Larry Blanchard wrote:
In article ,
says...
2) We The Sheeple (tm) want our votes bought and paid for. Whether it is Bush
paying off the Elder Moochers or Kerry paying off Lazy and Stupid Moochers,
we are largely becoming a nation of, well, ... Moochers.
I'm an "Elder Moocher" who paid 15% of his self-employed income into SS
for many years at or near the maximum rate. Explain to me how I'm
"mooching" if I want to get some of it back? Even without assuming any
interest, just converting what I paid in into todays dollars makes it
clear it'll be a long time before I break even.
And don't forget that SS eligibility age and average lifespan are very
close to each other. A lot of people never collect or collect for very
few years.
BTW, I agree with a lot of what you said, especially on the inability to
get elected by being honest.
1) You _should_ get out of the system what you were forced to pay into
it. OTOH, the system needs to be eliminated entirely over time
because any given individual could easily do far better than the
government has from a return-on-investment POV.
2) You may be the exception, but the majority of SS recipients will take
out far _more_ than they ever paid in. I don't have the cite handy
but iirc the "average" pensioner extracts all "their" money within
the first decade or so. This will further pollute the health of
the retirement system as lifespans continue to increase.
Here's a little "back of the envelope" calculation. The average
per capita income in the US (2000 census), is just a shade under
$22k. Now, lets pretend that someone made that every year for
the last 45 year - a bad assumption because the average income in
1959 was _way_ lower than this. Now, let's calculate their
15% payin:
$22,000 * 45 * .15 = $148,500
Now, assume an average SS payout of $1300/mo. We get a total time
to break even of:
$148,500 / $1300 = ~114 months or about 9 1/2 years
Obviously, this is an overly-simple analysis:
a) No compounding effect on the contribution is considered -
but that's actually reasonable because _the government NEVER
invested that money_, it spent it. The only sense in which it
"grew" in value was due to: i) Inflation and ii) A larger economy
+ high taxation rates increased federal revenues.
b) The actual "average income" was far less than $22K for
the past 45 years. I'd guess (and that's all it is)
it is more like $10K. In that case, using the same
calculations as above, we get a break even at just over
4 years.
c) This is the _average_ case. People who made less will
begin mooching sooner. People who paid more may never
end up dipping into the public coffers beyond what they
paid. But, the system as a whole is a very bad idea,
a lousy investment for everyone, and just another way
FDR promoted his socialist agenda to the detriment of
the American people.
3) I was not so much focused on Social Security, but rather outright
money grants like the new Drug Benefit. It is ghastly expensive,
is not funded by any prior contributions, and is nothing more than
a wealth redistribution scheme.
IMO, we should phase out ALL social programs - over time, giving back any
contributions people have made in a fair manner - because private sector
retirement investement is a far better deal for everyone. The recipients
benefit far more, and actual money (instead of government promises to pay
in the future) is injected into the financial system.
Some relevant info at:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0306-15.pdf
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Tim Daneliuk
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