How they fooled you when they took away your Pension, etc. (border, Obama)
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I've been retired since 2007 on a nice fat government pension. I hope to keep collecting it for 30 more years. If you need more money get another job or two. There's plenty of jobs out there. Get to work!
Welfare, food stamps, housing, even FEMA. I can’t qualify for FEMA relief because of my income, but some fleabag immigrant with American-born kids qualifies for EVERYTHING.
Again, I actually PAY taxes in this country. Why do people who shouldn’t even be here (except by govt incompetence) be qualified to receive these benefits over natural born Americans?
I am 69 years old and according to Social Security I can expect to live another 15.4 years to age 85.4. Maybe a little longer because I don't drink or smoke.
Why do you look at retirement as some sort of sick goal to reach? Do you really hate your job that much? I have reached the KMA (Kiss My A**) stage of life and financially I could have quit work a few years back but I don't want to quit work. I like what I do, for me it's a fun job so why would I ever want to quit?
The good old days? I lived in the good old days when the average size of a new house being built was 948 sq ft, did not have a "family room", had only one bathroom and a one car garage. Wanna know why the average home had but a one car garage? It is because the average family had only one car. Good old days? Duh?
We didn't have cable television, I grew up in the bay area and remember well when we had only four stations; 2,4,11 and 13. Well, there was channel 9 which was an educational channel but it was so very bad nobody watched it. One weekdays television went off the air after the news at 11:30 but on Friday night we always got to watch a "Late Night Movie".
No computers, internet or cell phones. We had a land line which was a party line we shared with neighbors to cut costs. One thing we NEVER did was make a long distance call unless it was a real emergency and it better be an emergency.
Family vacations consisted of camping out at Folsom Lake or Sly Park. In a tent.
A restaurant for dinner? Honestly, I can count on one hand the number of times we ever ate dinner at a restaurant over a 15 year period. We simply did not do it not even a snack. Of course, non of us were overweight beasties either. We didn't have any obese kids in school. Chubby but not fat.
Tell you what, my little snowflake, you want to enjoy the good old days all you have to do is buy a 948 sq ft 1 bath home with a a one car garage meaning you own only one car. Do not have a personally owned cell phone, company phones are fine, computer and do not subscribe to cable television... rabbit ears and live with your 3 or 4 channels.
Your annual vacation budget is $500 tops.
You want a pension? It's easy, take $100/month and put it in a performing mutual fund and in 40 years you will have a dang good pension. Take the $100/month you spend on cable television and instead put it into a mutual fund with a 6% growth rate over 40 years. You do this and you will have a Final Savings Balance of $199,160.03. There's your pension and you did it all yourself.
I am not yet collecting social security as my plan has always been to wait until 70 because it just makes financial good sense. The difference between collecting at 66 and 70 is 32% more money. By waiting when I do collect I will receive $3,075/month while my wife already receives $1,150 /month for a total of $4,225/month. What makes this really good is if I am not working that total $4,225/month is exempt from federal and state income taxes so picture it as take home pay for doing nothing. With 4.33 weeks in a month that comes out to an equivalent $975/week take home pay.
Look at it this way, from age 66 to 70 my benefit goes up 8% per year and it is tax exempt. Where else in any investment can you realized an 8% tax exempt return that is guaranteed by the federal government and tied to inflation? Right, you can't.
But my plan isn't to stop working until I no longer can so 85% of that social security will be subject to federal income taxes but oh well....
In my mind that isn't bad and it certainly isn't third world.
I don't think you have ever been outside the United States to a second world country. You have no idea how good you have it and how bright your future is.
Note to you: Your life success or failure is not tied to politicians of either stripe. Most politicians are parasites so my advice to you is to stop relying on them to do something for you but do it for yourself. If you wait for a Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or Paul Ryan to make your life a success you will be bitterly disappointed.
Socialism and communism throw you away the day you are born.
If you manage to survive the preferred abortion they make you suffer till death. So there is that.
I notice a number of posts even here on CD where people are talking about retirement at 68 or 70.
It's a political topic in this sense. Obviously the people in control of the peons (anyone with less than about 5 million) have decided that they are for a single purpose - to be used up and then cast away.
70? The average US Male now dies at 76. Many people have painful conditions starting in their early 60's and lasting through death. So if you play the game, go to school, work your entire life, etc - maybe you get 6 years of pain and sitting in the BarcoLounger as a reward?
So the New GOP Deal is simple.....work, then die as soon as you are incapable of adding to the GDP. I guess, in a sense, this is pure capitalism. Throw them out the door when they become a liability.
It's even worse than it seems because these people generally need other family members to help them in various ways....therefore making the lives of other tougher.
People here sometimes ask WHEN were the good old days? Well, it started with a couple things....
1. Only one parent needed to work.
2. A Pension was part of the future - often granted after 25-30 years (worker is 50-55).
3. Health care was included.
BIG difference today. For anyone who wants to know why we are becoming a 2nd world country quickly - look at stats like this.
Most people figured out right away when pensions went bye-bye that it WASN'T out of concern for employees. Obviously big companies simply wanted to save money. I was one of the last employees at my company to participate in a pension plan and I'm still working.
I can still remember the days of cost of living increases PLUS a yearly salary increase. Increases of 8-10% or more if you got promoted to the next level.
Young people today exist on 1-5% raises and the only way they make any money is to - change companies within the same industry or get into management. The average worker no longer keeps up with inflation.
They will never make the salary I make and my company has more profit than they know what to do with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PedroMartinez
Actually, most Democrats feel they are entitled to what others have. “Why should I work hard when I should just get what he has.”
Just more lame hyperbole.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pknopp
No, the argument is that we should cut them off and allow them to starve. The new Christian way.
Another thing I often hear is how the baby boomers had it so good because "good paying jobs" were everywhere.
In the late 60's and 70's there wasn't a safety net. You either worked or you went hungry, your choice.
Born in 1948 my wages sort of sucked nearly all the way through my 20's.
It wasn't until I was 28 before I started earning "decent wages". $5,850 in 1975 was equivalent to $26,821.82 in 2017. It was OK, I was single after all, but high living it was not.
Even in 1980 $19,900 was equivalent to $59,571.76 which was a lot better but still not high living. I should also add that I had two jobs at this time and I worked about 16 hours every weekend to support my family without food stamps.
I remember a three week period in early 1973 I was literally homeless and lived out of my Volkswagen Beetle. Not a good time. Oh, and until 1977 I never did have a pension.
Allowing children to starve is after all what a Christian country should do, right?
If a child prefers to starve, than go to work; that's called evolution. Especially if the 'child' is 30 years old and able bodied!
I have always worked hard for all of my life. I provided for my own support and the support of my family and I gave to charity. I will still be working when I hit 71 next month.
Listen; many of my old coworkers have told me to slow down. I even had one man that threatened me with a switch blade many years ago. Some of those coworkers retired and did nothing after they retired; they are all dead now. Of course it does not have to be work; but humans need to stay active and alert - that is what evolution did to us and that keeps us alive.
As far as pensions and pay; the private sector got the wrong end of the stick many years ago. The companies did everything possible to break the unions. I am not going to track down the graph right now; but there is one that shows how public sector pay rose from 1970 and how the private sector never caught up. Unfortunately; our Nation's wealth depends on the goods and services produced by the private sector. If we just produce money and give it away it has no real value.
Big business has many ways to thwart worker rights. You are replaceable is probably the number one reason today. It use to be simply that corporations would fire the older workers that had accumulated raises over the years and then hire greenhorns for considerably less money. Then they turned to relocating down South and that was not enough so they turned to south of the border and then all over the world. It was always about putting more money in the pockets of the top corporation executives. Of course after outsourcing ran the gauntlet; some turned to illegal immigration and now they are turning to automation.
But you have to ask yourself; which is better: Hillary that would have opened us up to unlimited outsourcing and illegal immigration or Trump that wanted to bring more jobs back home? Fewer workers to fill all the jobs can drive up worker pay and improve benefits (in a perfect world).
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