You can already invest your 401K or IRA in private investments. What do you gain by investing your Social Security funds?
My point exactly. Just a way of a stock market tax on us?
and someone will make lots of money managing those funds.
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You can already invest your 401K or IRA in private investments. What do you gain by investing your Social Security funds?
I gain actually receiving my Social Security funds, because currently I'm on course of not getting a dime of it back because of you and your generation.
Furthermore, the average return on the stock market over the long haul is 11% per year. The average return on Social Security is around 3% per year.
I wouldn't blame it on a generation. His generation paid for your grandma. Blame it on the mismanagement of the politicians who stole the treasury and left I.O.U's.
And who elected them?
The Baby Boomers are going to bring this country to its knees. They are greediest, most selfish and self centered generation this nation has ever seen. They don't know the meaning of sacrifice that their parents did.
You can already invest your 401K or IRA in private investments. What do you gain by investing your Social Security funds?
You can already invest your 401K or IRA in private investments. What do you gain by investing your Social Security funds?
My point exactly. Just a way of a stock market tax on us?
and someone will make lots of money managing those funds.
You support allowing people to invest some or all of the SS payments into private account?
Say what?the government is already privatized.
You support allowing people to invest some or all of the SS payments into private account?
So, the money I earned before the feds expropriated 15+% of it wasn't mine to begin with?A lot of this argument is based off the false assumption that what you pay into Social Security is "your money." It's not, and every time I hear that it means you have another person who doesn't understand how the system works.
Yeah..."People", except for the overbearing elitist snobs who notice that everyone else is stupid.The second problem is that people are stupid. I guarantee that a double digit % of the population would lose every single cent of what they were allowed to invest from Social Security.
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and intergenerational theft, plain and simple....And the few timid "reforms" proposed for it won't change that underlying fact.Social Security is there as a safety net in an attempt to assure that a person won't end up on the street eating cat food after a lifetime of hard work when they get tossed from a corporation due to ageism. Leave it be. The program, as is currently run, could be saved if folks were willing to make a few tough reforms.
So, the money I earned before the feds expropriated 15+% of it wasn't mine to begin with?A lot of this argument is based off the false assumption that what you pay into Social Security is "your money." It's not, and every time I hear that it means you have another person who doesn't understand how the system works.
Yeah..."People", except for the overbearing elitist snobs who notice that everyone else is stupid.The second problem is that people are stupid. I guarantee that a double digit % of the population would lose every single cent of what they were allowed to invest from Social Security.
Could you be just a little bit more full of yourself?
Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and intergenerational theft, plain and simple....And the few timid "reforms" proposed for it won't change that underlying fact.Social Security is there as a safety net in an attempt to assure that a person won't end up on the street eating cat food after a lifetime of hard work when they get tossed from a corporation due to ageism. Leave it be. The program, as is currently run, could be saved if folks were willing to make a few tough reforms.
I don't ever presume that I or anyone else is better at living your life for you than you are.There's a great deal of irony in that last line considering your standard M.O. is one of talking down to folks, but c'est la vie.
I grew up poor. I grew up in a household where in the summers lunch was a meal that didn't always happen. I ate bread and butter sandwiches as a kid. I qualified for the free lunch program in the school year, the only 9 months or so of the year I could be pretty sure I'd have three meals a day. My parents shopped at bargain basement grocery stores and swallowed their pride when they had to and went to the food banks. I was informed at a very early age that I'd have to pay for my own schooling. And I did.
Nobody is "handing" anyone anything, by letting them keep what's theirs in the first place, to save, invest or spend as they see fit.As such, I feel pretty confident in saying that if you hand a person money to invest in Wall Street who has no basic knowledge of how Wall Street works, they indeed will lose that money quickly. It may not be their own actions that loses it either. How many financial planners fleece their investors every year. It wasn't exactly stupid folks that invested with Bernie Madoff.
That doesn't even begin to cover the stupid folks who will just piss the money away at the first chance they get.
Nobody is "handing" anyone anything, by letting them keep what's theirs in the first place, to save, invest or spend as they see fit.
You support allowing people to invest some or all of the SS payments into private account?
No.
A lot of this argument is based off the false assumption that what you pay into Social Security is "your money." It's not, and every time I hear that it means you have another person who doesn't understand how the system works.
The second problem is that people are stupid. I guarantee that a double digit % of the population would lose every single cent of what they were allowed to invest from Social Security.
Social Security is there as a safety net in an attempt to assure that a person won't end up on the street eating cat food after a lifetime of hard work when they get tossed from a corporation due to ageism. Leave it be. The program, as is currently run, could be saved if folks were willing to make a few tough reforms.
It's elitist when you proclaim "people are stupid" as a blanket statement.
So, is bank robbery equally "not a problem", as long as you can get away with?...Are you serious?It's elitist when you proclaim "people are stupid" as a blanket statement.
See my sig line. I'm a big believer in the idea that individual persons are pretty smart. You sit down with folks, give them the tools to come to their own conclusions and the resources to do the work, and 9 times out of 10 they will.
The problem is that "people" are stupid Turning a large group loose with no prior knowledge or training guarantees that at best you get a large mess, and at worst you get a lynch mob.
If the idea of personal investment as an alternative to Social Security were accompanied by a quality education on how to responsibly spend money, I'd be fine with that. The problem is that I teach at the college level, and from what I've seen responsible living is never once addressed by parents, or schools, or the world at large. The kids I've seen are reasonably smart, but are turned loose like babes in the wood. The credit card industry, cell phone industry, etc are making a killing off these kids and those are the legal enterprises.
As to the other point: Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? Sure. That isn't a problem though as long as it is working.
So, is bank robbery equally "not a problem", as long as you can get away with?...Are you serious?
At what point are people "allowed" to take responsibility for their own lives?
Your approach prevents the thrifty and industrious from becoming literal millionaires, in the name of a "safety net" for those who aren't....It codifies general mediocrity of the many, in the name of ameliorating the incompetence, sloth and shortsightedness of a relative few.
Agreed and I think this does need to be emphasized. Whatever traveler wants to put forth, that money IS yours and YOU put it up though you do not have the choice to or not.You pay in your whole life for food stamps and you don't get them, just because a happenstance of the calendar.So now you can explain how people who work their whole lives paying in "do nothing" to earn Social Security.
Just because you have a completely separate program called "Social Security" doesn't mean it's not ultimately a handout.
Now that has to rank among the most ignorant statements of all time. Anytime you get back something you paid in on cannot, by any means, be considered a "handout".
What makes you view the stock market as 'extremely risky?' That is an asinine statement. Dropping all of your money into buggy stocks as the automobile comes out is risky but the one fact of the stock market is that over time it is guaranteed to increase. In the short term there is no stability but with a diversified portfolio and a sound investment strategy you WILL make money. how much is another matter.You support allowing people to invest some or all of the SS payments into private account?
As long as it is by choice and not by mandate. It is their money, they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it. Including, but not limited to, leaving it where it is.
I would maybe agree with this but putting a sure thing into something extremely risky like the stock market is not a smart plan.
You only say that because you do not seem to understand the full scope of privatization. You do not need to turn social security into a gambling program to privatize it. There are better ways.You support allowing people to invest some or all of the SS payments into private account?
No.
A lot of this argument is based off the false assumption that what you pay into Social Security is "your money." It's not, and every time I hear that it means you have another person who doesn't understand how the system works.
The second problem is that people are stupid. I guarantee that a double digit % of the population would lose every single cent of what they were allowed to invest from Social Security.
Social Security is there as a safety net in an attempt to assure that a person won't end up on the street eating cat food after a lifetime of hard work when they get tossed from a corporation due to ageism. Leave it be. The program, as is currently run, could be saved if folks were willing to make a few tough reforms.
Crap, I am agreeing with Wry, maybe I should reevaluate my positionSocial Security payments should be placed in a locked box away from the greedy hands of legislators, banksters and Wall Street tycoons. It should be invested in safe and well regulated accounts earning low but secure interest.
The crooks and liars see social security as a gold mine to be plundered, and the crooks and liars don't care if the aged and infirm live out their lives selling apples on the streets.
Banksters and Brokers provide little and take lots. Payments into social security should not be capped.