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Social Security in the red this year...bankrupt by 2037

Social inSecurity - I'll be hitting retirement age right when it goes bankrupt. Thank god for 401k's and IRAs. Never trust the government to take care of people.
 
My friends and I have already accepted that there will be no Social Security waiting for us when it comes time to retire. We don't even worry about it because it will be a non-issue.
 
This is why you need to take a little money now and invest it and keep reinvesting it year after year... Vanguard or T. Rowe Price has funds that have very good/consistent yields and many of those funds have been around for 30+ years. If you start at 20-30 by 60 you will be good to go.
 
That's all well and good if you're middle class (what few are left) and you can afford to do so...what are all the working poor supposed to do? The people that still have a week's worth of bills to pay after the end of the month's paychecks?

The tax increase to fully fund SS doesn't even have to be that high...Currently it's at ~12.5%. In 2037, incomes are expected to cover ~73% of outlays.

So it would only take a 30% increase in FICA now and sustained to make good on the difference. Note that that's 30% of the CURENT rate (which works out to about 4-5%, for a total FICA of ~16-18%), not raising the rate from the current 12.5% to 30%
 
5008789922_a43cbdca99_b.jpg
 
Social Security wouldn't be in such bad shape if the Republicans hadn't been raiding the trust fund for the last thirty years and replacing it with IOUs in order to hide the true extent of the deficits created by their tax cuts. Something like two and a half trillion dollars has been stolen out of Social Security since the early Eighties and I have no idea how such an enormous amount of money can possibly be replenished, especially now in today's fading economy. This is very unfortunate because the generations following the baby boomers are going to be increasingly reliant on SS as middle-class jobs vanish and with them pensions and living wages that allow people to save for retirement.
 
The system can be put back on a full "pay go basis" with an approximately 5-7% increase in FICA, which would only be 3-4% from the employee portion.
 
For the record, Mods, if Dennis pulls his rude, flaming spam post before you see it, I've got screencaps. Just let me know where to send them.
 
darkwing_duck1 said:
That's all well and good if you're middle class (what few are left) and you can afford to do so...what are all the working poor supposed to do? The people that still have a week's worth of bills to pay after the end of the month's paychecks?

The tax increase to fully fund SS doesn't even have to be that high...Currently it's at ~12.5%. In 2037, incomes are expected to cover ~73% of outlays.

So it would only take a 30% increase in FICA now and sustained to make good on the difference. Note that that's 30% of the CURENT rate (which works out to about 4-5%, for a total FICA of ~16-18%), not raising the rate from the current 12.5% to 30%
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The working poor which includes myself...well right now I am the non-working poor...needs to find a way to make it own their own...which includes me...I know people right now who get money from SS and it is sad that they let themselves get to a place where they have to have it and need it so desperately. At the end of the day we are responsible for our selves and our own well being...not the government.
 
The Blur said:
The working poor which includes myself...well right now I am the non-working poor...needs to find a way to make it own their own...which includes me...I know people right now who get money from SS and it is sad that they let themselves get to a place where they have to have it and need it so desperately. At the end of the day we are responsible for our selves and our own well being...not the government.
Click to expand...

Again, that's not an option for millions of people. What are they to do? Go die in the bushes?
 
darkwing_duck1 said:
The Blur said:
The working poor which includes myself...well right now I am the non-working poor...needs to find a way to make it own their own...which includes me...I know people right now who get money from SS and it is sad that they let themselves get to a place where they have to have it and need it so desperately. At the end of the day we are responsible for our selves and our own well being...not the government.
Click to expand...

Again, that's not an option for millions of people. What are they to do? Go die in the bushes?
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"They" is me too...what am I going to do? Find a way or yes die in the bushes. I don't disagree with a lot of what you are saying...but people really need to have their own back-up plan.
 
darkwing_duck1 said:
The Blur said:
The working poor which includes myself...well right now I am the non-working poor...needs to find a way to make it own their own...which includes me...I know people right now who get money from SS and it is sad that they let themselves get to a place where they have to have it and need it so desperately. At the end of the day we are responsible for our selves and our own well being...not the government.
Click to expand...

Again, that's not an option for millions of people. What are they to do? Go die in the bushes?
Click to expand...

It's time to send all the old people to the moon.
 
And things like this don't help...



Nearly 3,000 Millionaires Collected Unemployment In 2008, IRS Data Show

After the economy slipped into recession in 2008, millions of Americans received unemployment benefits to make ends meet -- including almost 3,000 millionaires.

According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income on their tax returns that year also collected a total of $18.6 million in jobless aid. They included 806 taxpayers with incomes over $2 million and 17 with incomes in excess of $10 million. In all, multimillionaires reported receiving $5.2 million in jobless benefits.

Those numbers are a minuscule fraction of the 9.5 million taxpayers who reported receiving $43.7 billion from jobless benefits in 2008, up from 7.6 million recipients reporting $29.4 billion in benefits in 2007. Still, economists said they are surprised so many people with seven-figure incomes claimed benefits.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/...ployment-benefits-2008-irs-data_n_747736.html

And this whole past year that I have been out of work I didn't collect a dime from anyone. :sigh:
 
darkwing_duck1 said:
jason's bro said:
darkwing_duck1 said:
For the record, Mods, if Dennis pulls his rude, flaming spam post before you see it, I've got screencaps. Just let me know where to send them.
Click to expand...


For the record, let the mods do their job, it was already notified on, a PM follow up is appropriate.
Click to expand...

I wasn't sure who to address it to, which is why I made a general post. I do it differently if there's a next time.
Click to expand...

How long have you been posting here?
 
The Blur said:
And things like this don't help...

Nearly 3,000 Millionaires Collected Unemployment In 2008, IRS Data Show

And this whole past year that I have been out of work I didn't collect a dime from anyone. :sigh:
Click to expand...

But that's part of the perversity of our welfare system. Yes, we have millions of people who make next to nothing, but we also have tens of thousands of people who are tens of millions of dollars in debt. They're the "ultra-poor" who should be taken care of long before we help those who are still in the black.

Take some guy who invested in "petsocks.com" and lost $10 billion in borrowed money. He's 10 billion times poorer than an African making a dollar a year, so how can we in good conscience help a billion starving Africans when there is an American citizen worse off then all of them combined?

The social safety net needs to bring everyone up to zero before it starts providing enough money so they can eat potatoes garnished with tree bark and grass clippings.
 
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