Pure Con

Some basic math will prove it very definitively.

If you work at $10.00 per hour for 40 hours per week for 40 years and average 6% on your investment saving what the government gets for Social Security and Medicare you would have over $1 million dollars to retire on. The interest alone would provide an income equivalent to $28 dollars an hour for the rest of your life with the principle left to provide to your children.

You have no principle with SS and you have $2000 a month verses $5000 a month based on current benefits and the numbers above.

Any way you slice it, that is a con, and a very profitable one since they simply blew the money on who knows what and now the only way to pay it out is to steal it form the next generation of workers.

Old Dino with some health issues now lives off his retirement plan and secondarily his SS. Should my SS go poof for any reason, I'll be hurting.
There are lots of senior citizens who worked all their lives and refused to mooch in the same boat.
This fact should not be taken out of the equation should a big time fix be made.

It's a Ponzi scheme, and an excellent political football. The average schmo doesn't understand it, nor can they do the math to see that they've been duped.

With the current social security tax rate including the part that the employer pays as part of your compensation at 12.4% that's a significant portion of the money that you could otherwise invest for your own retirement.

It is far too large of a percent as a premium on a subsistence survival for the truly destitute.

Social Security is essentially a ponzi scheme. The whole foundation rests upon the bedrock of there being 35 workers in the system for every retiree. In order for the system to work, three things must be and remain true: 1) The birth rate must remain constant or increase. 2) The death rate must remain constant or increase. 3) the number of people entering and remaining in the workforce must remain constant or increase. Any violation of any of these three premises would lead to dire consequences. A violation of any two would prove fatal to the system. We currently have consistently violated all three. Couple that with short-sighted administrations who saw that there was a surplus when times were fat...and they immediately started give away programs and tapped into the surplus without any regard of lean times, such as now.

Now add to that the concept of Keynesian economics, which requires inflation to work. It's all smoke and mirrors, because if tomorrow it will take $2 to purchase what $1 will buy today, who cares if you're growing at 100%? Relatively speaking, you've gotten nowhere. In fact, you're actually falling behind, because if government is taking 27%, the dollar amount you're losing to taxes is increasing exponentially.

All this to say, Michael, that none of this is your fault. That of course is meaningless, because it most definitely is your problem. And sadly, rich man, poor man, begger man, thief...we're all in the same bind.

Part 1 of 2:

Thank you Mr. Aarethun for asking this question. I have been an objectivist for over 40 years, and a productive, hard working individual for at least that long -- yet I find myself in a situation not dissimilar to your own. I'm a survivor, and no matter what, I will find more work, and will continue to work without complain (unless I find myself working for suppressive and evil beings).

However, what troubles me even more than my situation, is the unbelievably glib, harsh, even cruel responses that came back from your question. Although Miss Rand could get pretty angry at times and rightfully so (I saw her in person a few times in the 1970s), in general I always thought of her as a very positive, encouraging, and very NON cynical being.

After reading some of the responses to your question, I am almost embarrassed at level of venom and cynical cruelty that came back.

By the way, you didn't fail. The world went wrong, not you. But you see... that's what a TEAM is for -- to SURVIVE all the crap that the damn universe dishes out, that an individual might not be able to handle on their own, no matter how able they are.

I don't give a damn what the intentions of the original Social Security architects were, nor what those of today's politicians are - be it just a political ploy for votes or not. I look at Social Security as a SURVIVAL point.

Every great organization, team, army, company -- any super successful and strong group for that matter -- has always had a motto which every member has taken very seriously, which goes something like "No man left behind", "if you go, we go", or a 1000 different variations that all say the same thing.

Does this means they are all socialists and communists and the group is everything and the individual nothing? Of course not! Such great groups all through history valued the individual as much as we do. But they also valued the power of a highly connected, super competent team of individuals - especially when the going got seriously tough.

So instead of snickering and snarling at how incompetent and evil and false the Social Security System is, how about we look at it this way?

We have a 300 million people team that makes up a country that very dictator, communist, facist, suppressive person, and psycho would like to wipe off the face of the Earth. This includes those who live within the county itself -- both as citizens and non-citizens -- who hate their fellow man because their insane, and especially hate anything that has to do with freedom, self worth, volition, or anything that advances such concepts in our citizens.

Not to mention that the planet itself and the universe itself, likes to toss a few natural disasters our way.

So being a smart, competent, reliable, success-driven team of 300 million people who refuse to give in to all the above-named crap, and insist on surviving as sane, free, thriving individuals, decide as a group to create a 300 million people driven "insurance system" - to help any of our fellow team members when "shit happens". We do this by all agreeing that when we do work, we contibute an agreed upon percent of what we make each time we receive exchange for our work, to the SURVIVAL INSURANCE fund that is available when needed. Too old to work (or too infirm), work simply not there anymore, natural disasters, war, politically created disasters, you name it, the insurance fund will possibly be available. But only on a LIMITED basis.

Of course, knowing we are surrounded from the outside and from within by those who are very much of a different mind -- whether super evil and despotic or just plain lazy and stupid -- we would as an intelligent team of able individuals in the greatest country on planet Earth, have to design and institute some super strong CONTROLS, so that all this insurance fund money was not abused and wasted.

By doing this, we honor those who have worked hard but have reached a point where they simply cannot work any more -- or for whom work simply is no longer available -- or perhaps even just as a reward of being productive members of the 300 million person team for 6-7 decades without complaint. Plus they paid into the fund, didn't they.

No welfare. No hand-out. Just team-driven, team agreed upon, insurance.

A sane solution in an insane world.

[Continued in Part 2]