People who can't take care of their present may or may not have planned for their future, and they may or may not have been successful, and it may or may not be their fault.

and it may or may not have anything to do with me.

Well, I'm not going to try to convice you that helping the elderly is a good thing for society as a whole, if that's what you're asking for. I guess that's just something you agree with or not. Just don't try to justify it by saying that anyone who needs it didn't plan for their future, so it's their own fault.

You know, if the shit somehow hits the fan and you, though no fault of your own, lose most of your savings, you might appreciate it a bit more. Sure, lots of people fuck up but lots of people just have bad luck, you might be one of them, you should know as well as anyone that financial markets are capricious beasts and the economic stability of the recent decades is, in the scheme of things, an anomaly.

Now there's another good reason to abandon America. The free-riding whiner generation is about to flower. On the other hand, Republicans need to remember that they no longer have the moral authority to make the fiscal responsibility argument.

HM, this is not about taking something away from people who are counting on it. i am talking about telling new generations as they come up that A) your taxes are going to be lower B) save it, invest it, blow it, it's your choice and your future.

if people have 40+ working years of their lives with the idea that they have to save if they want to retire someday, then they have plenty of time to do it. there will be some people who are through no fault of their own may run into problems. there are ways to help them without an all encompassing national retirement system. what we have now is a system that says "we don't think you going to plan ahead so we'll make sure you have a check." that completely removes choices from those who do plan, and removes accountability from those who don't.

absolutely right, the republican party has whored itself out and sold out those committed to fiscal responsibility just as much as the democratic party has sold out those who think they stand for the working people.

they both give great lip service but little else.

We tried that, and felt the need to create Social Security to fix it. None of my arguments rely on any distinction between "taking something away from people who are counting on it" and phasing it out for future generations. Both result in people who, through no fault of their own, need money to live on. Pre-Social-Security, people worked 40+ years of their life, knowing they had to provide for their retirement, and it didn't always work out. If we take away Social Security, people will still work 40+ years of their life, knowing they have to provide for their retirement, and it still won't always work out. The fundamental justifications for Social Security have not disappeared.

In any case, what you're arguing for is the elimination of Social Security, which is something that Bush pretends not to be doing. He prefers to to bleed it to death through the mouths of stockbrokers.

This thread ROCKS!
George Bush sucks cocks
he's evil, he's ugly,
makes me just want to hurl,
a hypocrite, an asshole,
He makes my toenails curl
If you voted for him, I think you're a fool,
The people who voted for Kerry are cool,
He sent us to war and killed innocent folks,
tonight while he's sleeping, I hope that he croaks.
Gay people can't be on their lover's health plan,
and all these abortions that he wants to ban,
will cause all the crackheads to reproduce more,
the poor and the underage, unemployed whores,
they'll all be the moms of our next generation,
The world hates us now and I see no cessation,
The french think we're stupid, the U.N lost it's "u"
And medical research can't cure what they want to,
so if you have cancer spreading through your tush,
they won't find a cure, and you can thank 'ol george Bush

yes, you're right. i am talking about ending social security. i think society would do just fine with SS being phased out. i also know that will never happen as long as people understand they can vote for entitlements. SS wasn't originally viewed as a long term retirement plan for all of society. it was a depression era feel-good. when created, few were expected to live on it very long. since its creation, people have become accustomed to counting that as part of their retirement savings and have become dependent on it. programs to help those on hard times could be built and run more efficiently than a broad based everybody-in national retirement system. IMO.


Bush is talking about setting up individual retirement accounts funded with the money that is currently just going into the big pot which is completely outside of the individual's control.

if the individual has the ability to invest their retirement money into the buckets of money they choose they can build their own retirement plan. from what i understand this would look something like the TSP's that are currently out there. the only difference is that instead of one large pool of money invested in treasuries, there will be many different accounts invested in various options. as long as the individual can't pull the money out to buy a house or car or candy bar, i don't really have a problem with it. it wouldn't be as efficient (compared to no program at all) for those that do plan for themselves, but it would allow for greater opportunity for growth while providing the safety net that you think people need. The difference is that i think most people can make better choices for their money than the government can.

************very simple math follows, i know there are variables, but there is no need to get more specific.********************

A) an individual starts saving $100/month at age 25 and does that until they are 65 (40 years)

B) if their investment choice averages only:

- 4% avg they will have $118,590 at age 65
- 7% avg they will have $264,012 at age 65
- 9% avg they will have $471,643 at age 65
those are just hypothetical numbers. if we take it a step further and see what a 40 year period in the market looks like it gets more interesting. What i am going to enter here is not a balanced portfolio or an exceptional one. it is a relatively middle of the road, growth and income oriented mutual fund. i would not recommend this one fund for someone's retirement plan, it is only a reference point for this discussion.

if a person saved $100 per month into this fund for 40 years it would looked like this:

40 year period ending:
2004 - 12.5% avg return total saved = $1.138million
1994 - 11.99% avg = $987,695
1984 - 11.72% avg = $914,940
1974 - 10.31% avg = $614,879

Those are 40 year numbers. $100/month. i know that contributions would vary based on income level, but if X% of your income HAD to go into your retirement plan, just like it does now, it would work. keep in mind that the individual who doesn't make enough money to contribute $100/month isn't exactly accustomed to a lifestyle that would require $1,000,000 in the bank.

Let's take this a step further. If an individual today gets roughly $1300/month from SS, would they be winning or losing by this plan? i don't think i would see the elderly roaming the streets fighting stray cats for garbage scraps.

*******************
edit: to be fair, not everyone has the inclination to be in equities so.
if you had put $100/month into a run of the mill bond fund from 1974-2004 (only 30 years, not 40)
the average return would have been 9% and there would be $173,396 in the account. again, not a number to shrug off.

i also forgot to mention that all of those numbers take into account commissions and operating expenses, so a system run similarly would not only be self-sustaining, it would be profitable so that it can help fund programs for those who are less fortunate.

and i almost forgot what thread this is, so... George Bush smells really bad and sticks his tongue out at old ladies.

That's not really true. While the average lifespan wasn't much past 65, the average lifespan for people who reached 65 wasn't much lower than it is now.Perhaps, but at least with everybody in, there's no dispute over who qualifies.That money is therefore NOT going into the SS fund, and is not available to pay benefits for people who do not opt for the new system. Therefore, the money to make that up has to come from the general fund, exacerbating Bush's deficit much faster than the current system.

The current trend is away from pensions and towards 401k's. If Social Security is put into the stock market, most people will have all their eggs in that basket, and a downturn in the market at the time they plan to retire will be devastating. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. On the other hand, if the US defaults on its treasury bills, people would have been better off investing their retirement in canned goods.

Are you also telling those people that they don't have to pay in? :eyebrow:

bruce, to a limited degree yes. i don't know what the numbers would really look like, but it seems reasonable that the amount paid in should be able to be decreased until it reaches zero as the amount paid out decreases based on normal attrition. no matter which path is followed, when it comes to SS, at least one generation is going to get hosed over on SS benefit vs. amount paid in. better sooner than later.

but like i said, no career minded politician would ever support such a plan.

HM, did you even look at the numbers i entered? if an individual only paid $100/month into the new SS system they would have very substantial amounts of money to fund their retirements not even counting the 401K that most people also fund to some extent. If they retired in 2004 with @$1,000,000 and the next year experienced a 40% drop in the value of their individual account, they would still possess $600,000. If it dropped another 20% the next year they would still have $480,000. How many months of $1300 (what the average SS payment i see looks like) payments would $480,000 be good for?

at no time in the history of this country has a 40 investment in treasuries outperformed the market. past performance is not indicative of future results is the mantra of my business, but with all due respect, if we ever see a time period where the markets behaved like that, the world has a lot bigger problems than what Mrs Olsen down the street has in her retirement account.

Not all funds perform as well as the market, and not everybody gets the average. For example, just over a quarter of the funds available in my 401k lost money this year (including 3 of the four that I have money in). Now, if I got discouraged with my choices and moved my money into other funds, the ones I moved into could easily do the same next year. If the average return is, say, 12%, there is a bell curve of people's actual returns centered on that.

Most of the funds available on my 401k are less than 10 years old, never mind 40, so most peoples money will have to be transferred between funds as poor funds are terminated, which means that those people will be selling at a point that the fund has been losing money, and probably buying a fund that is currently doing well. Most people will not have the advice of stockbrokers, and will be pretty much flying blind.

does it ever bother you that all you do is look for reasons ideas work, instead of trying to fidn a way to make them work?

That already happened to my parents, they were notch babies. My Dad paid in the MAXIMUM, from the day SS was instituted in 1935 until he retired in 1983 but was penalized a third of his benefits.
Not to Mrs Olsen. It's hard to see the "big picture" when you're hungry. :(

One of the earliest American advocates of a plan that could be recognized as modern social insurance was Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, Roosevelt addressed the convention of the Progressive Party and made a strong statement on behalf of social insurance:

"We must protect the crushable elements at the base of our present industrial structure...it is abnormal for any industry to throw back upon the community the human wreckage due to its wear and tear, and the hazards of sickness, accident, invalidism, involuntary unemployment, and old age should be provided for through insurance." TR would succeed in having a plank adopted in the Progressive Party platform that stated: "We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and nation for: . . .The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment, and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use."

You tell 'em Teddy. :)

So would you like the Brooklyn bridge, the Ben Franklin bridge, or the Golden Gate? Buy all three and I'll throw in the Woodrow Wilson (really, no one else wants it)

You seem to have bought them already. Don't try to unload 'em on me.

Here you go.

(edit) And Here (/edit)

Though, to be fair, the 80% number seems to be "best guess". The pessimistic estimate turns out to be 70%. So my "at worst" phrase wasn't quite accurate. I'm guessing that that's not what russotto was getting at, though.

Ironic...

I hope Dubya gets an incurable case of ass cancer and has to live out the remainder of his days with a colostomy bag. I would also like to see someone give him the same poison they gave that Russian guy so we can see him turn into one of those withered apple faces. Mostly I would love to see that self-satisfied smirk wiped off his face.

I think you kind of missed the spirit of this thread ... you're supposed to be blaming dubya for your own ass cancer ...

It's W 's fault that undone fucked up!
[Charleton Heston]Damn the man they call W! Damn him to hell![/Heston]

Oh, goodie! I was wondering when we'd be getting around to this! It's not that I hate dubya, it's just that this ass cancer is making it real hell to sit on my polo pony.

Goddamned Dubya, It has to be his fault that Hunter S. shot himself to death.

Not as far fetched as you might think...

George W Bush infected my computer with a virus to make me lose my mind and throw it like a rubber ball into a big pile of refined white sugar.

He had his goons break into my car yesterday and rigged the horn to blow when I got in it.

His goons also rigged the car's battery to go dead overnight from a short circuit after the horn was smashed off the steering wheel because it wouldnt stop going off.

He had them get under the hood and break my spark wires in the cold weather knowing that I wouldnt have a clue what the problem was and that I would eventually go crazy, start talking to and then beating the car furiously.

George W Bush drove by me as I walked home in -40 degree cold from beating the crap out of my car. He would circle the block that I was walking on and ask me if I needed a ride, then when I walked toward the Limo, it would speed off with him laughing.

George W Bush decided to screw around with my 50+ year old heating system so that it broke down and that it seemed warmer outside than sitting in my front room.

George W Bush had a meeting with the entire engineering staff at AC* about not using any standards for anything created or changed in UG so that "the frozen, twitchy contractor" would just give up trying to make anything usable and ride his bicycle home to Pa.

Geoge W Bush decided that the permissions should be set that anyone can file to any directory not directly owned by another user....and that the save command for your specific part trips a save for that entire assembly, regardless of whether you created or ever changed that part.

George W Bush decided that no file management system is required for a group of 50 users, and that everyone would talk to each other and would "just know" when every one of the 45,000 files is under revision or undergoing other directory juggling.

George W Bush limits my network connection which is normally a gig, down to 100mb at AC because I'm a contractor and he doesnt think it's really needed for me to have the best or even average grade equipment.

George W Bush talked with the security dumbasses at AC and instructed them to program the access card to let me OUT into the proto lab, but not back IN.

George W Bush instructed the maintenance staff to strip the paint off the floor on my normal route through the plant to my desk and to take the "this area is closed" tape from the doorway that leads to this floor area, so that I would dance briskly and nearly bust my ass walking on it when I came into work that day.

George W Bush lost the paperwork to have my phone and voice mail activated...and when his goons finally created the account, some other asshat came by trying to fix the computer and broke the phone jack out of the wall.

George W Bush decided that I didnt need internet access at work and that I am the ONLY ONE IN ENGINEERING that doesnt have it.

George W Bush sees to it that my computer is moved every two weeks and that the dumbass that moves it, doesnt even check it to see that it's working before he leaves me a note requesting that I kiss his ass for doing this and that I should be happy.

George W Bush has the VP circle my desk when I work after hours when he doesnt normally even come into that section of the building.

George W Bush forced AC to use that stupid assed vending scheme with the cards to eliminate any coin transactions and he put the machine that charges the card on the other side of the plant.

George W Bush has my boss come into the office and ask me "is it done yet?" about every 2 hours and gets pissed off when I tell him, "your data files are spanked and disorganized....see me sometime next week for an update"

George W Bush bought the computer that I had set aside at Radio Shack right out from under me, and the only other place with a reasonably priced computer was 60 miles away.

George W Bush decided that there is no need for stops signs in this neighborhood, even though the roads are always dangerously slippery and has nearly as much snowmobile traffic as automobile traffic.

George W Bush had the electrical outlets in this house replaced with units so worn out that they wont hold a plug in place and you have to duct tape them in or slide something in front of the plug to hold it in place or your computer or radio with blink on and off.

George W Bush assures me that I am "part of the team" and encourages me to sign up to take an 05 snowmobile for a weekend numerous times, then after I do and my weekend comes up tells me they dont sign them out to contractors.

Jesus Christ this guy George W Bush is a pain in my ass!!

* - Arctic Cat Snowmobiles, Thief River Falls, MN.

I didn't realize that anal cancer was that complex.

On the other hand, he did let you go back to work. ;)

George W Bush sneaks into my house late at night and dumps the CoffeeMate out.

And I hate him for it.

It's not anal cancer, it's an alien hubajube.

http://cellar.org/2004/Conspiracy.jpg

via righty humorist Iowahawk