Millennials and Social Security…it is already included in the plan
Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research offers a smackdown of Abby Huntsman’s warnings to millenials on MSNBC.
For today I want to highlite several points. Dean Baker offers essentially Dale’s Northwest Plan as a way to deal with any problems of funding.
Center for Economic Policy and Research
lifted from an e-mail by Bruce Webb:
This represents current SS projections of wages before and Dean’s calculations after the imposition of a 0.5% each employee/employer annual boost in FICA each year from 2020 to 2050. In other words close enough to Northwest as makes no difference. And in the body of the piece Dean points out that this is enough to fully fund SS scheduled benefits through and past the 75 year window.
There are, of course, other aspects to the post that are important to the narrative. But how does Abby get airtime? She is a lot prettier than Dale Coberly? (I know, snark, but it is still true). From the CEPR post comes two facts I think need highlighted today:
The other part of Huntsman story that is even more misleading is the idea that the finances of the program poses some insoluble problem or that the program will impose an unbearable burden on millennials. In fact, average wages are projected to grow substantially in coming decades. If most millennials get their share of wage growth, then they will enjoy far higher standards of living than do workers today, even if their taxes are increased to cover the cost of a larger number of retirees.
Dan here . . . She really shouldn’t use talking points so easily dealt with. But the key point about millennials is that if their wages do not reflect increases in the economy and productivity gains, Baker summarizes:
In the last three decades most workers have not shared in the growth of the economy. Most of the gains have gone to profits or highly paid workers like Wall Street traders, CEOs, and some celebrity types like Ms. Huntsman. If this pattern continues then millennials may not see rising living standards in the decades ahead. However, the risk to living standards posed by the continuing upward redistribution swamps any risks posed by a larger population of retirees. It is understandable that those who benefit from the upward redistribution would prefer to have public attention focused on Social Security, but this focus is not based in economic reality.
It is important to point out that this difference between wages with and without the increased SS “tax” is not a cost. It is money you will get back with interest when you need it most.
It is the tragedy of Social Security that we have all learned to think about it as a “tax” when we pay it, and something like “welfare” when we collect benefits. Instead it is simply a very clever way to pay in advance for your own needs when you are too old to work, with your savings protected from inflation and market losses by “pay as you go” financing, and with an insurance component by which the workers protect each other from the possibility of ending up old without having been able to save enough for a basic retirement.
I disagree. Its a TAX.
Mike
of course it’s a “tax.” but it is also “not a tax.”
you seem to be the guy Mitt Romney had in mind when he said “they feel like victims and don’t want to take responsibility for themselves.”
Now I have nothing against taxing “the rich”, and nothing against “welfare.” But Social Security was designed by someone smarter than you and me, who insisted it not be welfare, and “put in that tax” exactly so “no damn politician can take it away from them.”
You want to play the game of demanding the rich pay for your bread. I can guarantee you how that game ends.
“If this pattern continues then millenials may not see rising living standards in the decades ahead.” Is Baker suggesting that the average American family hasn’t seen a rise in living standards over the past three decades?
“It is understandable that those who benefit from the upward redististribution would prefer to have public attention focused on Social Security, but this focus is not based in economic reality.”
Can’t find the citation right now, but one of the largest factors contributing to wealth inequality over the past three decades has been differences in direct and indirect (e.g., options) stock ownership. As I’ve argued in these comments before, Social Security flips asset allocation on its head, taking the young, where as a group they have the least amount of discretionary savings potential, the most amount of time to assume investment risk and the most future income earning potential, and forces them into an extraordinary low-risk investment strategy.
Coberly believes this to be a feature rather than a bug, But he also recognizes that with riskier investment strategy comes more volatile outcomes, so I also applaud him for being reasonably thoughtful in understanding the potential for increasing inequality resulting from his preferred policies and not complaining too much when someone bets on red and red comes in.
But others, like Baker, advocate for defined benefit systems that carry no investment risk.
Jed:
If you go to Lambert’s Krugman post, I believe you will find a BIS report and a graph I post supporting your contention on the growth of financial services. In 2008, they garnered 40% of the total profits. They were not talking about bank tellers being added and my contention is much of this is the result of the derivative market which needs little or no Labor. Ie. CDS, naked CDS tranched MBS, etc.
MJed
I guess I don’t understand your point. Risk is all very well and good for those who can afford it, and for a society that doesn’t mind the loser dying in doorways.
Social Security does not take away your opportunity to take risks, or get high returns. It does take a small amount of your money and save it for you free of all risk… except of course the risk of the politicians fooling the people who can’t afford risk to let them cut Social Security to the point where the risk of dying in doorways returns to America.
If you can’t make money “on the market” without using the money that otherwise goes to Social Security, you can’t afford the risk.
Coberly: I don’t care if it is a TAX, which it is. I don’t care if it is welfare or not.
I DO CARE if The Next Generation of WORKERS IS TAXED over the amount this generation has been.
If the new workers were making money hand over fist I WOULD STILL TAX THE RICH FOR ANY SHORTFALL. But they won’t being doing as well as this generation has done, will they? No they won’t.
We grew up when gas and cigarettes were cheap and plentiful and gold and resources were just laying in the ground waiting to be taken. Jobs were plentiful, the air was clean, labor expensive and banks were somewhat honest. Those dayz are dead and gone. Peak Oil came, the air is dirty and somewhat radioactive.
THIS economy has been mismanaged, milked dry, and left with its throat cut and bleeding to death. LEARN TO TAKE THE PAIN, don’t place the burden of YOUR comfort on the WORKERS coming up who are going to struggle ALL their lives to make ends meet because THIS GENERATION swallowed the whole nut.
Want more money for YOUR retirement? TAX THE RICH, they benefited from Disneyworld America, let them PAY for their ticket.
Jed,
trying harder to understand your point:
there is no logical connection between what Baker says and what you ask if he is suggesting: “if this pattern continues… may not see.” says nothing about “the last three decades.” but i believe that in fact Baker believes that “average” folk have not seen a rise in living standards in about three decades. I think that would be a very hard case to argue one way or the other. Depends on what you mean by living standards. The fact that everyone has a Blackberry… or something like it…. does not make up, in my mind, for the loss of places outside for kids to play.
And I would argue that the jobs people can get nowadays are much much less in the way of “better living standards” than they ought to be, could be.
Similarly I find it hard to follow you from “those who benefit from upward redistribution prefer to focus on Social Security” to “factors contributing to wealth inequality have been differences in stock ownership.”
Besides the logical disconnect, the direction of causation between owning stocks and increased wealth is to say the least hardly clear. I would suggest that Dean’s point might be just that increased wealth whether from owning stocks, or direct exploitation of poorer people, would tend to encourage the people who benefit from that to prefer to direct attention to an imaginary crisis in Social Security. I certainly cannot imagine that ending, or cutting, Social Security to enable the poor to buy more stocks would reduce inequality.
I have nothing against inequality in principle, but it does seem to me that some of the rich have now become so rich that they are making the rules for the country… so that they become richer and richer while the poor do not become richer, and don’t seem to have much to look forward to in terms of a better life for themselves or their kids.
Social Security may not solve all of this. But knowing that at some point in your life you can walk away from a bad job and do something else with your life seems to me to be a huge increase in the standard of living as compared to not knowing that you have at least that much hope.
Mike
all that bad stuff is mostly true.
so your answer to it is to go to the man in the big house and say, “Please, Sir, can I have some more?”
On the other hand, the honest rich recognize “i paid for it myself” as a legitimate claim. Peterson and friends are not honest, but even they recognize they need to cut your ability to say “i paid for it myself” before they can take it away from you.
oh, baker does not make clear
that there will be a larger number of retirees
because you are going to be living longer.
see, if you are not dead, there is one more retiree.
if you are going to live longer, you are going to have to have more money.
that is why i prefer to focus on “living longer” as opposed to “more retirees.”
YOU are NOT paying for “more retirees.” you are paying for your own longer life.
and if you can’t undertand that that’s what pay as you go does, be grateful that the people who invented social security did understand it.
Mike Meyer,
What you are not understanding is that there are taxes which are collected for varying purposes and those are clearly delineated in the legislation that describes and defines the purpose of those taxes. FICA is a “contribution” to an “insurance” plan. It’s revenues are set aside from general tax revenue and “ear marked” for use to pay Social Security benefits to those who have made those contributions during their working lives. The money (call it a contribution or call it a tax) goes into the Social Security Trust Fund. It cannot be used for any purpose other than the payment of benefits. It is denominated as special Treasury Notes so that it can earn interest paid by the U.S. Dept of the Treasury. What Treasury does with the money is no different from what Treasury does with all revenue from the sale of Treasury Notes.
The purpose is to have a fail safe, i.e, safety net, retirement system where by workers don’t have to receive welfare in their old age. It’s well worth the cost per worker. No beneficiary or participant is prohibited from making additional retirement plans. It’s a prudent step for those that can afford to do so. One cannot live a comfortable retirement on Social Security alone, but one will not starve so long as the Social Security system is kept safe from the scum that keep trying to define it as taxation and welfare.
Raise the taxes on the rich. I second the motion. But do it through the general income tax system. Tax to the hilt the mother f—kers who have been taking out more than their fair share from the economy, But leave that argument aside from the discussions regarding Social Security. The two are unrelated financial programs.
Coberly,
Blackberries, no. Air Conditioning, dishwashers, over-the-counter allergy medicine, air travel that’s affordable for significantly larger percentage of the population, etc., definitely. As for outdoor space, probably a matter of preference, but cities are definitely cleaner and more aware of making space available, average living space is higher, which probably has cut down on outdoor space on the same sized lot, but again, seems to be a preference choice, not lower living standards.
As for wealth inequality and stock ownership, certainly true that it’s an outcome oriented consideration, the stock market could have had returns similar to the housing market over any reasonable time period and those who owned stocks would not be as wealthy as they are. But similarly, if instead of Social Security in its current construct we had a superannuation program (like Australia, for example) and if the stock market had done what it has done (unknowable), then stock ownership would likely be more diffuse and wealth inequality would likely be lower.
I’ve come across some rich people in my life, and have found them no more or less interested in politics than others, and certainly don’t believe them to have any great power in setting the rules.
Jed
I try to make a distinction between the honest rich and the not-so-honest rich. I have no problem at all with the honest rich. On the other hand, if I am willing to raise “taxes” on ordinary workers to pay for their own retirements, I don’t see any problem with raising taxes on even the honest rich to pay for “the deficit.”
As for the dishonest rich, they are a great and growing danger to the republic. And as long as Walmart workers are paid so little they qualify for foodstamps, I am willing, first of all, to raise the marginal tax rate on very high incomes, and second, to find ways to make what, say, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, do illegal and punishable.
Meanwhile, I was arguing today that more people ought to live in cities instead of trying to make small towns richer. But that doesn’t mean I support the drilling for oil in every corner of the country.
But this is adrift. Given the current state of things, and as far as I can tell the state of things since the industrial revolution if not the invention of serfs and slavery, Social Security is necessary. And I can’t see that your arguments come close to addressing that.
to be clear, it is the dishonest rich who are making the rules.and lying about Social Security.
Jack: I AGREE. Keep SS out of the loop and increase INCOME TAX on the RICH. Should a shortfall in SS occur(I believe it never will) then increase the interest rate artificially on Treasury Notes in The Trust Fund. After all, don’t the Right Wing Nuts call them “Special Treasury Bills” already? The sale is halfway closed on that point alone.
REPAIR AND INCREASE INFRASTRUCTURE will better OUR Children’s lives to old age than a few extra bucks in some assistance program. Give them a better economy, invest those RICHMAN’S TAXES into The Space Age, actually CREATE JOBS that give those college educated something to do other than MacDonalds or Burger King. BETTER SCHOOLS so The Grandkids are better educated across the board instead of OUR “No Child Gets Ahead” way of education. Why, India has better educated kids than WE do.
TAX THAT RICHMEN put it into the Treasury, stay away from blowing it on wars of choice, and SS WILL take care of itself just fine.
Dan Thanks,
You did everything in this post that I would have absent a certain fatal level of procrastination. A burden off my mind/to do list.
Damn Chromebook. I will try to delete the (BW now deleted) above via the AB Dashboard and try again later on a different machine.
Okay that extended comment is gone. See ya.
Coberly: THE TAXMAN NEVER SEZ PLEASE!!!
As I have often said, forecasting out for 75 years is a bit of a dart throw. We just do not know what is going to take place. Even forecasting out to 2031(?) is still a bit of a dart throw for the economy. So listening to Ms. Huntsman talk about the Millenniums and how they might have to retire on 80% of SS (listen carefully to her words) is a bit of a stretch. We have some assumptions that SS may be down somewhere to 72% – 78% in 2030-something; but, we will not know what the reality is for a while.
Ms. Huntsman sound more like she has been drinking the Stan Druckenmiller College Tour Kool-Aid which states the baby boomers are taking it all and leaving nothing for students. Bigger problems for Millenniums and later generations are not entitlements as Druckenmiller would have them believe, it is job creation and student loan debt. Participation Rate is at the lowest level since the early eighties. The only thing outstripping the cost of healthcare is student loan debt which directly impacts them. The probability of owning a home for a non-college graduate has surpassed that of a college graduate due the amount of debt carried in the household.
If you look at the US Census projections http://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/pop_proj/20121214_cspan_popproj.pdf for 2030 and beyond, baby boomers are on the way out starting in 2035 and are pretty much gone by 2060. Further into the power point and in 2060, the 18 and under age group goes from 24% to 21% in 2060 and the > 65 goes from 14% to 22%. This is not an astronomical take over by the elderly.
The biggest problem the US faces is Labor Employment. Getting more people back to work throws the 2030-something date for exhaustion of the TF out the window besides getting back to generating more funds through payroll wage taxes. Blaming paid for Social Security and Medicare is to cloud the issue.
Anyhoo, mu $.02
Mike,
Do you understand that your use of caps takes away from your arguments?
Not that they are any great shakes either, like:
“THIS economy has been mismanaged, milked dry, and left with its throat cut and bleeding to death. LEARN TO TAKE THE PAIN, don’t place the burden of YOUR comfort on the WORKERS coming up who are going to struggle ALL their lives to make ends meet because THIS GENERATION swallowed the whole nut. ”
One question. Who “paid” for the retirement of the Greatest Generation?
Who is going to pay(unless the Petersons of the world win) for
“THIS GENERATION” s retirement?
run
correct. it is not granny who is robbing the kids: it is Druckenmiller and friends. It’s a time honored ploy for the pickpocket to yell “thief!” and point toward someone at the edge of the crowd.
and you are correct about what needs to be done to fix the economy.
but it is not wise to let them kill SS while you are trying to stop them from wrecking the economy. paying an extra 80 cents per week per year is cheap, cheap, cheap. and it’s what we need to do so that while we are fighting the rest of the fight we don’t have to look forward to a destitute old age.
people need to understand what SS is. it is NOT welfare. the rich don’t pay for it. “the government” doesn’t pay for it. WE pay for it. It is a way to protect part of our savings from inflation and market risks and to insure ourselves against not having made enough, or saved enough, to be able to retire when we get old.
if we need welfare and wage improvement, and an end to fraud and abuse by the banksters, and government by the very very rich, we need to work on that. but we don’t need to help them kill SS in the meanwhile by either “demanding” they pay for it, or forgetting to pay for it ourselves while we try to win the revolution that it’s going to take to solve all those other problems.
coberly:
Like I said, I am “witch” you on Social Security.
jed
none of us understands much more than what we see and do every day. so i hope you won’t mind too much if i say your idea of “higher standard of living” looks pretty pathetic to me. i am glad all those people doing relatively well can now afford frequent flying. but i don’t think you realize that the “bottom” four fifths of workers will NEVER make as much from the stock market as they do from Social Security. you’d have to know a few more details about how Social Security works… and how working people live… to understand this.
should have said “two fifths” or forty percent.
of course I understand that and a big reason is that the lower 40% isn’t forced by law to allocate 10.6% of their income from their very first paycheck to the stock market.
EMichael: The Trust fund already has the money to PAY for THIS GENERATION’s retirement. PAYGO pays into The Trust Fund and also the day to day so the Trust Fund just keeps growing&growing. Grandpa’s dollar will STILL be there when the Grandkids retire. Who PAID for what is irrelevant since its all an accounting question. Was it my dollar that paid Pop’s retirement or his since BOTH went into same pot? PAYGO ain’t that much compared to contributions to the Trust Fund. Reagan made sure of that which is why SS is one of the largest lenders to the govt. PLUS it garners interest.
As far as the CAPS are concerned—THANK YOU for worrying about MY life. WE hardly know each other yet YOUR CONCERN is touching.
To put YOUR mind at ease—–I look at adding CAPS as my style, my art, my form of self expression, something that sez —me. SOME don’t care for it which saddens me greatly and I was even BANNED FROM KOS and Ace Of Spades by their monitors there—YET I feel I must press on with my simple art.
Jed
no. that is not a very big reason. you need to get out more.
jed
get out your desk calculator and figure out what lower income people could expect to earn from the stock market over a working life time. be honest and show the spread… including those who would lose everything.
then find out what those lower income people get from SS. hint: it isn’t the “average” rate of return.
now, if you are really, really smart… smarter than the Fed… figure out what would happen to the economy if all those who don’t do so well on the stock market don’t have social security to fall back on.
maybe you, with your cut of their 10% would be doing fine, but i doubt it in the long run.
by the way, you may need to figure into your calculation how much those low end workers would actually get paid if the government wasn’t forcng their employers to pay half of that 10% and the employers didn’t figure that they could cut the employees’ wage by the other half because the employees wouldn’t know they missed it.
coberly, the life insurance industry has figured out the subtext of the problem you imply. the product is called a variable annuity. it provides a minimum guaranteed return as well as participation in the upside if the underlying investments outperform the minimum guarantee.
knowing you understand insurance concepts, compare purchasing term life insurance (mortality) so that your family would have $100,000 if you were to die before you reached 60, you could either have $100,000 in your bank account as soon as you started a family, and keep it in cash for the entire time, thus guaranteeing the 100,000, or you could purchase term life insurance, which benefits from risk spreading of the fact that most 20 year-olds live well past 60.
There’s a similar concept with longevity insurance and risk spreading of compounding investment returns across different cohorts. It’s a very similar concept to Social Security, except the underlying investment vehicle has higher expected returns because there is absolutely no reason to be investing in the closest thing to a risk-less asset class for fifty years when one could be paid all sorts of premiums – time horizon, liquidity, equity risk, for allocating to a higher risk asset class.
The government can still force employers to pay half, and force employees to save.
Jed
I don’t claim to understand the insurance industry. But if you have a plan that will replace Social Security bring it out and let the experts read the details.
My guess is that you have overlooked something.
As a millenial, I read through these comments and I am fascinated at the disconnect between the biosphere and the colonial capitalistic zeitgeist.
It seems as if everyone on this post has failed to ask the most important question: Will the USA, or any OECD nation, exist in the same capacity as they are currently?
In another 60 years the exploitative, destruction of our host will effectively created a bottleneck event, that should render all the arguments here moot. Societal collapse is not a new phenomenon and we are no more prepared than the Roman, Han or Gupta Empires for these events.
Endless growth is no longer an option.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasafunded-study-warns-of-collapse-of-civilisation-in-coming-decades-9195668.html
Landyn:
Pickup Paul Kennedy’s “The Rise and The Fall of The Great Powers.” I believe it will give better definition to what you are briefly advocating. No nation has long remain a tier one power which has spent beyond GDP growth on War at the expense of domestic productivity. This in turn would include your hypothesis.
Variable annuities can lose value. In addition life insurance is typically underwritten for mortality and disability insurance is underwritten for morbidity. SS is not. I would also add that a crucial part of life insurance is the ability of the insurance company to change the premium. That’s what the NW Plan is. A change of premium. Have you ever seen what the premium of a 20 year level term policy looks like in year 21?
most variable annuities are sold today with “guaranteed living benefits” and cannot lose value below the guarantee. annuities are a longevity product, and are not underwritten (such that a longer expected life would result in more expensive premiums) and term policies are much different than whole policies (and have nothing to do with annuities, other than both are offered by life insurance companies).
and, unlike SS, a life insurance company that knowingly collected premiums that were actuarially insufficient to pay promised benefits could (a) be indicted for criminal fraud and (b) the policyholders would be senior to all other claimants on the company assets.
After the crash of 08 most carriers scaled back their VA GLB’s due to hedging costs and poor performance of the separate account assets. Plus the guarantees, whether it be income, death benefit, LTC coverage have costs. I saw a VA today from Transamerica that charged 25bps for the enhanced death benefit.
In terms life insurance pricing I guess it depends on what “actuarially sufficient” means. For the last five years conservative Northeastern mutual companies have been waging a war within the National Association of Insurance Commissioners accusing stock based life insurers of using “actuarial insufficient” pricing models. The resulting regulation, named Actuarial Guideline 38, has been adopted by all state insurance departments. It was a partial win for the stock companies. Now the two are battling over something called Principal Based Reserving. It all revolves around actuarial assumptions.
In addition you should check out a book called The Fall of First Executive. Executive Life is probably the most famous recent company distress. Backed, in their general account, by what we now called high yield bonds, purchased from Michael Milken, Executive Life had the highest yields and lowest premiums in the universal life business. When Executive failed and was taken over by California’s department of insurance nobody was ever accused of actuarial shenanigans.
In other words “actuarial sufficiency” is pretty much in the eye of the beholder.
Jed
okay, take a guy with average lifetime earnings, adjusted for inflation, of 20k per year over 35 years.
now what is the premium for a policy that will pay him, adjusted for inflation, 50% of his average lifetime income for 20 years or more (as long as he lives) also adjusted for inflation.
and what happens if he misses a payment, or five years payments along the way due to unemployment, or decision to go back to school?
and what happens if he misses a payment, or five years payments along the way due to unemployment, or decision to go back to school?
and add the cost of life insurance and disability insurance to that.
and what DOES happen when the insurance company goes bankrupt?
AND so ya see how SS is NOT an insurance policy.
Mike Meyer
no. i don’t see that. if your point is that it’s better than a commercial insurance policy, i’d say yes, that’s the whole point.
to be clear, I’m advocating for choice in asset allocation, not that private insurers should assume the risk currently assumed by taxpayers.
coberly to answer your question more directly – I assume 2k is set aside every year for 40 years, and used real historical returns for the S&P500 and 10-year treasuries (no corporate bonds, which have higher returns), and assume 0.75% fee for stock component of the portfolio and 0.50% fee for bond component of the portfolio, and assume that just because, individuals underperform not just by the fees, but by an additional 1.0% for stocks and additional 0.5% for bonds. These are not CAGRs, they’re actual returns, so that if you have a 2008, where the market is down 38% it impacts the large size of a portfolio for a person retiring in 2008. I further assume 100% allocation to stocks in years 1-10, 80% in years 11-20, 70% in years 21-30, and 60% in years 31-40.
The lowest amount this hypothetical (taken from 47 discrete rolling 40 year periods) would accumulate would be $390k. Rules of thumb for “safe” retirement withdrawals are 4%, which would equate to $15k before I try to price a VA off of a lump sum single-premium for a 60 year old.
Coberly: Better or worse, if its NOT the same as, then its not an insurance policy. An Insurance Policy is a contract with certain guarantees. SS is NOT a contract.
Where is the guarantee?
Don’t get caught up in semantics. SS is more like insurance than an investment.
Its NOT an investment either. Its a TAX used to lend money to The Treasury through the purchase of T-Bills which, by the way, most likely will never be needed to be redeemed.
Jed
thanks. i’d have to see the details and ask a few real experts to understand.
mike
sorry, but you just don’t want to understand. the guarantee is from the United States of America. that used to mean something. i am not sure it will in the future if people like you… too many people like you… don’t understand Social Security and don’t stand up for it.
If the guarantee of the US Government is not good, NO guarantee under the laws of the US Government is going to be good either.
SS has paid all valid claims for over 70 years.
Jed
i’ll have to check to be sure, but i think i calculated that for SS to pay the benefit scheduled for a life expectancy of 20 years after retirement, the value of the annuity would have to cost 534k for a low wage worker, 701k if he has a wife on his account
962k for a med wage worker, 1244k with wife
1351k for a high wage worker, 1762 with wife
if i remember, this assumes the same interest as “would be earned” by those same workers in order to reach that value with the contributions determined by their wage level.
you might want to check me. but details are everything.
Coberly:
I’m NOT saying ANYTHING IS WRONG with Social Security, YOU ARE.
I’m saying that IT WORKS NOW and will continue to work. Are YOU not reading what I have written all along even YEARS AGO at Maxspeak and here and even unto above @ Mar 16, 2:52pm?
I have at NO TIME SAID IT DOESN’T OR WON’T WORK. That’s YOUR LINE.
I understand that YOU, in YOUR fears that someday in the far, far future, will somehow be cheated out of ALL YOU have worked so very hard for or even just some of it, but its a false fear. YOU want to TAX someone thinking, like a drowning man grasping for a straw, that it will somehow save YOU when there is NO NEED to fear at all.
U&I and ALL here will not live long enough to spend ALL that money in The Trust Fund.
IT IS A TAX AND THE TAXMAN WILL ALWAYS SHOW UP AT THE DOOR. He will most assuredly collect said TAX to make sure The Trust Fund will NEVER run out. Therefore YOU will always get SOMETHING in YOUR SS Check each month, YOU will NOT starve.
“…It is money you will get back with interest when you need it most.”
LOL @ Coberly. This topic is way over your head. SS is a ponzi scheme plain and simple.
Jamie:
The only one’s head this topic is over, is yours. When the Dean Bakers and Barkley Rossers, and other prominent economists can take notice of Coberly and Bruce’s words and plans for Social Security, I hardly believe this to be over Coberly’s head. However that may be, I am interested in hearing why you believe so. Sally forth with your data and good intentions to save us from the almighty Ponzi scheme called Social Security. This not quite an economist would endeavor to know the truth.
Don’t hold your breath, run. His/her statement alone is sufficient to show that they are a troll.
Jamie is obviously not paid by the word. Maybe by the drive by? Signing CPA…hmmm,