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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (22668)	1/6/2005 11:47:04 AM
From: whitepine	Respond to of 23153

ep....Social Security? So where is the outrage of the press that 'our' political leaders created the greatest Ponzi Scheme of all time? SS is a Tsunami that makes Enron look like a 1/8th-inch ripple. SS as a concept is certainly more reasonable than many other government programs, but it is an actuarial contradiction. wp

To: energyplay who wrote (22668)	1/6/2005 6:35:47 PM
From: chowder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

I hate SS but, I want my money! I put it in all of these years and I want it back. I didn't have an employer that paid half of it for me, I was self-employed thus, a self-employment tax as far as I'm concerned. SS needs to be privatized for the younger workers in my opinion and the Republicans aren't doing a very good job of selling it. The Republicans are assuming that everyone has enough common sense to know that SS money would be tied to index funds, not allowed to invest in an Enron or Worldcom. The Democrats know too many people lack common sense so they build on that lack of knowledge by creating fear. You could lose all of your money. Look at Enron. Look at Worldcom. The sky is falling. It's a damn shame in my opinion. Those same people who are opposed to you and I investing SS in an index fund, are the same ones who don't pay SS or have a government type plan that allows them to invest in those index funds. It's all about power and who controls it. What a sorry ass bunch of people. dabum

To: energyplay who wrote (22668)	1/6/2005 11:34:08 PM
From: bull_derrick	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 23153

One could think of Social Security in its present form as an insurance policy in case one lives a long time where the populations pools its risk. Some check out early while others need the assistance for a long period of time. Studies of 401K performance shows the average person makes very poor investment decisions regarding their retirement plan savings. At our company, some employees have 2 and 3 loans against their 401K which means they have substantially zero equity for their retirement. The public tends to invest in the market at the peak and sell at the troughs. I am sure Wall Street would love to see more dumb money coming their way. As a very conservative Republican, this may sound out of character, but I'm not at all sold that this is good public policy even though SS is not something I'm figuring into my own personal retirement plans. This would be a sad country in 40 years if the public were allowed to squander their retirement as they've shown a propensity to do with 401K programs. That may sound like a pretty liberal viewpoint, and it probably is, but I don't believe the average person has the financial wherewithal to pull it off.