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When you look at the broader picture, general tax revenues are indeed contributing to the welfare of the poor. Food stamps, subsidized housing, Medicaid (different from Medicare), senior rides and other programs are not funded through Social Security.
There is no valid reason the middle class should bear the entire burden of subsidizing the social security of the working poor. The middle class share the burden with the wealthy for all the other programs you mention. There is no reason the burden should not be shared by the wealthy for welfare that is paid through social security. This can be done by eliminating the income cap; or by directly injecting revenue from the general fund into Social Security.
Lower wage workers just do not live nearly as long as over stressed, over worked professionals raking in 6 figures. It is just not fair, but on average they will not collect much from SS, some occupations are worse than others.
increasingly society operates as a corporation, labor is just a commodity just like iron ore, therefore people who rip the most benefits of that labor must pay all the disposal costs. It is only fair, no sane free person would kill himself for $8 hr. stupendous income and life fairness inequality is only possible within a framework of the coercive socio economic structure. What is funny - the owners of that structure want just the benefits while passing the bulk of maintenance costs to the peons.
Last edited by RememberMee; 01-30-2017 at 07:54 AM..
This isn't really true, at least not from the implied angle of politicians making secret deals to fund pet projects by withdrawing from the social security fund.
The fund is invested in US government bonds, so like all government bonds the government pays interest to the ss trust fund and upon maturity repays the balance. If I buy government bonds as part of my investment portfolio it doesn't mean the government raided my savings account for things they didn't want to raise taxes for. I loaned the US government money with full faith that they will pay it back with interest, same as social security has. Sure they might use my money to pay for a $900 toilet seat but what they do with their funds isn't something that matters to me from a ledger side.
Information on SSA funding is all quite transparent and accessible, there has been no secret diverting of SS money to pet projects of legislators.
Thank you. I will add that the safest investment that you can make in this country is in a U.S. Government Bond. Its why the interest rate is so little and yet the government has no trouble selling them at regular auctions.
All this talk about "Congress stealing our social security" is silly. I usually find the people who bring this up are the ones who refuse to talk about any kind of amendments or reforms to deal with real issues like the fact that people simply live longer than they did years ago and will be collecting benefits longer.
What do these folks want? Even if this money was stolen, do they think it could all be repaid? This is a "straw man" that takes attention away from real ideas for reform.
social security money has never been stolen . the excess can only buy special bonds which have never defaulted . the money has always been repaid when due .
it is no more stealing your money than your mutual fund buying treasury bonds . the gov't is free to spend the money they borrow any way they like .
the problem with ss is ss disability is crushing the ss retirement money and survivor benefits .
disability fraud and abuse is rampant . billions had to be diverted from retirement ss to disability when disability ran out of money recently . .
they should break disability off and make it part of welfare . then they should go after the fraud and abuse and fund medicare with the savings .
just watch a few episodes of judge judy to see how rampant disability fraud is and that is not even what the cases are about .
problem solved !
Last edited by mathjak107; 01-30-2017 at 09:30 AM..
If ever there were an argument for privatizing Social Security... I am 55 years old. For over 20 years I have made over six figures a year. My mother, who is still alive at 86 and is getting my deceased father's social security, receives $1200 a month from the government. My father was an uneducated blue collar worker who never made more than 8 bucks an hour base pay. He retired at 62 back in the mid 80s, so he didn't get the full benefit. My mother never worked...a home maker her entire life. So...$1200 a month...which is based on meager increases over the last 15 years. Now me, I have worked constantly since I was 15 years old, the only gap is when I took a year off while going to school when I was in my early 20s. Over 20 years now I have made over $100K a year each year. According to the SSA.gov web site, my benefit if I retire at the same age that my dad did will be $1900 a month. Yes, only $700 more than my mother who never worked and my father who was a low income worker who retired early over 30 years ago.
I am speechless. Where the heck has all our money gone for these decades paying into the government fund? This is a lesson to everyone out there in their 30s and younger. Don't even consider SS as potential income in retirement. Save as much as you possibly can as early as you can and take advantage of as many investment opportunities as you can - like 401K and Roth IRAs. Your government is squandering your social security so do not expect to get anything resembling a return on what you are paying in.
First of all know this. You have never been taxed for SS above the current ceiling of 118 something a year. 1900 is what you get at 62 because it is considered early retirement. If you claim benefits at 66 like many of us, you will collect max benefits which I think is $2400 a month. If you wait until 70, I believe that the benefit goes over $3,000 a month.
Remember this: Everything that you hear in the media is designed to get the corporations relieved from their burden of matching what you are putting in. Count your blessings that there will be an annuity that will last you for life and not some finite amount that could be used up during any given ten years of bad luck.
Social Security is a SOCIAL program not a financial investment program. The idea is not to get "a return" on your money. It's to keep you from starving if you were unable or unwilling to save for yourself all those years. Could it be improved? Yes, of course, but the idea is not to give people a big windfall to fund their retirement lifestyle. It is just to keep those who failed to provide for themselves a minimal living so that the rest of society can be comfortable that we don't throw poor, old people into the gutter.
If one defers collecting SS to 70, but does not work those 3 or 4 years between FRA to 70, how much reduction would one see from their age 70 benefit not working those years ?
"It depends" is the answer. Your payout is based upon the average of your highest paying 40 quarters. If your pay from work performed after your FRA is higher than some of your earlier qualifying quarters, then that will bring the average up by replacing those low paying quarters with higher paying ones. If your last few quarters paid less than all your qualifying quarters, than it will not affect it at all. They won't replace a quarter that had a salary with a the zero salary quarter, or a lower salary quarter, so it doesn't bring down the average.
The best way to understand all this is to use the SS calculator and put in your own numbers (from last year's statement) and plug in some numbers for those future years, see what it says.
If ever there were an argument for privatizing Social Security... I am 55 years old. For over 20 years I have made over six figures a year. My mother, who is still alive at 86 and is getting my deceased father's social security, receives $1200 a month from the government. My father was an uneducated blue collar worker who never made more than 8 bucks an hour base pay. He retired at 62 back in the mid 80s, so he didn't get the full benefit. My mother never worked...a home maker her entire life. So...$1200 a month...which is based on meager increases over the last 15 years. Now me, I have worked constantly since I was 15 years old, the only gap is when I took a year off while going to school when I was in my early 20s. Over 20 years now I have made over $100K a year each year. According to the SSA.gov web site, my benefit if I retire at the same age that my dad did will be $1900 a month. Yes, only $700 more than my mother who never worked and my father who was a low income worker who retired early over 30 years ago.
I am speechless. Where the heck has all our money gone for these decades paying into the government fund? This is a lesson to everyone out there in their 30s and younger. Don't even consider SS as potential income in retirement. Save as much as you possibly can as early as you can and take advantage of as many investment opportunities as you can - like 401K and Roth IRAs. Your government is squandering your social security so do not expect to get anything resembling a return on what you are paying in.
That is not the amt you'll be receiving. It's based on 35 or 36 years, the average pay.
You can look at the history of your payments to FICA and your wages. Until you got older, your contributions and wages were very small. I would also guess that SOME jobs didn't take out for FICA (I got paid in cash for some summer jobs in my teens).
You have to work another few years at high wages. Then you'll get closer to the estimate of what you will receive.
55 minus 35 = 20 yrs old. Consider what your wages were for 20 to 30 years old. Probably not much.
You will be getting considerably more than $1,900/month. Or at least you WERE going to. But looks like SS as we know it is going to be cancelled. Medicare, too.
Atlanta - did you know that last year any personal income over $118,500 was not taxed for social security? I am working to figure out indexing of wages and if max SS earnings are limited to the taxable limit of income -$118,500.
It might be a way of limiting the max SS earned so you don't have people drawing 4-$5K of SS a month. Not sure haven't solved the SS puzzle - just started tonight. All that said, not sure how limiting how much income is taxed and capping monthly benefits helps sustain the program. I thought the more you pay the more you draw, which is true but appears to be limited.
The website below is a place to start your own research if you desire.
"The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that the maximum amount of wages in 2017 subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax (old age, survivor, and disability insurance) will rise from $118,500 to $127,200, an increase of more than 7%."
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