Hey tell me what you think about my way of fixing social security?

[SCOTT M]

Putting aside your specific proposal, you make an important point: The only way to make Social Security work is to invest our FICA taxes to earn a market rate of return. As it is now, the “return” is negative. Every dime that has ever been paid into SS is gone. It’s been spent. You and I have lost 100% of whatever we have paid in. The so-called SS “Trust Fund” is sitting on IOUs issued by the Treasury.

Enron’s 401k retirement funds were almost exactly like our SS retirement “funds.” Enron took its employees’ contributions, bought its own stock with the money, and spent the money. Then Enron went bankrupt. SS takes our contributions, “buys” Treasury Bills and Notes, and the government spends the money. It’s a sham.

Costa Rica has a retirement plan that takes its citizens’ retirement contributions and invests them in the residential mortgage market to earn a market rate of return, so the citizens’ retirement accounts are invested in hard assets, not worthless pieces of paper – or journal entries. If SS is so secure, why is the government now talking about SS going bankrupt? Why is the government talking about cutting retirement benefits and raising payroll taxes? It’s because those of us who are working today are paying the taxes that are used to pay the benefits of retirees, and as the ratio of retirees to working people increases as our population ages there will be fewer workers to pay for the benefits of more retirees.

Great Buddha - The fact is that the top 1% of income earners pay about 47% of all personal income taxes and the top 5% pay well over 50% of all those taxes. And that does not include what the “rich” pay in SS and Medicare taxes. The poor pay little or no income taxes. The government has tried to fool us into believing that we can solve the problem with SS by increasing taxes on the rich, but why would we need to do that if the money you and I have already paid into SS is “invested” in Treasury bills and notes? It’s not invested; it’s been spent. It’s gone.

Please read this carefully:

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/03/12/2...nslade.htm

In this situation the rich and the poor are in the same boat. That boat has sprung a leak. We’d better seal the leak rather than fight over the life jackets because we’re way out to sea and a life jacket will just keep whoever gets it afloat a little longer until the sharks decide they want a meal that’s alive and kicking.