn't think it has to repay its loans it took.  Talk about leadership leading by example.  Maybe I won't pay any loans back.  The only federal programs that are in the Black are SS and Medicare.  President Johnson started the messing with it to cover up the cost of the Vietnam War.  Before then it was purely stand alone. Started being included in general budget.  He called it the Unified Budget.  Nixon carried it on.  Reagan used it to hide his deficit spending.  The politicians see a big pot of money and think it is theirs.  The use the asset numbers to write down the deficit, but don't include the outlays to cover up the spending.  Its a real shame when the Government won't pay back its own people, but continually give away money to foreigners.

[wolverine_1]

+1 That's a good summary of how it went.  Technically the money is there, but it isn't actually there, it was spent.  Don't like it, but that's the situation we find ourselves in now.  So..... Do we bite the bullet and accept the situation and write off the "loan" or do we continue to squabble about who did it?  Both parties were at the party that spent the funds.  We can demand the repayment of the funds, but where will the money come from?  Higher taxes, fewer services, etc?  How shall we go?

[twoshooter]

Social security IS a ponzi scheme. You do NOT pay for all your own benefits. Social security is an INSURANCE program, and part of the reason the rates were set where they are is because they expected a good number of people to die before they could collect. Just like ANY life insurance program, only it is not calculated to produce excess profits for any stockholders.
     At the rate I will draw, I would exhaust what I and the government put in in about 8-9 years. When the program was started, 74 was way above the average life expectancy. All the tables and estimates now predict I will make 83. The extra will be made up by the next generation.This is the bridge, the responsibility of one generation to the next, we pay for them up front, they help us on the back side. If it were not so, there would be no purpose in reproducing.
     Meanwhile, EVERYTHING......I want to repeat that ..... EVERYTHING..... is a ponzi scheme , because everything MAN MADE is dependent on exponential growth. Complaining about the job market lack of growth ? The economy not growing ? Your investment not GROWING? Everything in existence has limits, some can be artificially altered by moving resources around, but in the end there is an equilibrium that must be reached. The finite resources and carrying capacity WILL eventually be reached, and at that point production and consumption will balance. At some point there will have to be a conversion from our current system to one of stability, or of chaos, I am sure the world does not care which.

[tom548]

The government did not put a nickel in you SS fund, all they ever did was steel from it.

[magooch]

No fears, the presses are turning out money almost as fast as it is being spent.  I'm told if you get the right paper and the right printer you can print your own.  Problem solved.

[vabeachman]

Right Tom,  It has never taken a government nickel.  Call it what you want, call everything a Ponzi scheme, so what.  That facts are our government does not want to pay back it debts to its own people and would rather waste money on aid to enemies of us than pay us the money we are owed.  The government can easily pay it back without raising taxes using an installment plan. 

[dwalk]

say what you want or rant all you want to about the SS program...but...keep in mind:


those of us who draw SS benefits are doing nothing more than what we were promised we would receive, and, what we paid into all our working lives...we were FORCED, BY LAW, to pay into it...



insurance program? yes...a FORCED INSURANCE PLAN that, as stated above, would be doing fine if congress would leave it alone and quit "Borrowing" from it!

[vabeachman]

Totally Agree Dwalk,  Plus when I filed my first tax return in 1968, a dollar was worth a heck of a lot more.  I still remember the days the a 20 would fill the tank, pay for movie tickets, get ice cream sundaes afterwards and still have change left over.

[garbhead]

The good old days:  If you had $5, you could fill your 66 Mustang up w/gas and buy 2  6-packs of Bud. Course that was 2-1/2 hrs work. Takes $60 now to do the same thing. Guess minimum wage needs to be
$24/hr...?   When I was a kid groceries were about $5/ per bag.  Now its $20 for a smaller plastic bag.

[twoshooter]

I in fact had a 66 mustang, it was my first car. Regular was 17.9 a gallon, Ethyl was 18.9. I was making 1.25 an hour.

[Oldshooter]

Totally Agree Dwalk,  Plus when I filed my first tax return in 1968, a dollar was worth a heck of a lot more.  I still remember the days the a 20 would fill the tank, pay for movie tickets, get ice cream sundaes afterwards and still have change left over.

My grown children hate to hear that. I use it, or a variation of it all the time.
1968 gas was 18.9 cents a gallon at the shamrock in my home town.
 
 I do understand how people feel that paid in for so long and dont get benefits from SS. My son gets a SS check due to the fact he has CP. He is almost 28 now. It makes his life better, (gets to go to a day camp and be with his peers and enjoys it immensely). So if i never see a penny of SS its OK, he does and it is a blessing.
 
 

[ultramag44]

Social security IS a ponzi scheme. You do NOT pay for all your own benefits. Social security is an INSURANCE program, and part of the reason the rates were set where they are is because they expected a good number of people to die before they could collect. Just like ANY life insurance program, only it is not calculated to produce excess profits for any stockholders.
     At the rate I will draw, I would exhaust what I and the government put in in about 8-9 years. When the program was started, 74 was way above the average life expectancy. All the tables and estimates now predict I will make 83. The extra will be made up by the next generation.This is the bridge, the responsibility of one generation to the next, we pay for them up front, they help us on the back side.     

When SS started, the average age of death was 68.5 years.  The government banked on  a recipient would work about 40 years, pay in by force of law, then drop dead in 3.5 years.  Sure, there would be a few who lived into their 70's & 80's.  But as one poster pointed out, what about the people who paid in for 30 + years and died in their 50's?  Their $$ was forfit to the Government. 
 
What that Charlie Sieria, FDR didn't count on was the medical advances of  WWII that made the lifes expectency suddenly leap-frog to 72 years!  Korea, Vietnam, Irak wars kept pushing the envelope.  The fastest growning age group is now 90 + !   In 1950, there were 16 workers to pay benefits to every recipient.  now, there are 3! 
 
Another thing they never foresaw was US families shrinking (less children.  The people who's children have the greatest income potential (= more tax $$ to the government), are having less children!  Those children (who aren't being born) were the ones they counted on to produce, pay taxes, live independently and carry every one else.  Now, the ones having big families are the cohort MOST LIKELY to have minimal ability to pay in or to simply not work and ride the 47% gravey train. 
 
Part of obamacare is the "health-care-manager" who, (not you & your doctor) will make the decisions about your health care. The "health-care-manager" will view every person as either a tax asset or a tax liability.   They will simply block the older people, or those w/ little or no ability to pay in any more tax $$, to receive adaquate care.   As obamma said about the one fellows' grandmother: "Just give her a pain pill and let her go."
Time to withdraw from the UN and close the building within 30 days.  Withdraw from NATO, SEATO.  Stop ALL foreign aid cold.  Tell China we will only pay the principle on loans, No interest; tough tootles.  Live within a ballanced budget.  There's still time...if we act NOW!

[Oldshooter]

Part of obamacare is the "health-care-manager" who, (not you & your doctor) will make the decisions about your health care. The "health-care-manager" will view every person as either a tax asset or a tax liability.   They will simply block the older people, or those w/ little or no ability to pay in any more tax $$, to receive adaquate care.   As obamma said about the one fellows' grandmother: "Just give her a pain pill and let her go."

Prolly so! If you get old and quit paying(Taxes) in you likly be told to go home and get your affairs in order and be comfortable. 

[garbhead]

I in fact had a 66 mustang, it was my first car. Regular was 17.9 a gallon, Ethyl was 18.9. I was making 1.25 an hour.

They were fun little cars.. My first one was a bluish silvery 289 4-spd coupe...I rolled it and hit a tree while upside -down.they said hitting the tree on the 2nd roll probably saved my life  seatbelt? no   stupid?   yes....My next one was a red 66 fastback 289 c4 (why did i ever sell that one ?))Stupid yes again

[vabeachman]

First things first.  Pay back the money that was taken out of it.  Pay back the IOUs.  Until that is done nothing will ever be solved.  Old Age, Survivors, and Disability insurance shouldn't be used as the governments piggy bank. 

[guzzijohn]

MY wife was an IT professional and died at 45. She paid a lot of money into the system just to get a $200 burial benefit. At least it could pay out a reasonable funeral cost amount.
GuzziJohn