EnviroLink Forum

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

That's a good one! Then I went to answer my email and my uncle sent me this news:
"

SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT'/ENTITLEMENT!

Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?

I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.

I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.

Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”
This isn’t a benefit – its earned income!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.

It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both
your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of
working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.

Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the
Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had
just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking.
They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.

And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed.
And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments?

And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments were acharity!
Let’s take a stand.

We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.
Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government –

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income. "
I think we have yoyos in DC........

_________________
"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

That is a legal classification for anything from farm subsidies to medicare and was applied to this from the start. It is not earned income, unless you only receive what you contributed and interest, which is not the case. It is more like an insurance policy than earned income.



No, it is only 12.4% now (half from the employer and half deducted from the employee) and was less in the past.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/taxRates.html



Way faulty math here. There is no way incrimental payments with 1% interest on the previous month will add up to that much above the amount paid into it in just 40 years. It looks more like they took the total added in over time and added the 1% interest for 40 years, which would be 80 years after you started working.

No, using this calculator $180,000 @ 1% per year is only $267995.47 after 40 years. The compounding monthly would increase the amount but not by a million dollars.

http://www.csgnetwork.com/compoundsavingsintcalc.html

No, using $30,000 per year at the quoted 15% rate and dividing that by 12 to get the month deposit, starting with a 0 balance, depositing each month and compounding interest each month for a total of 40 years we get: $ 41,393.64 interest for the whole time and a final total in the account of $ 221,393.64.

http://www.thecalculatorsite.com/financ ... hp#results





This is correct, proably because they did not calculate it themselves.



By advancing them what they would have paid throughout their life?



They seemed to have wasted it on math education for some ..... or maybe they did.



A stand for ignorance is always interesting. They did not waste the money on histroy or civics education for some either .... or maybe they did.



Or one writing flawed internet chain letters.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

So with ~14K/yr and 269K you get 19 years plus the amount of interest in those 19 years.
With a retirement age of 65 and average lifespan of 78, they still keep a bundle to spend.
My dad died at 59 and my mother at 71. Half of my friends died before retirement age, too.
And there still is a growing national debt of ~15.927 trillion plus interest.
I still say that DC is full of yoyos.

_________________
"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

No, that was using their figures which are way off. When I started working the total rate for employee and employer was ~8% and it is now 12.4%. So a 30K per year job would generate a payment into the system of $2400/year then and $9000/year now.

Think of the survivors benefits for wives that may not have worked, or in later years for husbands that may not have worked and both got money out they never paid in. Their spouses may have and that would level the field considerably. Also those who became disabled at an early age and drew out more than they paid into the plan or never paid into it at all.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Using the median income of $10,500.00 for 1972 and a slighlty higher SS rate of 8.5% total and also rounding up to a deposit of $75.00 per month at that claimed 1% interest compounded monthly adjusting the amount for 5% inflation every year (which is a simple way to handle the percentage increases and wage increases since), we see a total of about $125,000.00 after 40 years. If one were to have started in 1972 and retired this year there would be about this amount in the SS fund for their retirement. That would give a 20 year retirement of a whopping $6250.00 per year with adjustments for cost of living in following years. That breaks down to about $520.00 per month, which is not much considering the cost of food alone.

That is a far cry from the million dollar plus figure initially given as being depostied in the SS fund. Just an FYI, $30K for 40 years is only $1,200,000.00 so even 15% of that amount at 1% interest yearly would not come close to being more than the income.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

I sent what you said to my uncle to get his reaction. I still get about 270K, and never the less understand about lower spousal benefit and people getting disability without paying enough in. The 50% or so who never get it have their money in there, supposedly. However, the growth only economy started when LBJ and cohorts took the SS Individual accounts and put them into the general spending fund around 1965, to pay for massive escalation of the Vietnam War. After that it was just an illusion that you were getting your own money back, when it was really under-funded by the workers of that day, or today.
Raiding so called SS funds became a hobby of our yoyos, along with overspending and buying votes from government workers(with raise after raise, to themselves, too). Also, the yoyos are borrowing 3 or 4 dollars for every ten they spend.
I think all the yoyos in DC should be all sent up to the space station with no funding for their support or return.

_________________
"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

That whole thing of "borrowing" from the SS fund for any amount over the ceiling they set was not good and makes any attempt to change the system now creates another can of worms for those loans.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein