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Re: [OM] In case you hadn't heard....

Subject: Re: [OM] In case you hadn't heard....
From: Charles Geilfuss <charles.geilfuss@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:17:14 -0400
    Nathan, I agree with everything you've said except the first sentence.
It is not fiction. If two people work for 30 years, and one earns twice as
much as the other, if you go to SS's website the year before they retire
and plug in their SS numbers, (all other things being equal) they will not
receive the same SS monthly benefit.  US social security is a legalized
Ponzi scheme. It will work so long as there are more paying in than taking
out. But a time of reckoning is coming. At current trends, outlays will
exceed inputs in about a decade or two and they will have to dip into that
binder full of IOU's at the Treasury Office to make up the difference. But
as you rightly point out, there is no Trust Fund. Congress has used SS
surplus funds to make the US budget deficit look less bad for decades. The
Trust is simply a promise to get those funds elsewhere: they will either
borrow more (if they can), print more or tax more. I personally have
planned my life finances as if I will never see a penny of SS, which I
probably won't.

Charlie


On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 1:17 PM, Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> This is a fiction. The money you pay into SS is used to pay today's
> pensions. It is not squirreled away for your future retirement. Those
> benefits will come out of the SS taxes paid by your children. It is the
> most hare-brained retirement scheme in the world. It was set up this way,
> with a cosmetic layer of something that looks like insurance, and the whole
> ridiculous trust fund fiction, so that it would be politically palatable. A
> normal system financed by taxes was considered to "socialist" for the US.
> Nonetheless, that is exactly what SS is.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
> Nathan Wajsman
> Alicante, Spain
> http://www.frozenlight.eu
> http://www.greatpix.eu
> PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
> Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/
>
> YNWA
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 19, 2014, at 5:56 PM, Charles Geilfuss wrote:
>
> > The system (or scheme, if you
> > prefer) is designed such that what you receive in benefit is determined
> by
> > what you pay into the system.
>
> --
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