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Would they then be winners or losers that that they still could rely on SS?
Its a position they never should have been in to begin with. Had they been able to keep their own money and invest it for all of those years up until close to retirement, they would have had much larger nest egg and wouldn't have had to try and make such risky investments.
This is just proof in my personal opinion that SS helps in creating a false sense of security though. Most people with a an hour or two of reading/research every now and then could figure out where to safely put their money, how to allocate it and avoid being played in the great SS scheme to manipulate the voting public. Personal finance and investing is made to be some big Wall Street boogie man, stoking fear and making people feel like they need the government to save them. I have faith in the vast majority of the general population who are able to balance check books, buy cars and houses that they can also manage their retirement money using basic guidelines published by the 1000s of financial institutions, research institutes, and investment experts. All free information that can be executed on with minimal starting $ and a few clicks of a mouse.
I won't be on the street begging. We spread our investments out through a large portifolio, including real estate that we bought with cash. Smart people would never plan on SS as their main means of suppprt after retirement.
I don't count SS or my pension and both can disappear easily before I retire.
Bottom line is that if you don't get back proportional to what you pay in after the cap is raised, it isn't "raising the social security cap", it's simply increasing income tax and calling it something else.
And again, that is a bigger hit to upper middle class people than the super wealthy, who make most of their income from investments which never get touched by SS. 127K is barely middle class (lifestyle wise) in terms of household income where I live. 10% of your take home gets eaten up by property taxes in that scenario.
What they need to go is give me my money back since they cannot be trusted to manage money. Think about it, who in their right mind would give their retirement money to someone who is 20 Trillion in debt?
Hypothetically you make a good argument, but most people need to have others manage their funds for them because they just don't have the time or knowledge to invest. Even a well diversified portfolio of what money managers recommend would have taken quite a hit in 2008.
Again, people spend time researching mortgages and car loans/leases, this is no more complex. In fact I'd argue that its easier based on their being many fewer variables. Anyone who took "quite a hit" in 2008, if properly allocated (close to retirement meaning about 90% bonds / 10% stocks) would have taken a small hit. Anyone further out (10 years or so) would have taken a bigger hit, but also should be investing more money in stocks and is much better off today.
Every country with no publicly funded retirement security has extremely high elderly poverty rate. Thats the reality.
Of course the big money interests who advocate for the privatization and elimination of SS knows this. They are not uninformed. They just dont care about the elderly poverty rate.
Bottom line is that if you don't get back proportional to what you pay in after the cap is raised, it isn't "raising the social security cap", it's simply increasing income tax and calling it something else.
And again, that is a bigger hit to upper middle class people than the super wealthy, who make most of their income from investments which never get touched by SS. 127K is barely middle class (lifestyle wise) in terms of household income where I live. 10% of your take home gets eaten up by property taxes in that scenario.
Most suggestions to scrap the cap like was done with the Medicare tax cap decades ago, leave a gap between $127k and $250k for a single earner where no SS tax is applied.
Social Security is not a welfare program or an entitlement program. Change your opinion.
You are quoting the wrong poster. I didnt say what you quoted me on.
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That's what the Koch brothers want.
