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

To: i-node who wrote (200209)	9/4/2004 2:35:40 PM
From: SilentZ	Respond to of 1573761

>Look, I understand you're only 24 (and therefore still take a fairly short view of some things, as youth will cause people to do sometimes). But surely, you don't think 20-30 years is an appropriate planning horizon for Social Security? Not what I'm saying... what I'm saying is that if it lasts 30 more years, it will have worked for nearly 100 years without people sending 85% of their income to the government, despite the retirement of the baby boomers (the anomaly which could kill the whole thing). >What are you going to do 20-30 years from now when it is NOT viable any longer? Just tell those who are receiving benefits, "Sorry, you don't get your check this month?" or those who are paying into the system, "Well, we didn't actually SAVE your money for YOU". Your thinking is totally irrational. Dave... as we all know, Social Security isn't really the savings account that we're taught about in grade school... it's essentially payments to old people, plus some savings + interest on the leftovers to keep a cushion. There's no reason, that as long as most generations are larger than the preceding ones, having the working generations pay a certain percentage of the income that they make over 40-50 years of labor can't supply the elderly with $1,000/mo for the last 7-10 years of their lives. You might not like that you're paying your money to someone else's father that didn't work as hard as yours did, and that your father doesn't need that money, but it frankly doesn't bother me and seems like the right thing to do. Why wouldn't this be doable? >I'm going to give you a clue. This isn't my problem, it is your's, and that of my children. You can't tax your way out of it. You have to GROW your way out of it. And you can't GROW your way out of it at an average yield in the 2 or 3% range. You have GOT to get some of that money into the markets where it can earn a reasonable return. >If you have had "plenty" of math, you undoubtedly know about exponential functions. Compound interest is an exponential function. You may want to read the following sentence a couple of times: Of course I know about exponential functions, but remember this... that 2-3% is relatively safe and sure, but investing the money in the stock market and seeking 7% is nearly as likely to lose you 7%, and you could lose much more than that. >This should be a hint to you as to the ONLY way out of the social security crisis. More taxes does not solve the problem. Only a higher growth rate does. Does it? If you cap the amount of income that can be taxed for Social Security, then as more people that make more than $85K/yr make more money or more people that make less than $85K/yr cross that threshhold, the system doesn't get any more money put into it. So how does growth help? >Your statements indicate an unbelievable level of ignorance for a person who seems reasonably intelligent, on what may be the most important subject you can dream up. Nope, I've put a lot of thought into this. The math isn't really all that difficult. -Z