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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (173796)	8/14/2003 4:32:32 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574197

Ted, looks like we both could read more about Social Security. I checked my favorite site for common "dummy" questions, and I found this starter page: people.howstuffworks.com From there, I followed links to this page: ssa.gov Here are key points that I picked up: - SS benefits aren't limited to retirement pension. It also includes disability, family benefits, survivors, and Medicare. - SS taxes and benefits are capped at a working age income level of around $70K/year. So someone like Bill Gates isn't paying all that much in SS taxes, but he won't be getting "millions" in benefits when he retires, either. (A socialist web site suggested lifting that cap for taxes only, but without a corresponding lift in the cap for benefits, that sounds more like soaking the rich to me.) - Key quote from the government's web site on SS: "Social Security was never intended to be your only source of income when you retire or become disabled, or your family's only income if you die. It is intended to supplement other income you have from pension plans, savings, investments, etc. Low income workers receive a higher rate of return than those in the upper income brackets, but a worker with average earnings can expect a retirement benefit that represents about 40 percent of his or her average lifetime earnings." - SS is indeed a Ponzi scheme, but that's the way it was set up in the first place. It worked back in 1935 because the ratio of payees to beneficiaries was a lot larger than it is now. People are living longer, but the retirement age is still 65, the same as when SS was set up back in the beginning. The system is complicated, so the issues and questions are naturally complicated as well. I do know the partisan attacks, however, aren't helping to bring light to the situation at all. Tenchusatsu