What Social Security has become

[GoldStandard]

Anybody get this email? Pretty Striking.

Pay attention to your next Social Security income, whether you get a check or an electronic deposit....note what it is now called...see below.

SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT'/ENTITLEMENT!

Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?

I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.

I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.

Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a Federal Benefit Payment.
This isnt a benefit its earned income!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.

It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.

Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

Thats almost three times more than todays average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it - its a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot that it was OUR money they were taking.
They didnt have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.

And they didnt pay interest on the debt they assumed.
And recently, they've told us that the money wont support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments?

And now, to add insult to injury, theyre calling it a benefit, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't mean that our investments were a charity!
Lets take a stand.

We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.
Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.

99% of people won't send this.

Will you?

 

[SlyPokerDog]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/benefit.asp

 

[ABM]

I'm gonna open a food cart.

 

[Eastoff]

HEY GUYS! RE:Re:Re:RE: NEW ACCOUNT! Where is HCP when you need him to regulate?!

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

HEY GUYS! RE:Re:Re:RE: NEW ACCOUNT! Where is HCP when you need him to regulate?!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

[3RA1N1AC]

im not fucking with this guy, i think he is a secret government spy who is going to recruit one of us to drive a fake bomb into the RG

 

[Draco]

Payroll taxes weren't used to fund retirement plans they've always paid for the normal operations of the Federal government.

 

[Denny Crane]

Payroll taxes weren't used to fund retirement plans they've always paid for the normal operations of the Federal government.

I don't think this is exactly right. Payroll taxes are supposed to be put in trust fund accounts, and those accounts used to pay benefits.

Because the money is managed through trust funds, the executors of the programs can spend them as necessary - without congress approving a spending bill.

 

[Natebishop3]

I thought it had become a national ID number, which to my understanding was never the original intent.

 

[Draco]

I don't think this is exactly right. Payroll taxes are supposed to be put in trust fund accounts, and those accounts used to pay benefits.

Because the money is managed through trust funds, the executors of the programs can spend them as necessary - without congress approving a spending bill.

What is supposed to be done in theory and what has actually happened are very different.

In the 80’s Reagan and the Democrats passed massive overhauls to federal tax revenue, these were called “tax cuts” but in total they were revenue neutral. The “tax cuts” reduced progressive income tax revenue but increased regressive payroll tax revenue. That payroll tax revenue isn’t sitting in a bank account waiting to pay workers who retire. It has been spent to fund the everyday operations of the US government.

 

[Denny Crane]

The payroll tax revenue is mostly spent on benefit payments.

What bank would the govt. keep its surplus money in? What does this bank do with the deposited money?

The trust funds are required by law, and always have (as far as I know), to invest their surpluses in US treasuries because they are the safest investment, guaranteed by the federal government.

A side effect of this is that the money from the bond sales goes into the general treasury and gets spent.

Another side effect of this is that when the bonds come due, the govt. has to pay them off from the general treasury so some spending is squeezed out.

Not a problem when the trust funds are in surplus. But they're not in surplus anymore. They weren't in surplus when Reagan and Tip O'Neil got together and put SS on a track where it wouldn't run out of money for decades to come. What did change was that the trust funds used to be accounted for "off book" and we put on the books. This removed the distorted picture of what the govt. as a whole was really taking in and spending.

 

[jlprk]

No, what changed was that Reagan started rolling the enormous deficit snowball downhill, and only Clinton could stop it. Republicans always hated Social Security, and Reagan discovered that spending it was the way to destroy it.