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

To: Road Walker who wrote (329200)	3/16/2007 4:48:16 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578892

It's not at all like welfare. Everyone that works contributes, and the more you contribute the more you receive. But if you save all your life and have big stock portfolio that pays you a lot in Captial gains and dividends do you then get less SS then you deserve ??

To: Road Walker who wrote (329200)	3/16/2007 5:05:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578892

Yeah? You know exactly what's going to happen to you? No I don't, which is one of the reasons why I said "give me all the money I have contributed (which I would define as including the employee contribution) rather than just "release me from further payments. My home equity, my 401K and other stock holdings, and the refund of all my past contributions would provide for a buffer to the risk. In reality its very unlikely that any such refund will happen. If I was offered freedom from future payroll taxes in exchange for giving up any future SS benefits (very unlikely as well, but more likely then the refund) I might still go for it. One reason not to is that being free from payroll taxes, doesn't automatically mean that my total tax burden will be lower. Other taxes could be increased either right away or in the future. No chance of a disability so you can't work? I did say that the disability portion of Social Security is insurance. I didn't comment one way or the other about how good of insurance it is or how it compares with current or possible private insurance plans. re: In the future there will likely be very few retirees that SS provides a good ROI for, even if they have unusually long lives. That's true even without any reduction in future payouts, and future payouts probably will have to be reduced one way or the other. You are just making stuff up. Not a single thing is made up in that paragraph that you quoted. The future payouts from the SSA are projected to be higher than the future intake. So the "trust fund" gets depleted (meaning that retirees will be paid from income tax), since there is no real fund to draw from, then after the "fund" goes to zero, benefits will automatically be decreased. Ideally they get decreased before then to smooth out the transition, and spread its impact (lessening its impact on each person, if not the total dollar reduction). Of course you could increase payroll taxes or provide other funding, but they already are high enough to be somewhat problematic, and with the declining ration of workers to retired people, the current projected benefits will be hard to sustain. It's not at all like welfare. Everyone that works contributes, and the more you contribute the more you receive. Everyone that pays income tax contributes to welfare payments. The program is different then welfare. But it and welfare are both income transfer programs. SS transfers from working age people to retirees instead of transferring from the income tax payers to the poor.