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> "I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it" You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow

> "I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it" You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money.

fortytw2 10y ago
If it was actually your money, paying into it would be optional.
- chrisabrams 10y ago
  Bingo! This is the best attitude I have seen in the whole thread. Social Security is an authoritarian play, or a power play. Another way to look at it: if every single US tax payer had to manually pay their taxes, instead of them being auto-drawn from their respective W2 employer, you'd see more people asking the question "who's money is this really?" This is why the fair tax or similar plans will never pass. The power to silently tax people is too good for big brother.
  - knz 10y ago
    > Social Security is an authoritarian play, or a power play A more charitable view would be that social security is an attempt to provide a minimum standard of living for all seniors and the disabled. How do you propose that society cares for these people, particularly the disabled, if it's not done at a societal level? Retirement also benefits the young/middle aged by ensuring jobs open up.
    - chrisabrams 10y ago
      I think the older generation should give way to the younger generation. After all, it is the younger generation that is required to run the world while the older retires. However, as it is currently, the older generation is robbing the younger generation. The younger generation is paying for entitlements that it knows it will never receive. That is not sustainable, fair, or in my opinion: necessary. It should not be the governments job to manage retirement funds. That's why I said it's a power play, because if you made social security an open market with competition, you would probably see more positive support and results.
      - tunap 10y ago
        "Probably" see better results? I don't have, nor will I fetch for, the number of people who are solely reliant on SS, but my father is one of them. And he said the exact same words as you to me when I was a sprout. Now, after some bad decisions, and health issues as a direct result of long arduous work, he is glad to have that net. Please, don't tell me about my duties as a son, I've supported two family members through cancer, simultaneously. If/when it comes to it, he will be taken care of by me & siblings. How about the millions? who don't have children able to care for them? The streets is it? More welfare? I'd love to hear about a more sustainable option that doesn't include 'probably'.
        chrisabrams 10y ago
        That's great that you've recognized your duty to your family, but what happens when your children retire? What process is in place to help them? Current projects barely keep things solvent for the retiring baby boomer generation. Robbing Peter to pay Paul isn't sustainable [1], but that's what social security is. Social security is not a guaranteed solution. If we have to raise taxes or collect additional taxes, that makes it a ponzi scheme. Cutting benefits is similar: you either lose the money now or later. Discussion forums such as this are one of our few hopes for generating s sustainable solution. Just because a solution doesn't currently exist doesn't mean we should be complacent with how things are. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/pf/social-security-medicare/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/pf/social-security-medicare/
        vkou 10y ago
        It's not your money to 'lose', and welfare programs do not rob Peter to pay Paul. They are just that - welfare programs. Wealth redistribution. There is nothing fundamental about them that makes them pyramid schemes.
        anigbrowl 10y ago
        We already have a sustainable solution: admit more people to the workforce via immigration. As more of the baby boomers die off over the next `03 years, the pool of retirees collecting social security will shrink back towards the mean. You seem to be under the impression that the demographic bulge is a one-way thing.
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    This is a great point I don't see brought up often enough. It also has a lot of implications for the "gig economy" and independent contractors. If the majority of the workforce works as independent contractors, the government will not be able to use employers to collect ("withhold") taxes automatically from workers' paychecks. The IRS will need to wait for the contractors to explicitly pay their own taxes. I suspect this will have a big impact on cash flow for incoming taxes. Also, it could give more power to the people should they ever choose to execute a tax boycott.
    - mahyarm 10y ago
      My guess is the government will create legislation where it requires large marketplaces to automatically withhold taxes by default, such as ebay, airbnb, uber, lyft, task rabbit, amazon, doordash etc.
      - chrisabrams 10y ago
        This has already started with fees. Fees are just a synonym for taxes, or money that does not go in your pocket.
  - entee 10y ago
    Is that true? It's certainly true that under many of these alternative tax structures, we can't fund what we do right now. If instead there was a list that said, "Here is the amount of money that went to each of the major federal departments", maybe people would say, "really? that's cheap!" or "really? we spend that much on defense???" Who knows, but they'd be better informed. As I recall to a rough first approximation only about 1/5 of government spending isn't Defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. That's the first thing to keep in mind when talking about deficits, taxation and priorities. Personally every time I look at my pay statement the taxes sting badly. However, I think the more interesting discussion to have is, "what are we spending money on?"
    - chrisabrams 10y ago
      > Personally every time I look at my pay statement the taxes sting badly. However, I think the more interesting discussion to have is, "what are we spending money on?" As a self-employed libertarian I think the same thing :O I think most of the services that are offered through the government are noble or necessary..I disagree that it should be the government that runs many of them.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      If instead there was a list that said, "Here is the amount of money that went to each of the major federal departments" Yes...we could call it a 'budget.'
- jacalata 10y ago
  Not necessarily. The Australian superannuation program has compulsory contributions but the money goes into an account in your own name.
  - rch 10y ago
    Interesting - I wasn't aware of this program even as I was writing a similar comment.
  - snovv_crash 10y ago
    Do you get to choose the bank that the account is with?
    - jackvalentine 10y ago
      Yes, and the money is easily portable between them and you choose what level of risk you're willing to tolerate. You can even run a self-managed superannuation fund and make all the investment choices yourself if you want but people rarely do better than a standard fund.
      - deleted 10y ago
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  - merpnderp 10y ago
    How does Australia deal with retirees with too little or nothing in this account, aka the poor who are past working age?
    - jacalata 10y ago
      We have an old-age pension if your income and assets are below a certain amount: https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink/age-pension https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelin...
      - 10y ago
- rch 10y ago
  Not necessarily. If the system morphed into a required savings rate, then it could still be 'yours' without being optional.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> It is not an entitlement, it's your money That's not how social security works. Every dollar you pay in flies out to fund promises made in years past. "Your" social security money needs to be earned by our children.
- aardvark291 10y ago
  That's an accounting detail.
- wang_li 10y ago
  The Social Security Trust fund generally runs a surplus (as recently as 2014 it added $25 billion.) However it's projected that around 2030-2034 the number of recipients will be drawing more than is being paid in. At that point your statement will become more correct than it currently is.
  - thraway2016 10y ago
    ...the SSTF holds exclusively US Treasury notes and bonds as assets. You're describing a distinction without a difference, as other parts of the USG have already spent the surplus.
    - guelo 10y ago
      Sure, but US Treasuries are considered some of the safest assets in the world.
    - wang_li 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from as it assumes that the US won't be paying back its debts. Do you also consider that money you deposit into your checking and savings accounts as having disappeared into a black hole?
      - thraway2016 10y ago
        I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from as it assumes the exponential function will stop working in the near future. I'm coming from the perspective that there is neither a short term nor long term plan to address the inevitable default of the US government, decades hence. We WILL either default, monetize, or sell federal land. Math won't stop working in my lifetime.
joshontheweb 10y ago
It is your money that they spend now instead of properly invest. Regardless of what should be, there is little hope that it will be worth much to us in the future.
deleted 10y ago
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Bartweiss 10y ago
"You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you." I really don't like the glibness of that sentiment, even if the idea is fine. As a voter or constituent, yeah, fight for Social Security, try to maintain it. But as an investor? Recognize that your personal view has approximately no impact on whether Social Security exists unless you run for high office or devote your life to the topic. Make your best guess and save accordingly. People shouldn't make their individual choices around the political views they support, because most individuals have virtually no influence on national outcomes.
- baddox 10y ago
  In fact, I will argue that the commenter's attitude is MORE harmful. He or she is placing the responsibility on the individual, when this clearly is something where the individual has no authority. The notion that if you just vote REALLY HARD the people in power will treat you well, and that if you're not treated well you must not have voted hard enough, only helps maintain the status quo.
  - hsitz 10y ago
    Haven't you ever heard that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? There's a reason the Christian right has a political voice far out of proportion to their actual numbers: they're active and loud. No, of course the answer isn't to "vote really hard", but that phrasing is simply rhetoric built to disparage the poster you're responding to. Everyone has only one vote. But the people who make noise, the people who are politically active, gain power far beyond their single vote. And get enough of them together -- it doesn't necessarily take that many -- and you can orchestrate some real change.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      I don't know why you're being down-voted - everything you said is correct as a matter of fact. Pretty much any how-to guide to political activism focuses on practical techniques for getting your message heard, and getting it seen to be heard eg ensuring that media show up to cover you confronting a politician or other powerful figure. These things don't happen spontaneously, in general.
crdoconnor 10y ago
It's called social security for a reason. The politicians are itching to hand the pot of money over to Wall Street who will extract fees from it.
- sigstoat 10y ago
  as though the social security administration has no costs associated with its operation? i'd put my vanguard expense ratios up against the ssa's effective expense ratios any day of the week.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    When Bush the younger tried to privatize SS in the early 2000's as a favor to his cronies, he made sure the defaults were e.g. John Hancock at 2.4% fees. With effort you could have run it through Vanguard but most people are confused by investing and would have ended up being robbed in broad daylight by borderline criminal "asset managers."
mikestew 10y ago
You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. That's quite dismissive of his statement, and uncalled for. It's a pragmatic statement: politics aside, don't budget your retirement funds as if you'll still get the benefits promised to you as of today. Cram money in that 401K as if you won't be getting a dime of your money back from your SS contributions. What you want to talk about is a different, and mostly unrelated, to what parent is talking about. Doesn't make it unimportant, just not relevant.
bogomipz 10y ago
>" The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security." Not quite. This is actually split between the employee and the employer. With each contributing 6.2%. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10022.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10022.pdf Also why are you admonishing the OP? He has every right to pessimistic about this current state of social security.
- avn2109 10y ago
  But your employer is perfectly capable of doing accounting. So they pass through their 6.2% to you. In practice the mechanism is that every employer figures it in to their offers, such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist.
  - merpnderp 10y ago
    My employer also calculates health care and 401k matching, ie the full cost of employment to the department who will be bearing the cost. A salary of $100k is really a cost of ~$125k. [EDIT] With health care costs being fixed at crazy high amounts (in the US at least.)
  - pc86 10y ago
    > such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist Every offer is up to 6.2% lower. I have a business with employees but their pay is sufficiently low (compared to the revenue of the business; their pay is above market for the jobs they do) that SS does not enter into our calculations. If the employer portion of SS was eliminated tomorrow we would not give anyone a 6.2% raise, nor would future employees get offers 6.2% greater. I'm sure somewhere there is an employee whose salary is a big piece of a business's income and they would have gotten a little more money had that tax not been there. But I'm pretty sure that's the exception rather than the rule, if for no other reason than SS taxes are capped so you reach a point where more salary does not equal more SS tax.
    - kgwgk 10y ago
      Maybe you will have to give them a raise when they notice that pay elsewhere has gone up. Of course if they already get 6% more than they would at the next comparable job today there is no economic reason to give them the raise, but there is not economic reason to pay them so much currently either.
jandrewrogers 10y ago
It is not your money, it is a tax on income like any other. The Supreme Court established in 1960 (Flemming v Nestor) that contributions to Social Security are not your property and the government has no obligation to ever pay you benefits regardless of contribution. People have had this entitlement revoked in practice, though the targeting tends to be selective for out-groups and not a substantial fraction of the population. The government strongly encourages belief in the myth that Social Security is something other than a welfare tax with no implied obligation to the taxpayer because that notion makes the tax much more palatable than the reality.
- rebootthesystem 10y ago
  Yes. I wish more people understood this. The other one nobody seems to want to talk about or understand is Medicaid. People think they are getting health insurance (or whatever they want to call it) when, in reality, they are accumulating debt with the government and a debt most states are required, by law, to collect. This is one of the huge problems (outside of costs and lies) I have with Obamacare. The claim is that millions of people now have insurance when, in reality, millions of people were shoved into Medicaid and are accumulating a non-trivial financial obligation with the government. To say this is dishonest is probably cutting it short. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate-recovery/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate-recover...
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you're saying that using Medicaid is equivalent to accumulating debt with the Federal government. Medicaid is health insurance. It's true that Medicaid will seek reimbursement for procedures that should not have been covered, but that's not different much different than what happens when a private insurance company refuses to pay a benefit. The hospital is free to pursue the person directly for the balance they owe.
    - greedo 10y ago
      If you use Medicaid, you're expected to first deplete almost all of your financial resources to pay. It's not unusual to even have your home become an asset that will be eventually taken by the government.
pc86 10y ago
> The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money. Except the facts don't match up with this. It is not designed to be like a pension. It is the workers of today paying for the retirees of today, on the assumption that when you retire there will be workers to pay for you. There is no guarantee, and there is no fallback. The money is spent just as soon as it's taken from you. It is an entitlement because I'm paying for my parents and my peers' parents. If it's around when I retire, I will be spending other people's hard-earned money, not my own. I mean the Wikipedia "definition" of entitle is "a government program guaranteeing access to some benefit by members of a specific group" which is exactly what SS is.
- mac01021 10y ago
  > It is the workers of today paying for the retirees of today, on the assumption that when you retire there will be workers to pay for you. Isn't that how pensions have traditionally worked too?
  - nickff 10y ago
    Most pensions at least pretend to be equivalent to a retirement savings account. Defined contribution pensions are effectively a savings account, and defined benefit pensions pretend to be similar (but are usually not). Defined benefit pensions are usually used for government roles and some large unions, where the unions can get large increases in total employee benefits without having the true cost show up on the organization's books. The union and employer generally agree to use unrealistic numbers for returns on investment (>=8%/yr).
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    No- pensions take money from you while you work, put it into savings (investments) and then use that money to pay you when you retire. A properly ran pension fund is not dependent on current workers to pay current retirees, and if there were no current workers, there would still be money to pay retirees.
merpnderp 10y ago
But it isn't your money. They take your money today and then tomorrow ship it out to someone on social security. Your money is well and long spent on Depends and Ensure by the time you retire at which point some other sucker is on the hook to pay for your dotage. And like every pyramid scheme, if the bottom becomes too small it will fail spectacularly.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Again, assumes we can't adjust things on the input side. and that the output side only ones in one direction.
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slv77 10y ago
"It is not an entitlement, it's your money." I think you'd be on higher moral ground if Social Security was on sound footing from an actuarial basis, the US had balanced budgets for the last 30+ years and had invested heavily in the next generation (here or abroad) through education, infrastructure and social capital. Writing an IOU from the general fund to the Social Security "Trust" fund is no more legitimate than "saving" for retirement by funding an IRA with a credit card cash advance. Money is just an implied promise with future workers. As the last person on planet earth I could have stacks of hundred dollar bills and it won't get me a sandwich. If you look at US demographics the entire notion of retirement is at risk unless we assume some combination of massive productivity boosts, massive immigration and/or massive, sustained trade deficits or a next generation of workers that is willing to forgo children and embrace minimalism and self sacrifice that would make a monk look like a hedonist. Otherwise the future will consist of lower standard of living for the vast majority of seniors; working longer; and some combination of lower asset prices and higher long term interest rates.
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tn13 10y ago
Social Security is a theft of my money by government. The smugness of government to decide what to invest for MY retirement itself is an insult to me. I can do zilch. Voting against SS would mean labeling yourself some kind of moron who is not paying his "fair share" senile libertarian. I think the only practical way is to think of this as some kind of ransom money we are paying to mafia not get into jail at this moment. The SS when I get old would mean nothing.
anigbrowl 10y ago
It is an entitlement, because it's your money. You have legal title to it; that's what 'entitlement' means.
artmageddon 10y ago
> You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. I mean I want the money to be there and will fight tooth and nail to ensure it, but damn if my control over it isn't limited. We still need to look out for ourselves.

fortytw2 10y ago

If it was actually your money, paying into it would be optional.

chrisabrams 10y ago
Bingo! This is the best attitude I have seen in the whole thread. Social Security is an authoritarian play, or a power play. Another way to look at it: if every single US tax payer had to manually pay their taxes, instead of them being auto-drawn from their respective W2 employer, you'd see more people asking the question "who's money is this really?" This is why the fair tax or similar plans will never pass. The power to silently tax people is too good for big brother.
- knz 10y ago
  > Social Security is an authoritarian play, or a power play A more charitable view would be that social security is an attempt to provide a minimum standard of living for all seniors and the disabled. How do you propose that society cares for these people, particularly the disabled, if it's not done at a societal level? Retirement also benefits the young/middle aged by ensuring jobs open up.
  - chrisabrams 10y ago
    I think the older generation should give way to the younger generation. After all, it is the younger generation that is required to run the world while the older retires. However, as it is currently, the older generation is robbing the younger generation. The younger generation is paying for entitlements that it knows it will never receive. That is not sustainable, fair, or in my opinion: necessary. It should not be the governments job to manage retirement funds. That's why I said it's a power play, because if you made social security an open market with competition, you would probably see more positive support and results.
    - tunap 10y ago
      "Probably" see better results? I don't have, nor will I fetch for, the number of people who are solely reliant on SS, but my father is one of them. And he said the exact same words as you to me when I was a sprout. Now, after some bad decisions, and health issues as a direct result of long arduous work, he is glad to have that net. Please, don't tell me about my duties as a son, I've supported two family members through cancer, simultaneously. If/when it comes to it, he will be taken care of by me & siblings. How about the millions? who don't have children able to care for them? The streets is it? More welfare? I'd love to hear about a more sustainable option that doesn't include 'probably'.
      - chrisabrams 10y ago
        That's great that you've recognized your duty to your family, but what happens when your children retire? What process is in place to help them? Current projects barely keep things solvent for the retiring baby boomer generation. Robbing Peter to pay Paul isn't sustainable [1], but that's what social security is. Social security is not a guaranteed solution. If we have to raise taxes or collect additional taxes, that makes it a ponzi scheme. Cutting benefits is similar: you either lose the money now or later. Discussion forums such as this are one of our few hopes for generating s sustainable solution. Just because a solution doesn't currently exist doesn't mean we should be complacent with how things are. [1]: http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/pf/social-security-medicare/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/22/pf/social-security-medicare/
        vkou 10y ago
        It's not your money to 'lose', and welfare programs do not rob Peter to pay Paul. They are just that - welfare programs. Wealth redistribution. There is nothing fundamental about them that makes them pyramid schemes.
        anigbrowl 10y ago
        We already have a sustainable solution: admit more people to the workforce via immigration. As more of the baby boomers die off over the next `03 years, the pool of retirees collecting social security will shrink back towards the mean. You seem to be under the impression that the demographic bulge is a one-way thing.
- chatmasta 10y ago
  This is a great point I don't see brought up often enough. It also has a lot of implications for the "gig economy" and independent contractors. If the majority of the workforce works as independent contractors, the government will not be able to use employers to collect ("withhold") taxes automatically from workers' paychecks. The IRS will need to wait for the contractors to explicitly pay their own taxes. I suspect this will have a big impact on cash flow for incoming taxes. Also, it could give more power to the people should they ever choose to execute a tax boycott.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    My guess is the government will create legislation where it requires large marketplaces to automatically withhold taxes by default, such as ebay, airbnb, uber, lyft, task rabbit, amazon, doordash etc.
    - chrisabrams 10y ago
      This has already started with fees. Fees are just a synonym for taxes, or money that does not go in your pocket.
- entee 10y ago
  Is that true? It's certainly true that under many of these alternative tax structures, we can't fund what we do right now. If instead there was a list that said, "Here is the amount of money that went to each of the major federal departments", maybe people would say, "really? that's cheap!" or "really? we spend that much on defense???" Who knows, but they'd be better informed. As I recall to a rough first approximation only about 1/5 of government spending isn't Defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. That's the first thing to keep in mind when talking about deficits, taxation and priorities. Personally every time I look at my pay statement the taxes sting badly. However, I think the more interesting discussion to have is, "what are we spending money on?"
  - chrisabrams 10y ago
    > Personally every time I look at my pay statement the taxes sting badly. However, I think the more interesting discussion to have is, "what are we spending money on?" As a self-employed libertarian I think the same thing :O I think most of the services that are offered through the government are noble or necessary..I disagree that it should be the government that runs many of them.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    If instead there was a list that said, "Here is the amount of money that went to each of the major federal departments" Yes...we could call it a 'budget.'
jacalata 10y ago
Not necessarily. The Australian superannuation program has compulsory contributions but the money goes into an account in your own name.
- rch 10y ago
  Interesting - I wasn't aware of this program even as I was writing a similar comment.
- snovv_crash 10y ago
  Do you get to choose the bank that the account is with?
  - jackvalentine 10y ago
    Yes, and the money is easily portable between them and you choose what level of risk you're willing to tolerate. You can even run a self-managed superannuation fund and make all the investment choices yourself if you want but people rarely do better than a standard fund.
    - deleted 10y ago
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- merpnderp 10y ago
  How does Australia deal with retirees with too little or nothing in this account, aka the poor who are past working age?
  - jacalata 10y ago
    We have an old-age pension if your income and assets are below a certain amount: https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink/age-pension https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelin...
    - 10y ago
rch 10y ago
Not necessarily. If the system morphed into a required savings rate, then it could still be 'yours' without being optional.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> It is not an entitlement, it's your money That's not how social security works. Every dollar you pay in flies out to fund promises made in years past. "Your" social security money needs to be earned by our children.

aardvark291 10y ago
That's an accounting detail.
wang_li 10y ago
The Social Security Trust fund generally runs a surplus (as recently as 2014 it added $25 billion.) However it's projected that around 2030-2034 the number of recipients will be drawing more than is being paid in. At that point your statement will become more correct than it currently is.
- thraway2016 10y ago
  ...the SSTF holds exclusively US Treasury notes and bonds as assets. You're describing a distinction without a difference, as other parts of the USG have already spent the surplus.
  - guelo 10y ago
    Sure, but US Treasuries are considered some of the safest assets in the world.
  - wang_li 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from as it assumes that the US won't be paying back its debts. Do you also consider that money you deposit into your checking and savings accounts as having disappeared into a black hole?
    - thraway2016 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from as it assumes the exponential function will stop working in the near future. I'm coming from the perspective that there is neither a short term nor long term plan to address the inevitable default of the US government, decades hence. We WILL either default, monetize, or sell federal land. Math won't stop working in my lifetime.

joshontheweb 10y ago

It is your money that they spend now instead of properly invest. Regardless of what should be, there is little hope that it will be worth much to us in the future.

deleted 10y ago

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Bartweiss 10y ago

"You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you." I really don't like the glibness of that sentiment, even if the idea is fine. As a voter or constituent, yeah, fight for Social Security, try to maintain it. But as an investor? Recognize that your personal view has approximately no impact on whether Social Security exists unless you run for high office or devote your life to the topic. Make your best guess and save accordingly. People shouldn't make their individual choices around the political views they support, because most individuals have virtually no influence on national outcomes.

baddox 10y ago
In fact, I will argue that the commenter's attitude is MORE harmful. He or she is placing the responsibility on the individual, when this clearly is something where the individual has no authority. The notion that if you just vote REALLY HARD the people in power will treat you well, and that if you're not treated well you must not have voted hard enough, only helps maintain the status quo.
- hsitz 10y ago
  Haven't you ever heard that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? There's a reason the Christian right has a political voice far out of proportion to their actual numbers: they're active and loud. No, of course the answer isn't to "vote really hard", but that phrasing is simply rhetoric built to disparage the poster you're responding to. Everyone has only one vote. But the people who make noise, the people who are politically active, gain power far beyond their single vote. And get enough of them together -- it doesn't necessarily take that many -- and you can orchestrate some real change.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    I don't know why you're being down-voted - everything you said is correct as a matter of fact. Pretty much any how-to guide to political activism focuses on practical techniques for getting your message heard, and getting it seen to be heard eg ensuring that media show up to cover you confronting a politician or other powerful figure. These things don't happen spontaneously, in general.

crdoconnor 10y ago

It's called social security for a reason. The politicians are itching to hand the pot of money over to Wall Street who will extract fees from it.

sigstoat 10y ago
as though the social security administration has no costs associated with its operation? i'd put my vanguard expense ratios up against the ssa's effective expense ratios any day of the week.
- avn2109 10y ago
  When Bush the younger tried to privatize SS in the early 2000's as a favor to his cronies, he made sure the defaults were e.g. John Hancock at 2.4% fees. With effort you could have run it through Vanguard but most people are confused by investing and would have ended up being robbed in broad daylight by borderline criminal "asset managers."

mikestew 10y ago

You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. That's quite dismissive of his statement, and uncalled for. It's a pragmatic statement: politics aside, don't budget your retirement funds as if you'll still get the benefits promised to you as of today. Cram money in that 401K as if you won't be getting a dime of your money back from your SS contributions. What you want to talk about is a different, and mostly unrelated, to what parent is talking about. Doesn't make it unimportant, just not relevant.

bogomipz 10y ago

>" The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security." Not quite. This is actually split between the employee and the employer. With each contributing 6.2%. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10022.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10022.pdf Also why are you admonishing the OP? He has every right to pessimistic about this current state of social security.

avn2109 10y ago
But your employer is perfectly capable of doing accounting. So they pass through their 6.2% to you. In practice the mechanism is that every employer figures it in to their offers, such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  My employer also calculates health care and 401k matching, ie the full cost of employment to the department who will be bearing the cost. A salary of $100k is really a cost of ~$125k. [EDIT] With health care costs being fixed at crazy high amounts (in the US at least.)
- pc86 10y ago
  > such that every offer you ever receive is ~6.2% lower than it would be if SS didn't exist Every offer is up to 6.2% lower. I have a business with employees but their pay is sufficiently low (compared to the revenue of the business; their pay is above market for the jobs they do) that SS does not enter into our calculations. If the employer portion of SS was eliminated tomorrow we would not give anyone a 6.2% raise, nor would future employees get offers 6.2% greater. I'm sure somewhere there is an employee whose salary is a big piece of a business's income and they would have gotten a little more money had that tax not been there. But I'm pretty sure that's the exception rather than the rule, if for no other reason than SS taxes are capped so you reach a point where more salary does not equal more SS tax.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    Maybe you will have to give them a raise when they notice that pay elsewhere has gone up. Of course if they already get 6% more than they would at the next comparable job today there is no economic reason to give them the raise, but there is not economic reason to pay them so much currently either.

jandrewrogers 10y ago

It is not your money, it is a tax on income like any other. The Supreme Court established in 1960 (Flemming v Nestor) that contributions to Social Security are not your property and the government has no obligation to ever pay you benefits regardless of contribution. People have had this entitlement revoked in practice, though the targeting tends to be selective for out-groups and not a substantial fraction of the population. The government strongly encourages belief in the myth that Social Security is something other than a welfare tax with no implied obligation to the taxpayer because that notion makes the tax much more palatable than the reality.

rebootthesystem 10y ago
Yes. I wish more people understood this. The other one nobody seems to want to talk about or understand is Medicaid. People think they are getting health insurance (or whatever they want to call it) when, in reality, they are accumulating debt with the government and a debt most states are required, by law, to collect. This is one of the huge problems (outside of costs and lies) I have with Obamacare. The claim is that millions of people now have insurance when, in reality, millions of people were shoved into Medicaid and are accumulating a non-trivial financial obligation with the government. To say this is dishonest is probably cutting it short. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate-recovery/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate-recover...
- mywittyname 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you're saying that using Medicaid is equivalent to accumulating debt with the Federal government. Medicaid is health insurance. It's true that Medicaid will seek reimbursement for procedures that should not have been covered, but that's not different much different than what happens when a private insurance company refuses to pay a benefit. The hospital is free to pursue the person directly for the balance they owe.
  - greedo 10y ago
    If you use Medicaid, you're expected to first deplete almost all of your financial resources to pay. It's not unusual to even have your home become an asset that will be eventually taken by the government.

pc86 10y ago

> The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money. Except the facts don't match up with this. It is not designed to be like a pension. It is the workers of today paying for the retirees of today, on the assumption that when you retire there will be workers to pay for you. There is no guarantee, and there is no fallback. The money is spent just as soon as it's taken from you. It is an entitlement because I'm paying for my parents and my peers' parents. If it's around when I retire, I will be spending other people's hard-earned money, not my own. I mean the Wikipedia "definition" of entitle is "a government program guaranteeing access to some benefit by members of a specific group" which is exactly what SS is.

mac01021 10y ago
> It is the workers of today paying for the retirees of today, on the assumption that when you retire there will be workers to pay for you. Isn't that how pensions have traditionally worked too?
- nickff 10y ago
  Most pensions at least pretend to be equivalent to a retirement savings account. Defined contribution pensions are effectively a savings account, and defined benefit pensions pretend to be similar (but are usually not). Defined benefit pensions are usually used for government roles and some large unions, where the unions can get large increases in total employee benefits without having the true cost show up on the organization's books. The union and employer generally agree to use unrealistic numbers for returns on investment (>=8%/yr).
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  No- pensions take money from you while you work, put it into savings (investments) and then use that money to pay you when you retire. A properly ran pension fund is not dependent on current workers to pay current retirees, and if there were no current workers, there would still be money to pay retirees.

merpnderp 10y ago

But it isn't your money. They take your money today and then tomorrow ship it out to someone on social security. Your money is well and long spent on Depends and Ensure by the time you retire at which point some other sucker is on the hook to pay for your dotage. And like every pyramid scheme, if the bottom becomes too small it will fail spectacularly.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Again, assumes we can't adjust things on the input side. and that the output side only ones in one direction.

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slv77 10y ago

"It is not an entitlement, it's your money." I think you'd be on higher moral ground if Social Security was on sound footing from an actuarial basis, the US had balanced budgets for the last 30+ years and had invested heavily in the next generation (here or abroad) through education, infrastructure and social capital. Writing an IOU from the general fund to the Social Security "Trust" fund is no more legitimate than "saving" for retirement by funding an IRA with a credit card cash advance. Money is just an implied promise with future workers. As the last person on planet earth I could have stacks of hundred dollar bills and it won't get me a sandwich. If you look at US demographics the entire notion of retirement is at risk unless we assume some combination of massive productivity boosts, massive immigration and/or massive, sustained trade deficits or a next generation of workers that is willing to forgo children and embrace minimalism and self sacrifice that would make a monk look like a hedonist. Otherwise the future will consist of lower standard of living for the vast majority of seniors; working longer; and some combination of lower asset prices and higher long term interest rates.

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tn13 10y ago

Social Security is a theft of my money by government. The smugness of government to decide what to invest for MY retirement itself is an insult to me. I can do zilch. Voting against SS would mean labeling yourself some kind of moron who is not paying his "fair share" senile libertarian. I think the only practical way is to think of this as some kind of ransom money we are paying to mafia not get into jail at this moment. The SS when I get old would mean nothing.

anigbrowl 10y ago

It is an entitlement, because it's your money. You have legal title to it; that's what 'entitlement' means.

artmageddon 10y ago

> You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. I mean I want the money to be there and will fight tooth and nail to ensure it, but damn if my control over it isn't limited. We still need to look out for ourselves.