Quote:
Originally Posted by joeydb
Sure it is.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is, for all intents and purposes, a duck..
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Baloney. No Ponzi scheme here. The reality is that Social Security is one of the most successful programs in the world. It has never failed to pay it's benefits. Never. Doomed to fail? LOL - It's solvent easily until 2037, and then can still pay out 78% of current benefits if nothing at all is done.
Raise the cap from $108,000 to $250,000, and it's financed easily, for the next century, and benefits can even be increased.
That's what we should be doing, as a first-world country that cares about it's citizens. That's why we started social security as a fail-safe fallback, and why we need to continue it. In America, we don't want our elderly to live in poverty. I'd hope we still had too much pride for that, as a country. We stopped that the last century. One of the few things we've done right for ourselves.
I don't understand people that want that social situation to return. The "every man for himself, no I won't help you and you can't help me" crowd of societal living in this great country. We have enough homeless among those without medical (psychiatric) care and among our military veterans. We need MORE help for our citizens - not throwing millions of elderly out on the streets to die of starvation.
That's crazy!
BTW, if you had your money in "an investment program", you'd have lost 1/3 of your retirement funds during the past 8 years. Social Security funds are invested in a far more safe manner. You are supposed to be doing that (investing on your own) anyway - not depending upon Social Security for your sole retirement income.
PS - can you give the webpage where you copied your chart from? I'd like to read the accompanying text. It doesn't seem to match other analysis I've seen of SS benefits paid out (that most people get out far more than they put in) If that chart was true, I think we'd be swimming in extra money and Social Security would be flush beyond belief - if it were true that most people take or will take out far less than they put in (which is what you say that chart is saying)