Hearing the various discussions about the state of social security and other entitlements and perhaps the need for some other "mandatory" plan begs the question....is it a good thing at all or does it in fact take money away from the well-being of its citizens? How do low income and minority participants fare.....? I found an interesting analysis on the rate of return realized by social security.....the piece is a bit dated and the recent equity market pullback could change the numbers a bit, but the answer remains the same...... http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1998/01/social-securitys-rate-of-return
For those of us past 55 it's a little too late to worry about the comparison. What's done is done and now I want the rate of return that I have been seeing in the past few years in my semi-annual SS letters.
I've always grown up being taught that this rouse will never be there by the time I am old enough to use the program. It's always been a tool to stir the elderly politically one way or the other..I say burn it.
The younger you are , the easier it sounds to just throw it away. For us 57 somethin gs and older, the idea of all that money we have paid in being gone forever doesn't go down so easy. And its not like we ever had a choice......
My takeaway on these things is this, like much that the central government puts its hands on, the unintended consequences of this particular program is such that they end up doing disproportionate damage to the very constituency they are designed to assist.....educated, disciplined and/or knowledgeable consumers have always been vastly better off keeping this money and saving it themselves and keeping it in the local economy/community......the argument goes that low income, low education, single parent households, et al need this kind of mandatory/forced savings program to provide them with some vehicle by which to accumulate wealth for their retirement years.....the evidence suggests that this is precisely the group that has the greatest negative effect - and yet the libs continue to advocate these programs to the detriment of their core constituency.......what does that say? Not unlike minimum wage......the evidence is overwhelming in showing that the greatest negative effect is upon young, low educated and/or minority workers......the very workers they say they want to "help" and those uninformed masses continue to believe.......go figure. What is that about "blind", unthinking lemmings following the partisan rhetoric?
Should Tina Turner have stuck with Ike because the music was good? Sometimes you have to cut your losses.. Granted, I'm not in my early, mid or late 50s but I am 41 and I never had a choice either... at least most teachers (liberal or conservative) that I ever had as a kid have always told me they can't see this being around by the time I retire. Now, add to the fact that this is a Ponzi scheme but you have the massive baby boomer generation entering retirement.. it's going to break.
It's not just the Ponzi scheme nature of the program. It's the additional fact that the fund was "invested" in US Treasuries. Now they can make an arguement that this is a safe investment but the arguement fails if the US credit rating goes into the crapper because some ruling political party thinks that they can spend as much as they want and then turn around and just raise taxes to cure the financial disaster that they've brought upon the country.
Check out the tremendous increase in the national debt during the Bush years as opposed to the Clinton years: http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html Yes the Bush record is better than the past two years but while the stimulus money invested by the government that contributed to the last two years is part of it ( and still yet to be finally judged in effectiveness ) the deepest recession since the Depression has to be partly responsible. For example the tax and fees revenue collect by the US Gov't. in 2005 was 4.2 trillion dollars as opposed to the 3.7 trillion collected in 2009. A difference of 500 billion dollars.
This is completely irrelevant in terms of solving our present challenges. Why is it that supporters of this administrations are spending more time making irrelevant historical comparisons than they are encouraging the Chief Executive to do his job? I'm just not sure how that helps anything... Let's see.....Clinton inherited a world that had just experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ability to cut the defense budget as a direct result of the efforts of the Reagan/Bush administrations that preceded him.....to praise Clinton for his management of the federal budget without giving credit to those most responsible for the reasons for his ability to do so is just a little too specious for my tastes.....it's the exact opposite of the Obama syndrome of ...."it's my predecessors fault". You can't have it both ways..... Bush inherited a Clinton recession (yes, it's true) and a horrific enemy attack on civilian population centers necessitating a material ramp up in defense/security spending.....that said, Bush didn't endear himself to fiscal conservatives with his federal spending on education and prescription drug care. All the above notwithstanding, to put things into proper perspective, federal non-defense spending increased 4.1% per year under Clinton and 5.9% under Bush......the drunken sailor in office now is increasing federal spending at a rate of of 17.4% per year.....as if he just won the lottery 3x the rate of Bush and it's Bush's fault.....let's dispense of this ..... what are your plans for getting us out of this mess now Mr President?
I like the AARP commercial out now in Florida that says leave our hard earned benefits alone and cut out "shrimp testing on treadmills", "pickle technology", etc. etc. If the general public truly thought the GOP or tea party would eliminate...eradicate.... even their own earmarks then the GOP would win the next election hands down. But that gets us back to one of my premises.......the people are wising up and starting to trust no one......and moderates trust the GOP even less than the Dems mostly because the GOP works so damned hard at protecting those that are swimming in cash and yet talk freely of taking away from those that barely make it financially.
First of all it's no coincidence that the largest 2 years on the graph are ones with a Democratic president and congress. Second, after 911 we were forced to undergo drastic changes in our society costing billions of dollars. They include the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security and of course the hiring of thousands of TSA employees. We had to increase security on our borders and in our ports. We undertook the cost of war in the Middle East. (a war I might add supported initially by Democrats.) Here's one of the many reasons spending is so high http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm
If by that you mean that the GOP is supportive of efforts to expand the economy creating greater opportunities for all, I would suggest that is a good thing......why should the GOP not protect the rights of citizens to swim in their own cash if they choose? Why do you not find it offensive that the socialists seek to limit you from reaping the rewards of your own efforts? Whose cash is it? At what point did you first begin to realize that your views were in direct conflict with the principles laid out by the Founding Fathers? That you no longer believed in the fundamental tenets upon which this great society was founded? The GOP just doesn't believe you can give everybody more dessert by acting in a manner that will make the pie get smaller......
You've got that trickle down party line thing down pat. I will never buy into it because I have worked for ownership in the past that just didn't believe in that nonsense even though they espoused it politically. By the way.....one Porche employs one service tech or one truck driver for a short period of time whereas how many jobs would the owners of 15 Chevy's support.......if they could afford to buy the damn Chevy's? Why is it so okay to protect what millionaires have but it's quite fine to keep taking more and more from the common man? Just remember that not everyone who is not a millionaire is black, jobless and living in a ghetto.
The vacationer-in-chief has left for his holiday weekend... <object><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kiO2iwAgbFs?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kiO2iwAgbFs?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>
Consider the hilarity in arguing that the "rich" need to pay more taxes to a government that has mismanaged a social security system to the point of extinction and guys like Dave stand to lose every single penny they have paid into it. What we should be discussing is not paying any tax at all. What other enterprise would you invest in where you are practically guaranteed to lose your ass? None of us have ever had an employee as bad as your typical congressman. They can't do anything right.
The commercial makes me want to puke. This is the same AARP that endorsed the Obama Health Care Plan. To sell this piece of crap as deficit "neutral" they had to steal 500 BILLION from medicare. Of course they endorsed the program that stole money from medicare because they were being cut a sweet deal on insurance to cover medicare gaps. AARP stuck it in the back of seniors and now they run this commercial???? **** them.
Who suggested that? Generations of empirical research and behavioral science have no chance against the dreaded "focus group of one"! You've completely lost me on the Porsche/Chevy thing....more of both is a good thing,no? Less of both is a bad thing.....are you suggesting we forcibly confiscate the Porsches, sell them and buy Chevy's for the downtrodden and society is better off? Really comrade? I don't get it..... :lol: