Social Security...raise the bottom lower the top!!

I think it`s time to take a good look at S.S. The bottom end is way to low...and the top simply doesn`t need to be so high. Right now things sound fine to CEO`s and their buddies. But how about garbage collecters and the folks that struggle all thier lives at Wallmart to keep us in cheap goods. These are the ones who can`t invest much if any in stocks, houses, ect. Their to busy working hard for food...and what about folks that become disabled. Even worse.

The folks that need it the least get the most.

I think it should be redistributed differant...same money...lower the top/raise the bottom! Whats so hard about that! (other than greed by those who get the most)

What does your concense tell you about this topic?

Ken

If you mean fix it by taking out a larger percentage for those making low money, and a smaller percentage for those making high money, so that the low end people would have more SS, and the high end people less SS, then I'm all for it. But somehow, as logical as that is, it won't happen because it SOUNDS like it's stealing from the poor.

Your SS retirement is based on how much you put into it. The money I have in my SS account is the money I earned, and that was taken from me by the goverment, to theoretically give back to me later when I retire. I'd be upset if this were given to somebody else, or "redistributed" to somebody that didn't earn as much money as I did.

Or, the short version - we're way to socialistic as it is.

Keep in mind many retirees can`t afford to go out to eat...or go to Disney or a movie or sometimes even buy a car. Wouldn`t this help the economy and create more jobs while raising our standard of living.

Many doctors help retirees...if a expensive over the counter drug that would work just fine is available...the doctors will recommed a even more expensive prescription drug so medicaid/medicare will pay for it...this cost everyone a LOT of money,...food stamps...assisted housing...ect...so in a way you are already paying dearly. Change the way everything is done...a good start would be to raise the bottom SS payments and lower the top.

What if you become disabled and unable to work tomorrow. Would you still feel as you do now if you had to live out the rest of your life on $600 a month?

Ken

SS benefits/disability is the biggest ponzi scheme around. You contribute (no choice) all of your working life thinking that you or your family will be able to recoup your contributions later in life. However if you die, there is only a miniscule burial fee and the rest is gone.

This entitlement program is really going to bankrupt us. For instance, I have a family member who retired 20 years ago and is living off the maximum SS benefits. With modern medicine she'll live for at least another 10 years yet her receipt of benes has far exceeded her input. I'm not saying she isn't entitled to the benes because she's simply following the letter of the law but therein lies the problem.

I believe that when SS started it was something like on 8-1? ratio of taxpayers to recipients and now the number is something like 3-1. And I think the projections are that in a few years the ratio will be approximately 2-3.

Change is in order but I don't think asking those who already pay most of the taxes in the US to pay even more for lower income earners is the way to go. I think that the top 5% of income earners pay something like 40% of the taxes and those at the bottom pay very little, if anything.

Instead, SS needs to go back to it's roots: it was designed to be a supplementary program and not one's retirement. People should be allowed to priviatize a portion of their SS benefits if they choose. If there was a clear message that the job of government was not to take complete care of you, people would make some different choices and perhaps plan better for retirement. Harsh results? You bet but also very true.

Here another thing, young folks from other countries are coming over here and starting their own business...more often than not it`s a finger nail place, resterant or buying a 7-11/shop and go type place. They move their parents over here...buy a house for them to live in and employ them to answer phones or just sit around...after a while (and after the parents are over 63 or so) the parents get their citizenships. Next the parents get a dummy divorce and appliy for SSI/food stamps and everything else under the sun. One parent will claim to rent a room from their kids. The other will claim to rent a house...from there kids...it`s all fake...but they were smart enough to use our system. The parents live happily together getting $540 each SSI...$120 each food stamps...a total of $1320 a month tax free. And of course the state and federal government gives them completly free health care...including free drugs.

At the same time my mother and father inlaw (whom worked all their lives here in the US) receive less then a $1000 between the two of them (they think it`s wrong to get divorced to get extra money)...they recieve no food stamps (their to proud for this) And must pay a deductable on health care. Also they must pay a lot towards drugs.

Ken

Better yet (which would affect me), would be to eliminate SSI and prohibit 'undesirables' from getting any benefits, except lockup in mental prison or extermination. If foreign: deport.

Leave Disability (SocSec) for those who are only physically disabled and are neither nutcases nor 'undesirables'.

(Undesirable is a euphamism for a certain segment of the population, of which I am part.)

I agree with Charles Bradshaw. I would even give up what the gov has already taken from me to let me manage my own money. Does the gov think I need that much help that I can't save for myself? Come on, I made the money let ME choose how to save it. Realistically I am not counting on ever getting it back, which is really wrong.

Brock:

We all know that SS is a Ponzi Scheme. If you and your spouse each earn at the top end of the scale, the return can become negative -- particularly with the penalties imposed on people who decide to stay married or to continue working.

The prospects for benefit reductions through delayed retirement ages and means tests over the next two decades is chilling.

Chilling? I don't know. I fully expect everything I put into the system to be lost. It's the plan to take money from those of us that work. Neat thing with social security is that the people making the MOST money don't pay any. It's only paid on wages, not on any other income. Every time you raise taxes, you only hurt those in the middle and upper middle classes - the working people. You end up paying that money out to those that don't work, or who have the lowest income jobs - and who often have those jobs because their lifestyles don't let them have good jobs! Why are they working at minimum wage? Not because they have to, not in this country. It's because they CHOSE to drop out of school, or CHOOSE not to be reliable, or to drink, or whatever, or because they want to. Nobody that wants to has to be unemployed in this country. I've seen too many people with too many things against them strugle to make something of themselves to believe otherwise.

Short version - handouts don't fix anything, and should be voluntary. What did people do 150 years ago, when government handouts didn't exist? Starve? I don't think so. They depended on community members to help them when they were down, and they had to work if able. Far better system.

Sorry for the rant!

I'd really like some of my retirement income, enough to scrape by, to come from a source that can't just declare bankrupsy and leave me to starve. The choices I see are business and goverment.

If stocks really had some solid value they would not vary in price by 5% in a single day, and individual stocks would never go from some high value to zero in a few days. Yes the average gain over a hundred years looks good, but there have been periods where the market has lost 80% and has stayed down for a decade or more.

I see the privatization of social security not as a benefit to individuals, it is just the only remaining pool of cash that can be used to further inflate the "value" of stocks. Privatization (aka individual accounts ala "let me invest my own") would be a double boon to the CEOs on Wall Street. First there is the opportunity to steal not just 401Ks, but every bloody cent of most people's life savings. Second is that forever after Wall Street would hold all senior citizens hostage -- give us the monetary policy we want or the market will drop and thousands of old people will be eating cat food.

The two together are sure disaster because with the market as the only option, its where most money would be, and with so many voters hostage to what the market does, politicians could not follow prudent policies. Regulation for such things as honest accounting would be instantly trumped by a threat of a major drop in the markets and wide-spread starvation. I'd expect this to result in a short happy time while the market gets everything it wants, followed by total Soviet-style collapse when there is no way to hide the lies anymore.

I want my Social Security payments and benefits adjusted to my life expectancy and the expected cost of a frugal old age; I'm not asking for a free lunch. I'll invest the rest in my 401K hoping it will allow me such luxuries as continuing to own a car, have cable, phone, internet and everything else beyond the necessities. Yes this would likely increase my Social Security taxes, but it allows me to invest more agressively before retirement and to spend more of my savings durring retirement because I would know I'll still eat if I invest badly, if I outlive my best estimate of my own life expectancy, or if I don't remain able to work all the way to 67.

I do resent the current system that says somebody of compareable earning power to myself can move into the country when I am 57, work 10 years, and at 67 collect exactly the same benefits that I contributed 52 years to get, and he'd probably have a second pension from wherever he lived before. I'd like benefits based on lifetime contributions, not just the best 10 years.

I also resent that women pay the same tax, but get about 50% more in benefits; I think life expectancy for men is somewhere around 85, for women about 95. So the average man would get 18 years of benefits and the average woman would get 28. Now suppose you fix the system by raising the retirement age to 75; men would average 10 years of retirement to women's 20. So raising the retirement age is a sexist solution that exacerbates an already very unequal situation.

Finally, everyone asks what goverment does with the money to ensure the ability to pay benefits. I'd like them to also ask business what they are doing long term to ensure future earnings to pay benefits, including just remaining a viable company beyond the next quarter.

By the way, KenB, are you planning to kill this thread like you did before if the conclusions the participants come to don't meet with your approval?

The proposel is to let you invest only 16 percent of your SS retirement funds.So there is only a limited amount you can lose, and a chance to gain more.

Brock,

With your unreserved agreement with me, you are agreeing to not only my extermination, but, all of my kind as well.

Undesirables = NON-breeders = G_ _ = Subhuman by genetic mutation of the most monstrous sort.

I am merely acknowledging the fact of how my kind has been viewed by both science and religion (all things un-natural and evil by merely existing).

Gotcha! {huge evil grin}

(I do believe this is grounds for banning me from CPF.)

You know, this forum is a bit like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Multi-level comedy/entertainment...

Serious take - most immigrants are very hard working people, that have struggled to come to the US to make a life for themselves. MOST people are decendents of these immigrants, and that's why we're such a diverse and powerfull country. Personally, laws designed to punish 2% of the population because they somehow cheated the system, which end up affecting 30+% of the population in excess paperwork and restrictions, bother me. Example - one guy goes nuts with a rifle, and we have restrictions. As if that would slow someone down that wants to wack people. Example - a handfull of people were getting SS disability AND other income (for shame! trying to earn a living), so some pinheads decided that this wasn't good, and so our friend Craig is living under restrictions that no one should have to.

Government action is always wastefull, and usually makes things worse. This includes changing and reforming goverment action!

So I take it nobody would object to basing Social Security retirement benefits on lifetime contributions rather than just the best 10 years. I can't see where that would inconvenience anybody except those who try to game the system. If Tri and Hoang attribute their earnings to their parents, they will significantly cut their own benefits.

SSI is another thing altogether; while the retirement portion is part savings plan and part insurance (to some extent those who die young subsidise those who live long), SSI is pure insurance policy. I've heard the horror stories about being on SSI, but is private insurance of the same sort any more generous? I've heard they keep spying on you, and will periodically and without cause ask you to prove you are disabled all over again. I have private disability insurance, and I've always suspected that to the insurance company, I wouldn't be disabled if I could still sell pencils on a street corner. Then there is the little scam they both play; you can only collect if you are employed when you become disabled, and many medical conditions work slowly so you are likely to be fired 'cause you can't do your job long before you become disabled enough to make a claim, and then since you're not employed you can't make a claim.

I wonder if I could even get the shabby deal Craig gets. I expect one way or another I'd have to spend the money I saved for my retirement before I could qualify; the price of entry would be whatever my life savings is. Of course the problems of Social Security are only a bad joke next to the enormous problems of Medicare.

As to letting you invest "only 16 percent", the problem with all the proposals that came out of Bush's stacked committee is the 16% comes out of income for the current system, hastening the day when the current system can't support your folks. What does the proposal do if you loose that 16%? If you are still helping your parents when you retire, what does that do to your expectations of a pleasant retirement of your own?

I'm all for letting people invest, so take the lid off IRAs; let people save 10-15 thousand like 401Ks will allow; and create a program like 401Ks for people who's employers don't offer one.

I think the primary goal of Republicans is to create a stream of investment capital for big business and don't really care if the funds are there at retirement. Their view is that of someone who expects to save 2 million or more; if they loose 25%, they might have to settle for a smaller yacht or give up the condo in Bermuda. What happens to somebody who could only save 250,000 if they loose a fourth of it?

On the other hand, Democrats always take the cheap shot that only looks out for the poor; there is no safety net for those who try to look out for themselves by saving; or put another way, the safetynet that is free to those who don't save a thing costs the rest of us everything we've saved. Making SS an "insurance" like some Democrats propose means that if you save 250k you get to spend your 250k, if you saved nothing, we'll give you 250k; so if you can't save a couple mil, why even try?

I keep looking for a moderate voice that looks out for those who save as much as they can, but could be wiped out by bad times, or have incomes such that saving some is possible, but enough is unlikely; that large number who hope their savings will add enough to social security to make life humane.

As to goverment action being wasteful, I believe Social Security is run on about 3% overhead, while a comparable private plan would have overhead more on the order of 10%. Social Security will work if there is action by politicians to make it work, and it will fail if sabotaged by politicians who don't want it to work. Right now it needs a mid-course correction and those who don't want it to work are refusing to let it be fixed in any way that doesn't make it into primarily a corporate welfare program.

Originally posted by Evan:
So I take it nobody would object to basing Social Security retirement benefits on lifetime contributions rather than just the best 10 years.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">You seem to be misinformed. The benefit is calculated on the highest 35 years of [index adjusted] earnings. 10 years is the minimum years of contributions to qualify for any benefit.

If that is true, I'm very glad to hear it. I don't mind paying into the system, or even paying a bit more to the extent my income is above the mean; but I really hate the idea that people other than those who become disabled can get benefits without paying the price of admission.

But then, in Tri & Hoang's little scam, arn't they just transferring benefits from themselves to their parents?

For those interested here is the official social security site www.ssa.gov

Doug is right, This Page on www.ssa.org shows that benefits are based on your 35 best years.

The benefit is roughly (and with some special cases)
90% of first $7,104 of adjusted average anual income
32% of next $35,700
15% of everything above that.

So an adjusted anual income of:
$7,104 would yield an anual benefit of $6,393 (90%)
$42,804 would yield an anual benefit of $17,817 (42%)
$100,000 would yield an anual benefit of $26,396 (26%)
$200,000 would yield an anual benefit of $41,396 (20%)

Also remember this is adjusted average anual income, not just what you make now. So if you have some years of minimum wage work at $2.00 an hour full time 30 years ago, it will figure into the average as a year at about $21k.

I can't see living on $7,104 anywhere, and that income wouldn't leave anything to save to add to that $6,393 benefit. I guess how generous you see this would depend alot on where you live. Anybody got some figures on median incomes and cost of living in the same area? What is the poverty line at these days?

Also consider that if Medicare, which is in worse trouble, does not continue, you can expect to pay $7,200 ($600 per month) for health insurance, if you are lucky and don't actually have to use it. (Just a guess based on some talk show call-ins).