How GOP Social Security Cuts Will Hurt You

Correct....that's a proven fact.

But then that defeats the whole purpose of having insurance.

Social Security is insurance. It is not a pension plan nor is it a savings plan or an investment plan or anything else.

There's a cap on Social Security income, because there is a cap on the insurance benefit. The maximum amount of the insurance benefit that one can currently receive is $2,639 per month.

Logically then, raising the cap should result in an appropriate increase in the monthly insurance benefit, right?

 

Apparently, you've led a very sheltered life and don't have any real experience with the Real World®.

Not everyone gets to live a Beautiful Life™

Some people's lives are so horrifically bad, that even Wes Craven and M. Night Shyamalan would be afraid to make a horror film about it.

And contrary to your blind assertions, not everyone is a Wall Street Wizard, buying and selling stocks and bonds for profit.

For those people who weren't blessed enough to have the Beautiful Life™ that you've had and who are not Wall Street Wizards, there's Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance.

 

Social security cuts???

You know what? you realize I'm not going to see a dime from social security right?

I'm 36 and by the time I'm 65 retirement age will be 75..

SS is terrible the way it is presently... People should have their SS witheld and placed into a personal account.

The reason why SS doesn't work today is because all the money is thrown in one big pot (that is usually empty) and the government just distributes it as needed..

Social security would be way better off today if the government didn't steal the money from the "pot" in the first place - now they're behind on repacing it and they've been behind for 35 years.

But hey, just another reason to NEVER trust the government.

 

see all these fear mongering issues I have already explained numerous times on this website... so lets tackle them ONCE AGAIN to ease your fears...

1. I covered that disabled folks WOULD be covered, and we could pay for this, by lifting the cap on social security deductions from paychecks that currently stop at what was it $112,500 currently? you now lift that cap and when I calculated the revenue from that, it was more than enough to cover the current disability (as a percent of americans) and an expected increase because I just see more people abusing the system than before, so I expect a natural increase in the upcoming decades myself... so essentially I added a "tax" on the wealthy, does this upset you, are are you good?

2. you won't "run through your money" because we will limit the amount you can withdraw, we could use a massively complex formula that calculates things such as inflation, cost of living, burn thru-rate, median income of your area, etc etc etc... but one thing nobody seems to consider, id since you will now have this massive stored value, a simple 5% annual return on that large nest egg, would more or less be the entire amount one would need to live on that calendar year... for example... lets say after 45 years of working a crappy low paying job, and the government nestling away 6.2% from your paychecks and making your employers match another 6.2% and an average S&P 500 index return that entire time, would put you at around a million plus dollars today... now lets say our formula declares, you need $30,000 a year to match the exact income you had before you retired... hey guess what... that means all you need is a 3% return on your investments this year... odds are when we look at past performance, you're likely to get above that for an average annual return... so you will never whittle down your nest egg, it will last indefinitely... is that okay with you, a retirement nest egg that lasts until the day you die, at the same income level you retired at, and you leave $1,000,000 to your heirs? are you good with that too?

3. oh my god the ksy is falling the sky is falling the markets will crash and never return, pull your money out, the buildings are burning... if everyone who panic'd in 2008 simply left their money where it was... and did NOTHING to their 401k's... in a couple years they would have been back at the exact same spot, without losing a single thing... but people were stupid, they panic, they moved money, they withdrew it, they stopped contributing, and all those suckers are the ones who lost, the wealthy capitalized and are now wealthier than ever, because they understand simple economics... but lets appease you, lets do the practical thing... what do you think happens to your typical IRA/401k today when you are 10 years away from retirement? you think its investing in the same things? the same risk? the same ill-liquidity in case a market crashes? or do you think they adjust those "retire in 2016" funds that are so popular these days at employers? they change your risk scheme, and they move money into what we call, recession busters... you might end up with 5 years of income, stored in bonds that will actually RISE in value during a stock crash... so the very thing you would be pulling income from, those bonds, would increase in value... which means you have in excess of 5 years to wait for the market to recover... can you show me a stock market that took over 5 years to recover? are you better now? are you at ease? are you good?

so you can see all this rhetoric is nothing more than fear implanted by one party to convince people life will end and this is horrible... don't take control of your money, because it will all disappear, let the government hold on to that money for you, because government will magically make sure you get what you need... (although it would appear government can't give you what you EARNED, and they keep redefining what you need)

anyhow do you seriously need me to dive into more complex detail on ANY of those three items?!?! ANYTHING AT ALL, ask and I will... lets talk...

so NO, the typical GOP answer is not tough luck, you know why you think that, because thats what you've been told SO many times, you're convinced in the truth... you're so convinced it would implode and be worse off, and your safe bet is to keep giving government YOUR money, in one day of hoping it gives it back... but should you die early, yay we get to keep YOUR money and never give it to YOU... thanks for the early death!

P.S. and if we really want to make it a truly complex formula, we could actually increase payouts to whittle down some of that nest egg, so you don't end up giving a million plus to your heirs, I mean, you might not like them that much, or think they'll blow it on snorting cocaine and hookers! or maybe we could just follow YOUR desires in YOUR will, and donate that to PBS, to ensure Trump can't shut it down right... you could now donate YOUR million plus dollars to give him the big middle finger... although you can't, because YOU want government to control YOUR money... (and the longer they control your money, the more power they have over you, and the less power you have to control them)

 

I meant a money market just to draw interest on the money. Not an account that could be withdrawn early. Make it an account that a person could not withdraw from until vested. At retirement age or death a person would be vested. Of course a next of kin would withdraw when the fundholders dies.

 

hey I know this message was to another guy... but I wanted to correct you on one thing... you said by the time you're 65 it will be 75... technically, it's already 67, so you should have said, by the time I reach 67, it will be 75... see how quickly you just worked 2 more years without even knowing!!!

P.S. I mean I guess you COULD retire at age 65, but you would only get an 80% payout and not full benefit... and don't even think about delayed retirement to gain in excess of 100% benefit, by the time you're 75, you will probably be ready for death after working all those years! don't delay!

 

I hear 14 to 15 years away from retirement and even that on a sliding scale which gives everyone plenty of time to adapt to the changes and if the goal is reach have an even BETTER return on their contributions and a safer fund(s) in which it is held.

I turn 64 next with full retirement at 66. I've never heard a Republican proposal that did not safe harbor those soon to retire. And I will voluntarily work beyond 66 as long as my employer is paying me well for my work, I like my job and don't know that I would want to stop doing it and repeating the rewards for it. Go a couple of more years AND collect full SS be a nice little bump to my retirement funds and keep me active.

 

I think what I heard specifically is that 49 is the safe mark for having your retirement age raised to 70

 

And of course raise the cap on benefits to match that increase in contributions...............? That's how retirement systems work. And of course it only applies to EARNED INCOME since it is a retirement program for when you have no earned income, that is what it replaces. Those at the top are weighed heavily to investment income which is not subject to employment income pension and health insurance contributions. It won't make a dent in the contributions that come into Social Security. It is NOT a fix for the problems it faces and yes the program should be fair to everyone including those who contribute the most and get the least in return, don't you think?

 

How is healing something and making it better attacking it?

 

Yeah and those observations that said the Gingrich/Kaisch tax rate cuts and the Bush43 tax rate cuts would do the same never came to fruition did they? In fact the Gingrich/Kaisch tax rate cuts helped to produce the surpluses as tax revenues exploded and Bush43 and the Republican Congress accelerated those tax rate cuts and fully implemented them in 2004 and again revenues soared and then brought the deficit down to a paltry $161B by 2007.

Congress is going to put together the budget and hopefully we will have more of the same as above. If you don't think that we should follow that course again please explain why. Yes tell me why it would be better to do as the Democrats began doing in 2008 and took that last Republican deficit of $161B to $1,4000B in just two years increasing spending 9% and then 18%. Why do you want to do that again?

 

It's not free money; those already collecting SS/Medicare have paid into it for decades. So they have a vested interest in it. To cut their benefits and/or reduce their SS payments would be the same as throwing them under the bus.

 

The right wants more jobs that pay more than a job only worth the minimum wage or less, it wants the workers to determine in a fair manner whether they want to be in a union and that no one should be forced into on against their will, the right wants better education starting in grade school and first and foremost getting children out of K-12 with a good education. What good is it to expanded and pour more and more money into secondary education when we aren't getting the results needed and creating mountains of debt. Then the poor and disadvantaged won't be poor and disadvantaged anymore and instead of having to pull themselves up by their bootstraps they can put their boots on standing up.

The Democrats have had almost 10 years to accomplish something. They have failed, let's stop doing what they were doing and do things we know have worked in the past.

 

Well I guess it would be called something else, is that "killing it"?

 

Nothing like whining from the party that promised to do nothing to
Save Social Security.

 

when are you gonna get that we put in money for SS all our lives... you may not of, but the rest of us have

 

Some of us do, and some that don't still get to collect it.

 

Like beauty, whether you see changes in the program as an attack or healing is probably in the eye of the beholder. A simple remedy, or part of a remedy, would be to remove the income caps on SS contributions. That's not what has been suggested by GOP leaders though. Have you read Paul Ryan's ideas about transforming Medicare into a subsidy and having retirees try to purchase insurance with it? Unless he is also going to control costs, like Medicare negotiates, seniors can easily be priced out of health care, at the time of their lives when they need it the most.

 

How can workers determine anything without union representation? How can you have better schooling without a standard for education to be judged by? If you were concerned about debt you would fight to eliminate corporate welfare....the largest recipients of welfare. Rather than reducing their taxes next to nothing while giving them taxpayer money. You could start with the sugar lobby. Why should taxpayer dollars subsidize sugar when the consumer pays twice as much as they should for sugar? And if congress were worried about retirement benefits why don't they reduce their own benefits and apply that money to SS? The government is a bloated cash wasting bureaucracy run by large corporations on both sides. People need to cut through the propoganda on both sides and see the truth.

 

Why? If those that are making that much, they should have to pay anyway.

You also confirmed to me the fact that it is a insurance (I forgot), and as with most insurance, they will screw you over any time they can

 

I absolutely think it should be fair to all, an example of how it is not fair is federal workers retirement, they get dinged if they had earned income from a non government job the government considers that double dipping, and the government penalizes you. Fairness is never part of the equation when it comes to everyday hard working Americans

 

Why? Because Social Security is an insurance program, not a Welfare Program.

 

And of course you would lift the caps on the benefits.

Because it won't do anything and no we don't need to pass a HUGE tax increase on the highest earners who already lose money in SS not getting a return on all the money they pay in already.

 

Determine what? They can determine if they want to work for that employer or not.

How can you when the public school system can't even manager to give you a standard education in the first place?

What welfare do corporations get? They pay HUGE tax revenues that's what they do.

I'm all for getting rid of sugar price supports, you got my vote. But to compare that to what we spend in welfare programs?

I am all form reforming the ENTIRE government retirement system top to bottom and getting rid of it totally and offering ALL government workers a 401-K retirement plan and their SS like everyone else. Trump that!

No it is run by bloated government bureaucracies and bureaucrats who shake down corporations with their tax schemes and regulation schemes and don't care about the American worker who NEEDS corporations and the people who risk their money in such ventures to create jobs for them to work at and earn money.

Well what exactly is that truth. You think corporations can simply be done away with. Do you have any idea the role of corporations in western history and the shamby life you would be living without them?

Tell me what do you do with your investment money, you know your retirement savings? How are you accumulating the wealth you need in your life and to take you through your retirement years? Do you put it under your mattress?

 

And those are the people that social security will be there for. Good to see you are one of the beautiful life people.