OT: How to Save Social Security

[Duane Bozarth]

...

What makes you say that? Only if one is speculating, not investing, do you want to get "in and out"...that's not to say one never rebalances a portfolio, but it's the penchant for day trading, etc., that typically leads to poorer returns for most than an informed buy-and-hold strategy over the long term.

Foregoing the thought of hitting the big winner for long term gains will end up w/ comfortable returns if not spectacular during bull markets and far reduced losses during bear periods. Again, we're talking long-term (30-40 years) retirement here, not short term speculation.

I'd wager if one simply used any of the broader market index funds balanced w/ some bond funds starting at age 25 w/ regular contributions there will be little likelihood of not being comfortable at age 65 (or well before). In essence, that's what I'd like to see done...an enforced conservative savings plan for all since it appears the bulk of the young these days are more into self-gratification for the moment than thinking of how they're going to get by later on...ideally, it wouldn't have to be forced, but that's better than the alternative of continuing the "pay-as-you (hope) go" plan of the present.

Something similar for med insurance will also need to be done eventually.

[GregP]

Your post is one of those Goebbelian Big Lies: it pretends that Republicans had power when they did not control the presidency and they are little hopeless boys (and a very few girls) now that they do. Bullpucky. The largest deficits by far since WWII were during the Reagan, GB I, and GB II administrations. These are in terms of percentage of GDP. The Republicans have no intent of spending less money, only more: they realize that that keeps them in office, and since they have no intention of living up to the Compact With America, the second biggest political lie in the US in the last 60 years - the cumulative oeuvre of the GB II administration is the biggest - they will continue to increase spending and refuse to make anyone they might have to face up to to pay for it.

[William Sommerwerck]

You have it backwards.

Republicans love big deficits -- especially those created by tax cuts for the wealthy -- because they provide a wonderful excuse to cut discretionary spending.

Remember -- the only thing in life that matters is acquiring wealth.

[Larry Blanchard]

OK, Doug. SS does take in real money. What should they do with it?

And I know you'd rather can the whole system, but that's not the question I'm asking.

[Larry Blanchard]

Or a balanced fund. The oldest of them all, Vanguards Wellington fund, started before 1929. Despite that, it has returned over 8% annual average for its entire life. Over 10% for the last ten years.

I should have started putting money in it at least ten years before I did :-).

[Doug Miller]

Invest it in an actual asset. Real estate, corporate bonds, stocks, gold, passbook savings accounts at a commercial bank, you name it, I don't care. As long as it's an actual asset, I'm happy. The problem we have now is that Congress is playing a shell game, by falsely claiming that the money is invested, when in fact it's nothing more than a fistful of government IOUs.

That's true enough, I *would* rather can the whole thing. As I've pointed out before, it's just a Ponzi scheme (albeit on a scale that Ponzi himself would never have imagined in his wildest dreams), and if anyone but the federal government were operating it, he would have been jailed decades ago.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Renata]

No. A bit later. But SS is most benefiting Bush's budget shenanigans.

"Back in 1983, as part of a deal to save Social Security from impending demographic doom, Congress enacted legislation to essentially increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits. As a result, the government began to collect more Social Security payroll taxes than it paid out to beneficiaries each year. The theory was that the government would use these surpluses to pay down the national debt. That way, when baby boomers retire?and comparatively more people are collecting benefits while comparatively fewer people are working?the government would be in a better position to borrow the necessary funds to provide the promised benefits.

So much for theory. The reality? For the first 15 years, every penny of the surplus was spent, first by Republican presidents and then by a Democratic president. According to figures provided by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the surpluses were relatively insignificant for much of this period. Between 1983 and 2001 a total of $667 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes was spent?about $35 billion per year. It was only in fiscal 1999 and 2000, when the government ran so-called on-budget surpluses, that excess Social Security funds were actually used to retire debt. ... In his first three budgets, Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations?about $160 billion per year!

By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004?which began in October 2003?if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion, rather close to the modern peak of 6 percent of GDP. And according to its own projections (the bottom line of Table 8 represents the Social Security surplus), the administration plans to spend an additional $990 billion in such funds between now and 2008. That year, according to the Office of Management and Budget's projections, the on-budget deficit will be about $464 billion. Only by using that year's $238 billion Social Security surplus does the administration arrive at a total, unified deficit of $226 billion. And the ultimate on-budget deficit will almost certainly be worse. OMB has proven in the past few years that its projections can't be trusted.

The accounting for Social Security surpluses has always been dishonest. But in the past few years, the Bush administration has made this shady accounting a central pillar of its fiscal strategy."

Rest at

which someone posted earlier in the thread, but you guys are apparently too busy to peruse.

Renata

[Doug Miller]

[snip description of Congress systematically stealing money from taxpayers, then wasting it]

Now what are we going to do about it? Runaway government spending, I mean.

I have a suggestion: prohibit, by Constitutional amendment if necessary, the withholding of income taxes from payroll checks, instead requiring that all taxes be paid in a lump sum on April 15. Once people see how much the government is really taking from us, I think hardly anyone would sit still for it.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Duane Bozarth]

Yes, I just gave an example of one possible conservative alternative that has a high probablility of reasonable success...

Combined, of course, w/ a gradual shifting towards more principal-conserving choices as time frame for requiring the assets approaches...

OK, now question--if this choice were followed, there would inevitably be a significant amount of balances at contributor's passing...is it possibly a choice to take at least a fraction of those accumulated assets as the basis for longer-term health care financing?

[frenchy]

Speaking of Social Security, how about the topic of identity theft that is now exploding. Would the adoption of a 3 or 4 digit 'pin number' to everyone's social security number help in preventing identity theft? I/e/ a number that SS would assign to everyone, and it could be used as a final identity checker that would only be typed in like we now do with credit card and atm accounts when at the store, or the extra 3 digits on back of credit cards. If someone discovered the pin number thru fraud or whatever, you could go in person to soc security office and provide enough information to have it reset to a new number. And when someone tried to open new accounts under your social security number, they would be required to know that 4-digit code. Why don't I hear anyone talking about a solution to this problem instead of the same old crap about shredding up your bills etc. while the problem just skyrockets anyway???

[hagstar]

Your stats are based on an average black male who doesn't exist, the sample consists of almost no middle examples as I explained. I love how I explain a flaw in the statistical view and you come back with the exact same statistic I just refuted, while adding nothing that indicates you even tried to understand what I said.

I think you understand exactly my point but are acting deliberately belligerent because you know many people will fall for this. THERE IS NO AVERAGE black male eddie, just a defective statistic derived from pure early and late deaths, with zero middle. Otherwise you would agree one foot in boiling water and one in ice water would be comfortable. Can you deny, eddie, the average temp here is comfortable?

[Eddie Brimer]

talk about double talk john...re-read your post! plain talk...IF a black males live past age 30, he STILL doesn't live as long as a white male. white female, or black female.(statistically speaking) this would lead you to believe that the elderly black male is getting left out...... now, with that said, here is the problem with bushys lie (as you like to put it). sure, less black men are left alive in the latter years because of average life expectancy, but what they are not saying is...there are also fewer that make it to SS age because of premature death from violence, etc.. they pay less in than the others because of this, and also because of unemployment. prison etc., etc.. also there is substantially more paid to surviving widows and dependents. it's a wash.

[CW]

No, that's what you were saying. Try to keep your story strait.

By that logic, you never pay taxes either. Maybe you do. What kind of printing press do you use?

I am biggining to doubt if anything makes sense to you. You don't seem to have a very firm grip on reality.

[Larry Blanchard]

Or even better, do it quarterly like I had to do when self-employed.

I once argued a $5 difference up through several layers of the IRS - I lost, but they spent at least $50 to get that $5 :-).

And the one I loved was when I won. They never said "Oops, we were wrong", the letters I got (almost every year) said "We have abated your penalties."

[Peter Wieck]

Just keep in mind when having this discussion...

1. The government has been raping the SS trust fund for many years.
2. NONE of the thieves proposing "solutions" are ever likely to depend on, or even need any aspect of SS, Medicare or Medicaid.

So, parties who have _no_ needs congruent to those who will actually need SS are making life-decisions for that group.

Some fun, huh?

[GregP]

That's "proof ?" As I said, you have the extremist's view that whatever you say is self-evidently true, simply because *you* said it.

[GregP]

It most certainly is a mythology, even tho it is not like the Soviet Union's.

Nope, I didn't say "Nazi" or "Nazi-like." I said "fascist."

[Eddie Brimer]

[Scott W. Harvey]

I'll do you one better: how 'bout an electronic card with a digital readout that changes the card number every few minutes?

Such a thing is possible and has been used for quite awhile to provide an ever-changing password to users of some high-security computer systems. It works by changing the password every few minutes so that any compromised password will only be valid for a couple of minutes. Don't know why such a scheme couldn't work with credit cards and SS cards.

IMHO, the use of the Social Security number for any non-governmental purpose should be banned at this point. The problems that are now surfacing related to the use of this number have been known and ignored for years.

Back in the late seventies, I attended a garage sale that was been put on by members of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Their club had been recently raided by the cops (possession of illegal weapons, I think it was), and they were trying to raise money to pay some of their legal bills.

The club had a pretty nice console that I bought from them at the sale. When I started dismantling the set for cleaning I discovered that two of the chassis mount bushings were missing (probably rotted away) and someone had propped up one side of the chassis with a tattered paperbook book to compensate.

That book was from some underground publisher and it was all about how to assume a new identity. It was a fascinating read....I read it from cover to cover without putting it down once. Although I never tried any of the techniques in the book, I had little doubt that they would probably work.

About three-quarters of the way through it it dawned on me that the same techniques could just as easily be used to assume someone else's identity as well. That was kind of a warning shot over the bow for me. Ever since that time I have made it a golden rule never to give my correct SSN to anyone who didn't have an absolute need to know. This has created some problems for me in the past, particularly with insurance companies who insisted on using my SSN as a policy ID number. (One of these companies would send me correspondence with the policy number right on the front of the envelope-insane!)

Nowadays, most of these folks have wised up and adopted a different numbering scheme not tied to the social security number, but widespread non-official use of it persists nonetheless. What a mess, what a mess.

-Scott

[Michael A. Terrell]

The state of Florida job service required you to sign in to look at the job listing by printing your full name and SS number on a form that was open for everyone to see. 25 names and SS numbers per page on open clipboards for everyone in line after you to steal your information.. I refused to sign it and went to file a complaint with one of our congressional representatives over the careless handling of this information. I haven't checked on the complaint because I got my disability a month later and haven't been well enough to get back to their office in the last two months.