Beating Social Security

[rightwinger]

PC never, ever supports her allegations that she makes up.

After a week...I am still waiting for her to show how she would "beat" social security

 

[Skull Pilot]

Anyone who had control of the 15% of their life time income confiscated by the government for SS would be much better off and I daresay would have something left to leave their families when they die

SS is nothing but guaranteed government dependence

The 15.3% does more than provide retirement benefits. You are really talking about 10.6% (soon to be less because of DI). They would be worse off if they keep the 15%, 10.6%, 10% if the government has to raise income taxes in order to pay benefits to existing retirees. Unless you will tell retirees to pound sand, the deal you are suggesting does nothing but change the name of the tax.

Any transition would require some sort of grandfather clause and even the so called extra benefits are pretty crappy

SS disability is one of the worst out there in fact any private DI would be less expensive and provide much better benefits

I find it funny that any private pension fund would be deemed illegal if current contributions were used to pay out benefits but you people think it's just fine for the government to do it

 

[Freewill]

 

[NYcarbineer]

Justice Cardozo was not just a judge. He sat on the Supreme Court and his writings on the Social Security constitutionality was a response to the SCOTUS ruling the Social Security was constitutional. When Supreme Court rules something is constitutional it is or becomes constitutional. Claims that SCOTUS rulings are unconstitutional are nothing more than meaningless opinions with absolutely no legal standing.
If you were to read the 1937 SCOTUS rulings you would learn that Social Security was written so that the taxes collected to fund it fit into the category of an excise tax and the Courts confirmed the funding as being excise taxes.

Yes, the Supreme COurt has a very long historn of using the Constitution as toilet paper.

waaa.

Got a better idea for determining the constitutionality of laws?

Absolutely!

Use the Constitution.

Reagan saved Social Security when he could have let it go bankrupt.

Are you using a different Constitution than Reagan's?

And this is why brain-dead ideologues are called 'Lock-Step Liberals.'

Learn this from the first Republican President:

"Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 16, 1854),

So Reagan was wrong on one of the most important domestic socio-economic issues of our times.

Let's hear you say that.

"Reagan should have let Social Security go bankrupt."

lol, see how extreme the RWnuts have gotten in this country?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Tell me how many of you have actually figured out how much money you would have if you had invested the 15% of your life time income instead of it being confiscated by the fucking government?

I have and if I had had control of it I would be retired already

The payroll tax isn't 15%.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Yes, the Supreme COurt has a very long historn of using the Constitution as toilet paper.

waaa.

Got a better idea for determining the constitutionality of laws?

Absolutely!

Use the Constitution.

Reagan saved Social Security when he could have let it go bankrupt.

Are you using a different Constitution than Reagan's?

And this is why brain-dead ideologues are called 'Lock-Step Liberals.'

Learn this from the first Republican President:

"Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 16, 1854),

So Reagan was wrong on one of the most important domestic socio-economic issues of our times.

Let's hear you say that.

"Reagan should have let Social Security go bankrupt."

lol, see how extreme the RWnuts have gotten in this country?

REagan was nothing but another big government hack dressed in small government sheep's clothing

 

[JoeTheEconomist]

If you want to "beat" Social Security, you have to come up with a solution that is better.

All the proposals I have seen assume Social Security is just torn up and we start from scratch. We can't do that. Hundreds of millions of Americans have already paid in or are now living off of Social Security. Any proposal to "beat" Social Security would have to provide a methodology to transition off of Social Security while you move to some sort of savings plan

Hard to do that without raising withholding or slashing benefits

TOTAL BS.

There have been a myriad of proposals out there that don't tear up the system but seek to transform it over decades to something that forces responsibility on those who otherwise would wind up destitute and rewards those who are more pro-active.

Why would a millionare need to save for his retirement through the government ?

Name one and we can discuss

I've already listed one.

1. You start by personalizing S.S. That means you get a statement that says this is what you put in, your interest, and balance. It is handled by the government. Not wall street. That money is yours for retirement. When you start taking out, your balance goes down. If you run out, you go on minimum support from the government (and I do mean minimum) because now you are on welfare.
2. When you pass, remaining money in your account goes to your designated heirs. It beefs up their accounts.
3. If an account hits a minimum, then you have the choice to stop paying in. This might 1,000,000 or 2,000,000. It depends on when you plan to retire.
4. We stop the employer portion and take it all from the employee. Initially, employers would be required to add that to their employees salaries until things equilibrate. That way people see how much money is going into the system. Many people today do not realize that their employer pays an equal amount into S.S.
5. We lift the cap on S.S. We don't raise it. We go to the top and work our way back down. Below 150K, it becomes progressive.
6. With the extra revenue from (5), we start to cut back the contribution of those at the bottom (again it be somewhat progressive to start) to the general fund and start the personalized funds. It makes no difference to the bottom line. With the extra revenue and the existing general fund, it simply means that we are now starting to accumulate people's actual balances. The %'s will shift over time.
7. We means test the rich off the program. I don't like it, but that's gotta happen. Again, it is progressive and only starts with people who have incomes above some silly level like $100,000 a year (maybe they only get 90% of they were slated to collect).
8. We bust the elderly and anyone else who is scamming the system. And I mean we come down hard on them. This is a violation of trust and if you steal from the elderly you are going to PAY dearly....that includes a reduction of benefits and loss of property.

All this gets moved around and arranged so that on day 1, the percentage going to personalized accounts is 1/2 percent (the other 13+% going to the general fund. In a year, it shifts a little more.

We will need to look at the general fund to see if there need to be adjustments.

If we start today, 40 years from now everyone's contributions go to personalized accounts. We've done away with Pay-go and we have a general fund for those who run out of cash before they pass away.

How the money gets handled on the government side will be another discussion. Harvard has actuaries who kick the crapp out of the stock market every year. We would pull some of them in and make safe investments (like mortgages where you have a 30% downpayment...imagine interest rates if you had all that money looking for a safe haven).

This isn't comprehensive and it certainly needs to be moved around.

But something LIKE THIS beast the living s**t out of the current system.

Don't even bother to respond with a rebuttal unless you can show me WITH NUMBER how the two compare.

It is going to be difficult to give you numbers to compare when your list doesn't have hard numbers. 5 and 6 seem to be a wash. #7 sounds great but it will save you a very small amount.

Today SS gets 10.6 (it is about to get closer to 10 because of DI). So you are looking at 1/2 percent going to a private account and 9.5 percent going to SS. At 1/2 percent a typical worker will get to $1,000,000 somewhere around 70 years.

These figures are aggressive. The worker starts @ 28K, and gets 3% real raises for 45 years. He invests the money 100% in stocks earning 6.5% real. After 45 years, he has about $529,000. What are you going to do for the minimum wage worker?

He may require a boost or it may be a minimum payment which means he is going to pay a greater percentage. They have to be on track for some minimum when they retire or become disabled.

Speaking of which, unemployment insurance would go away and would be paid into this account too. There are some other things that might go into the account too. If you become unemployed, you get a check from this account.

When you are employed again...you are going to pay in extra to recover. Your parents could move some of theirs to yours if they wanted to cover you too.

5 and 6 are supposed to be a near wash.

7 has to happen as does 8.

I will grab some of my old spreadsheets. But, the 1/2% goes to 1% at some point and will steadily grow. The overall burden will swell at some point and will be helped again by the guys with the big dollars. In 20 years, the average worker will be putting something like 1/2 of his social security into his personal account. In 40 years, the guy starting out puts it
all in there.

In total you want to make SS a welfare program (not sure to the degree). Having researched SS for 5 years, I can tell you the cheapest version is end the program and transfer the resources to an actual welfare program.

I may have already shared this with you, but it explains the false promises of the Bush 2005 proposal. Yours is better than what he suggested, but you ought to make the same mistakes. The economic returns of Social Security were wildly overstated, and he made legacy SS costs a ward of the state.

What are your projections for 7 and 8.

What I see is a massive legacy cost that will be shifted to the general taxpayers. That is no more realistic than saying leprechauns will pay for the system.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Tell me how many of you have actually figured out how much money you would have if you had invested the 15% of your life time income instead of it being confiscated by the fucking government?

I have and if I had had control of it I would be retired already

The payroll tax isn't 15%.

Excuse me but you are forgetting about the employer contribution

What's the matter you forget about the other times I've informed you of this?

 

[JoeTheEconomist]

SS is most easily reformed and will continue without any problems financially for the American people. SS is a program that Jesus Christ would approve.

====
All they have to do is take the Earnings Cap off and SS would be solvent forever.

If they just raised the Earnings Cap to $250,000 SS would be good to the year 3000.

Hauling the frauds off to jail would be useful too.

Nobody wants to see granny going off to prison....but cheating is cheating.

Can you elaborate on how much fraud you think exists?

 

[Camp]

Anyone who had control of the 15% of their life time income confiscated by the government for SS would be much better off and I daresay would have something left to leave their families when they die

SS is nothing but guaranteed government dependence

The people will become dependent no matter what. Not everyone has the skill or knowledge to invest and prepare for their retirement. The options seem to be forced payment into a program. Taxes Social Security is the system we have chosen. The other option would be forced investment into private firms and entities. Can't imagine forcing folks to pay into a private investment firm. Who pays when the firm invest in a looser or the market just tanks when it is time for some particular folks to retire?
The problem is not that the numbers and concept of your idea are incorrect, rather it is that over a lifetime or working, most people have periods of not really being able to afford to put a percentage of their earnings into a savings program. They will not do without things they deem necessities and priorities but will instead make excuses to skip the investment of their funds in favor or those other things. Whether it be the purchase of a chicken for a Sunday dinner or a few extra dollars for a car payment, the funds are not being invested the way they should be. It may be a weakness and people should be responsible for themselves, but it is what it is. In the end, we would end up with folks who didn't invest the way they should have and becoming persons who without assistance end up living on the sidewalks in boxes or homeless shelters, dependent on charity or the state to feed them and care for their needs. Just straight out welfare.
In one way, SS can be viewed as a scheme to force citizens to pay taxes to at least contribute to the funds that might be used to support them when they go on "welfare" if welfare is the way you choose to describe Social Security.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Tell me how many of you have actually figured out how much money you would have if you had invested the 15% of your life time income instead of it being confiscated by the fucking government?

I have and if I had had control of it I would be retired already

The payroll tax isn't 15%.

Excuse me but you are forgetting about the employer contribution

What's the matter you forget about the other times I've informed you of this?

The employer contribution is not YOUR contribution. If you end SS you end the obligation of your employer to pay that tax.

Think before you post.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Social Security works.
Ask Social Security receipients if they want it privatized

Anyone who wants a personal savings account is free to open one tax free. many employers will also provide matching funds

The point of the thread is that there are other systems and variations that work better.

Shed your Liberal biases, and admit it.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Tell me how many of you have actually figured out how much money you would have if you had invested the 15% of your life time income instead of it being confiscated by the fucking government?

I have and if I had had control of it I would be retired already

The payroll tax isn't 15%.

Excuse me but you are forgetting about the employer contribution

What's the matter you forget about the other times I've informed you of this?

The employer contribution is not YOUR contribution. If you end SS you end the obligation of your employer to kick pay that tax.

Think before you post.

Sorry but employer contribution ARE yours and therefore must be counted

ANd I never said to end the forced savings I am saying that the money should be in the individuals' hands not in the hands of the fucking government

You forget about the last time I said that as well?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Anyone who had control of the 15% of their life time income confiscated by the government for SS would be much better off and I daresay would have something left to leave their families when they die

SS is nothing but guaranteed government dependence

The 15.3% does more than provide retirement benefits. You are really talking about 10.6% (soon to be less because of DI). They would be worse off if they keep the 15%, 10.6%, 10% if the government has to raise income taxes in order to pay benefits to existing retirees. Unless you will tell retirees to pound sand, the deal you are suggesting does nothing but change the name of the tax.

"Unless you will tell retirees to pound sand blah blah blah..."


Spoken like a true statist.
After all....no one can solve their own problems without big government.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Yes, the Supreme COurt has a very long historn of using the Constitution as toilet paper.

waaa.

Got a better idea for determining the constitutionality of laws?

Absolutely!

Use the Constitution.

Reagan saved Social Security when he could have let it go bankrupt.

Are you using a different Constitution than Reagan's?

And this is why brain-dead ideologues are called 'Lock-Step Liberals.'

Learn this from the first Republican President:

"Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong."
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (October 16, 1854),

So Reagan was wrong on one of the most important domestic socio-economic issues of our times.

Let's hear you say that.

"Reagan should have let Social Security go bankrupt."

lol, see how extreme the RWnuts have gotten in this country?

Ah see, stunned silence. She won't say it. These people are gutless.

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC never, ever supports her allegations that she makes up.

After a week...I am still waiting for her to show how she would "beat" social security

There are least three given in the thread.

Stop lying.

 

[JoeTheEconomist]

Anyone who had control of the 15% of their life time income confiscated by the government for SS would be much better off and I daresay would have something left to leave their families when they die

SS is nothing but guaranteed government dependence

The 15.3% does more than provide retirement benefits. You are really talking about 10.6% (soon to be less because of DI). They would be worse off if they keep the 15%, 10.6%, 10% if the government has to raise income taxes in order to pay benefits to existing retirees. Unless you will tell retirees to pound sand, the deal you are suggesting does nothing but change the name of the tax.

Any transition would require some sort of grandfather clause and even the so called extra benefits are pretty crappy

SS disability is one of the worst out there in fact any private DI would be less expensive and provide much better benefits

I find it funny that any private pension fund would be deemed illegal if current contributions were used to pay out benefits but you people think it's just fine for the government to do it

If you grandfather the deal, then there is no way to improve the system. Someone is going to have to pound sand. The generations thereafter can improve. Until you tell someone to pound sand, all you are doing is changing the name.

DI is a problem for DI. It is a tiny fraction of the overall problem. The entire system can go away, and it adds a year to the solvency of the old-age system.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Tell me how many of you have actually figured out how much money you would have if you had invested the 15% of your life time income instead of it being confiscated by the fucking government?

I have and if I had had control of it I would be retired already

The payroll tax isn't 15%.

Excuse me but you are forgetting about the employer contribution

What's the matter you forget about the other times I've informed you of this?

The employer contribution is not YOUR contribution. If you end SS you end the obligation of your employer to kick pay that tax.

Think before you post.

Sorry but employer contribution ARE yours and therefore must be counted

NO, they are only 'yours' because the payroll tax is part of the Social Security law. End SS and that tax ends. You keep your 6% or whatever, but that's it.

 

[Skull Pilot]

PC never, ever supports her allegations that she makes up.

After a week...I am still waiting for her to show how she would "beat" social security

There are least three given in the thread.

Stop lying.

I have given multiple examples of how anyone could beat SS so anyone who wants to see them can just use the search function

 

[NYcarbineer]

PC never, ever supports her allegations that she makes up.

After a week...I am still waiting for her to show how she would "beat" social security

There are least three given in the thread.

Stop lying.

Wild speculations.

Oh btw, the American People will never destroy Social Security, so you extremists on the Right are engaging in little more than idle chatter when you discuss your 'plans'.