I'm a teacher. Here's why I am cheering my new freedom from unions

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

How does the Education Department (it's real name BTW) have any impact on the quality of education in your schools?

It has sucked 3+ Trillion dollars form the economy over the last 30+ years, ate a huge chunk of that money in administrative costs, then doled out what's left to the schools with big time strings attached. The result has been higher dropout rates and lower test scores.


.

It is so sad that you have such little grasp of why dropout rates are an indicator of anything involving educational practices.

I have a full grasp on how useless the Ed Dept has been. I'm aware there are a wide variety of reasons kids drop out, but one of the main reasons is poor teachers. I only takes one to sour a student on school. I had a lot of teachers over the years, most were very good, however I only remember the names of the bad ones almost 50 years after I graduated form high school, they were both in Jr. High. Good teachers motivate kids to show up and learn, others make you want to stay in bed.


.

You do realize that they survey dropouts as to why they left school and bad teachers are not the cause.

One of the chief reasons that kids drop out of school is they have not learned the basics and reach a point where they no longer understand what is being taught. The school system has failed them.

Bull crap! Kids drop out because they are too lazy to do what is necessary to learn. That is why kids who have parents involved in their education rarely if ever drop out. I saw it it for 20 years.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Public employees should never have been permitted to unionize. Even Franklin Roosevelt realized that!

Unionizing is not the problem. Being able to negotiate for salaries and benefits are the problem. It allows them to hold taxpayers hostage. Federal workers have working unions and they are not allowed to bargain for salaries or benefits.

Just ask the teachers in my state of Kentucky how well their unions did when the state was destroying our retirement system this past spring. The teachers were the hostages and the state started executing their ability to retire and tried changing the rules after the game was in the 4th quarter for some of us. Fortunately, the courts have stepped in and said they could not do that.

 

[bodecea]

99.9 percent of management nowadays has no interest in the welfare of its workers.

Not true. A manager who does not take an interest in the welfare of his/her workers will have low productivity and a high turnover rate. Not conducive to job security.

Only if the market is there to switch jobs....who is willing to give up years of work, tenure or some other job security just like that?

 

[buckeye45_73]

I've noticed a few things from this post that are trendy...

1) Not a one poster puts one iota of responsibility on the kids. In your minds they just show up and a good teacher will make them a genius. No effort required by the kid. It's 100 percent in the teacher in every case.

2) Teachers should ask for lower wages and should never get a raise....but every other worker is exempt from that standard.

3) Many see it as easy and overpaid yet they chose not to be a teacher. But if someone complains about a CEO heck they will defend his or her bloated salary.

4) Bad teachers in most states are let go when the principal seems it necessary. Good productive teachers are also let go. Where I love teachers are let go from time to time and sometimes with no reason. I served on our school board for many years and have seen both happen.

5) Quit your kind and move to a troubled school and help fix the problem.

6) union's are going away and that might be good I guess. However when they are gone and things don't change much then who will you blame?

Ok I'll look at these
1)The kids are responsible, but you cant force them to care, that takes parents and teachers.
2)good teachers should get raises, bad ones fired......it's not difficult
3)Who said it was easy? I have backed teachers to get the unions and adminstrators out of the classroom, so teachers are allowed to control their class and teach what is required.
4)Bad teachers are hard to get rid of, most go to the rubber room and still draw pay......no thanks
5)good point, but that's why we hire teachers and administrators.
6)when unions are gone, we'll blame the adminstrators, because it's their job to run the school. they will now have the power to hire/fire and promote/demote teachers based on merit, not some bs union seniority scheme.

Thank you for your input. I didn't post the original but I would like to address some points.

1) So why do most people put all the blame on the teachers?
2) How do you determine a bad teacher? That is the actual difficult part.
3) Controlling the classroom is often determined to be the sign of a bad teacher.
4) You are using per hyperbole. The "rubber rooms" were made famous by NYC. They do not exist hardly anywhere else in this country. Most teachers get suspended without pay.
5) I am glad you agree.
6) Where do you get the idea that teachers are promoted to anything? I started as a teacher and 20 years later I was still a teacher. Getting promoted to administration has nothing to do with unions as they do not represent administrators.

Good counter points

1) Because they are the ones paid to teach. Like I said unions are a huge problem because they have rules along with adminstrators, that took almost any power of a teacher to control a classroom or how to present material. Without unions, the hope is teachers will be able to run their class as they see fit, as long as they stick to the basic curriculum.
2)Well that's the standardized tests, as well as maybe interviewing students and their parents.
3)HUH??? I know you're being abstract, but I'm not getting it, so we must be thinking of 2 very different things. Mine is making them behave, so the atmosphere is conducive to learning.
4)If that's the case, then good. But NYC is a major area and it needs to be cleaned up.
5)we agree
6)Promotions, raises. I know most stay teachers, but if they have any new titles or governmentish promotion opportunities, then good, if not, also ok, but at least let good teachers get raises, even if they don't want a promotion.

 

[bodecea]

Next up...blaming dentists for their patients getting cavities.

 

[EGR one]

It has sucked 3+ Trillion dollars form the economy over the last 30+ years, ate a huge chunk of that money in administrative costs, then doled out what's left to the schools with big time strings attached. The result has been higher dropout rates and lower test scores.


.

It is so sad that you have such little grasp of why dropout rates are an indicator of anything involving educational practices.

I have a full grasp on how useless the Ed Dept has been. I'm aware there are a wide variety of reasons kids drop out, but one of the main reasons is poor teachers. I only takes one to sour a student on school. I had a lot of teachers over the years, most were very good, however I only remember the names of the bad ones almost 50 years after I graduated form high school, they were both in Jr. High. Good teachers motivate kids to show up and learn, others make you want to stay in bed.


.

You do realize that they survey dropouts as to why they left school and bad teachers are not the cause.

One of the chief reasons that kids drop out of school is they have not learned the basics and reach a point where they no longer understand what is being taught. The school system has failed them.

Bull crap! Kids drop out because they are too lazy to do what is necessary to learn. That is why kids who have parents involved in their education rarely if ever drop out. I saw it it for 20 years.

Your opinion is noted and rejected. I was a teacher in the U.S. Navy, and had to deal with many of the failures of the public school systems. We had to teach them math and science before we could begin teaching them electrical and electronic theory.

 

[Timmy]

Standardize test scores are a poor way to measure performance.

1- students are different . Many have issues at home , many have disabilities.

If you have a class with a lot of learning disabled kids, they are not going to score well no matter how good a teacher you are .

2. Everyone starts to teach to the test . Instead of teaching the children .

 

[sealybobo]

You know it's the GOP's dream to do away with these socialist programs. You know you believe they are unconstitutional. You guys deny your real motives while you slowly chip away at things like ss, medicare and roe v wade.

Admit you believe you'd do better if they did away with those programs and you invest that money yourself, which you wouldn't. You're already having a tough time making ends meet. You would just spend that money and we'd have to take care of you if you could no longer work.

SS is a great program. I may die at 66 and never take a penny out. But I may also live to be 100 and then I'll collect for the rest of my life. What a great program that you guys want to destroy.

And we are waiting for Republicans to make healthcare more affordable.

They polled 100 Republicans. They all like the Affordable Care Act but they hate Obamacare. Dumb fucks.

I don't know that social programs are unconstitutional, but without a doubt it was not what our founders intended, in fact most were against federal government dependency.

Yes, those were different times, but certainly if they wanted government dependents, they could have created similar programs to what we have today: Government log cabins instead of HUD. Cash for Carriages instead of Cash for Clunkers. Government farms instead of Food Stamps. A national tax to support lazy people instead of welfare. Government firewood instead of utility assistance.

The thing is our founders wrote (in the Constitution) what the federal government is to be responsible for. All other things outside of those obligations were left up to the states.

Would I like to have all my SS money so I could have invested it personally? You bet. And I'd be retiring earlier with more money than I'd ever get from SS. But what about the irresponsible? Well.......you leftists have been manufacturing irresponsible people for decades, now you're surprised??????

But don't worry about social programs. If we wanted to end them, we would have done so this past year, or even during the Bush years when WE HAD CONTROL over the entire federal government.

You see, social programs can be compared to what I call Ray from Cleveland's Raccoon Theory. You see a hungry raccoon digging through your garbage can. So you go inside the house and fetch him that half ham you were going to throw away at the end of the week. The animal eats in delight. Now give it about 20 seconds and try to take that ham back and see what happens.

Politicians (especially Democrats) are well aware of my raccoon theory. Once you give something to people, it's virtually impossible to take it back; at least not without getting your hand bitten off. So Democrats try to hand out more half-hams and Republicans are afraid to take them away even with full support of the voters.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution that grants Congress the right, of expending on articles of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
James Madison, annals of Congress, 1794

Republicans are slowly chipping away.

Most Americans won’t save that money. That why I like it. Also because the people who die early make up for the people who live to 100.

Social security and Medicare played a huge part in creating a middle class the world has never seen before. That means life got better for the masses. Social security and Medicare are good programs.

The rich have convinced you these are bad programs.

I like your theory though

I didn't say they were bad programs, just badly run programs.

I spent ten years in the medical business where we dealt strictly with insurance companies and government entities. Trust me, government is all Fd up when it comes to handling those programs.

I agree "some" Americans will not save for the future, but that's because we have so many social programs and rescue operations that people don't care. I'll spend money now, and the government won't let me starve later; and we don't.

But it's not about that, it's about control and politics. Okay, so we can't trust everybody, then why not make it a law where the worker contributes to their own IRA instead of SS? It would be a law just like SS. But instead of the money going to the government, it goes into your private retirement account. It's deducted out of your check just like SS and you can't touch it until retirement.

It would be a better system, but the problem is Democrats could never use it against Republicans come election time. Every election, the Democrats tell the public what Republicans want to take away from you. They couldn't do that if we all put our money into a private IRA.

Bullshit! You know that many people with or without social security and medicare won't save enough. Hell, they won't save enough even with these things.

But I like that idea where they have to save x amount towards their own private fund. Not a bad idea.

Well I like the hybrid system for now, some private and some SS. But I think the thing is the private accounts will actually pay off more at retirement is the point. Sure the stock market goes up and down, but for the long haul you make money. I think people should still get the SS they were promised, but some people could opt out to do a private system.

I'm expecting them to cut our social security benefits by about 25%. They will tell us, "in order to save it we have to make these cuts" and the American people will bend over and take it. The young won't care because they don't expect to get it anyways and they haven't been paying in for that long. The old won't care because they won't touch their benefits. But anyone who hasn't retired yet, will have to take a hit. Maybe for someone 59 it won't be 25% but for someone who's 50 it will be a 15% cut. Someone who's 45 may take a 25% cut. Point is they are going to fuck us one day and we will take it just like Greece took those austerity cuts.

And I think we are a worthless bunch of citizens who don't vote and don't save so I think we deserve to have these benefits taken away.

The rich love it. They are sick of paying into these social programs they don't want or need. The social contract has been broken. And we let it happen.

Will the private accounts pay more? For a lot of poor people they put in a little and there are hidden fees/administrative costs that end up eating away the gains. I had this myself on one small investment I had for about 10 years. I kept noticing that the $2000 never hardly ever grew. In 10 years it was still $2000. Why? Because there were fees the bank was charging me for managing this investment. Inactive fee. So to stop this I had to invest $50 every year to avoid the inactivity fee.

My point is, no most people will not make out better with their private fund. Even if some poor schlub saves up $200,000 and retires at 67. If he lives to be 97 he will run out of money.

What I do like about the private account is that the family gets it when the person dies. Right now if your parents die at 59 you get nothing that they put in. The government keeps it. BUT, I still love the idea of SS and Medicare.

The GOP want to give you $7K instead of medicare. What healthcare giant is going to insure an old person for $7K a year?

 

[buckeye45_73]

I don't know that social programs are unconstitutional, but without a doubt it was not what our founders intended, in fact most were against federal government dependency.

Yes, those were different times, but certainly if they wanted government dependents, they could have created similar programs to what we have today: Government log cabins instead of HUD. Cash for Carriages instead of Cash for Clunkers. Government farms instead of Food Stamps. A national tax to support lazy people instead of welfare. Government firewood instead of utility assistance.

The thing is our founders wrote (in the Constitution) what the federal government is to be responsible for. All other things outside of those obligations were left up to the states.

Would I like to have all my SS money so I could have invested it personally? You bet. And I'd be retiring earlier with more money than I'd ever get from SS. But what about the irresponsible? Well.......you leftists have been manufacturing irresponsible people for decades, now you're surprised??????

But don't worry about social programs. If we wanted to end them, we would have done so this past year, or even during the Bush years when WE HAD CONTROL over the entire federal government.

You see, social programs can be compared to what I call Ray from Cleveland's Raccoon Theory. You see a hungry raccoon digging through your garbage can. So you go inside the house and fetch him that half ham you were going to throw away at the end of the week. The animal eats in delight. Now give it about 20 seconds and try to take that ham back and see what happens.

Politicians (especially Democrats) are well aware of my raccoon theory. Once you give something to people, it's virtually impossible to take it back; at least not without getting your hand bitten off. So Democrats try to hand out more half-hams and Republicans are afraid to take them away even with full support of the voters.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution that grants Congress the right, of expending on articles of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
James Madison, annals of Congress, 1794

Republicans are slowly chipping away.

Most Americans won’t save that money. That why I like it. Also because the people who die early make up for the people who live to 100.

Social security and Medicare played a huge part in creating a middle class the world has never seen before. That means life got better for the masses. Social security and Medicare are good programs.

The rich have convinced you these are bad programs.

I like your theory though

I didn't say they were bad programs, just badly run programs.

I spent ten years in the medical business where we dealt strictly with insurance companies and government entities. Trust me, government is all Fd up when it comes to handling those programs.

I agree "some" Americans will not save for the future, but that's because we have so many social programs and rescue operations that people don't care. I'll spend money now, and the government won't let me starve later; and we don't.

But it's not about that, it's about control and politics. Okay, so we can't trust everybody, then why not make it a law where the worker contributes to their own IRA instead of SS? It would be a law just like SS. But instead of the money going to the government, it goes into your private retirement account. It's deducted out of your check just like SS and you can't touch it until retirement.

It would be a better system, but the problem is Democrats could never use it against Republicans come election time. Every election, the Democrats tell the public what Republicans want to take away from you. They couldn't do that if we all put our money into a private IRA.

Bullshit! You know that many people with or without social security and medicare won't save enough. Hell, they won't save enough even with these things.

But I like that idea where they have to save x amount towards their own private fund. Not a bad idea.

Well I like the hybrid system for now, some private and some SS. But I think the thing is the private accounts will actually pay off more at retirement is the point. Sure the stock market goes up and down, but for the long haul you make money. I think people should still get the SS they were promised, but some people could opt out to do a private system.

I'm expecting them to cut our social security benefits by about 25%. They will tell us, "in order to save it we have to make these cuts" and the American people will bend over and take it. The young won't care because they don't expect to get it anyways and they haven't been paying in for that long. The old won't care because they won't touch their benefits. But anyone who hasn't retired yet, will have to take a hit. Maybe for someone 59 it won't be 25% but for someone who's 50 it will be a 15% cut. Someone who's 45 may take a 25% cut. Point is they are going to fuck us one day and we will take it just like Greece took those austerity cuts.

And I think we are a worthless bunch of citizens who don't vote and don't save so I think we deserve to have these benefits taken away.

The rich love it. They are sick of paying into these social programs they don't want or need. The social contract has been broken. And we let it happen.

Will the private accounts pay more? For a lot of poor people they put in a little and there are hidden fees/administrative costs that end up eating away the gains. I had this myself on one small investment I had for about 10 years. I kept noticing that the $2000 never hardly ever grew. In 10 years it was still $2000. Why? Because there were fees the bank was charging me for managing this investment. Inactive fee. So to stop this I had to invest $50 every year to avoid the inactivity fee.

My point is, no most people will not make out better with their private fund. Even if some poor schlub saves up $200,000 and retires at 67. If he lives to be 97 he will run out of money.

What I do like about the private account is that the family gets it when the person dies. Right now if your parents die at 59 you get nothing that they put in. The government keeps it. BUT, I still love the idea of SS and Medicare.

The GOP want to give you $7K instead of medicare. What healthcare giant is going to insure an old person for $7K a year?

Ok first it's a good discussion, we're talking about ideas and concerns and not you suck posts, so thank you.
So the problem is the SS is a Ponzi scheme in a way and the money is being used to cover the deficit(general fund), which should be illegal.
But because of those two things, it will have to be reformed. I thought Bush's plan was actually very good. It kept the commitments to the people in or near retirement, while allowing younger people to go to a private based system, if they chose it. I still think that's the way to go.
Now for the fees, I think the government should be able to negotiate with a broker much smaller fees based on the volume they would have. That's the thing, govt people don't know anything about this stuff, which is why we need to get more people with private back grounds in some positions. But it should be an easy negotiation, with that kind of volume people would take a much smaller fee.

Now for Medicare, I'll have to think on that a bit more. I'm ok with keeping it, but would like to find a private option, because I think it would be better, but constructing that plan would be difficult.

 

[buckeye45_73]

It has sucked 3+ Trillion dollars form the economy over the last 30+ years, ate a huge chunk of that money in administrative costs, then doled out what's left to the schools with big time strings attached. The result has been higher dropout rates and lower test scores.


.

It is so sad that you have such little grasp of why dropout rates are an indicator of anything involving educational practices.

I have a full grasp on how useless the Ed Dept has been. I'm aware there are a wide variety of reasons kids drop out, but one of the main reasons is poor teachers. I only takes one to sour a student on school. I had a lot of teachers over the years, most were very good, however I only remember the names of the bad ones almost 50 years after I graduated form high school, they were both in Jr. High. Good teachers motivate kids to show up and learn, others make you want to stay in bed.


.

You do realize that they survey dropouts as to why they left school and bad teachers are not the cause.

One of the chief reasons that kids drop out of school is they have not learned the basics and reach a point where they no longer understand what is being taught. The school system has failed them.

Bull crap! Kids drop out because they are too lazy to do what is necessary to learn. That is why kids who have parents involved in their education rarely if ever drop out. I saw it it for 20 years.

True parents are important, probably the most important factor. But we can't do anything about that. The closest would be to threaten to kick them out, then maybe the parents would wake up.
So now we're back to teachers. Giving teachers more flexibility to teach would be good. I once had a social studies teacher construct a map, we couldn't see and we grouped up and pretended to be explorers and every day we got so many moves and as we moved we would see the map and maybe discover stuff. It didn't take long, it was fun and got students engaged and interested in the subject. Another thing she did was tell us we found some battle plans during the civil war and we needed to decide if they were real of fake and then we had go into groups and each group had to come up with a strategy based on that decision, it was very fun and worked. (the plans were real, it was based on a real incident in the Civil War)

So my point is teachers can make things interesting and they can make them boring and some it wont matter what you do, but you just have to do your best. teaching is about creativity as much as it is about giving knowledge.

 

[buckeye45_73]

Standardize test scores are a poor way to measure performance.

1- students are different . Many have issues at home , many have disabilities.

If you have a class with a lot of learning disabled kids, they are not going to score well no matter how good a teacher you are .

2. Everyone starts to teach to the test . Instead of teaching the children .

1)Well they have classes for that, and yes students are different, but it's not an excuse to suck.
2)IF you make the test around what you want to teach, what are you losing?

 

[Borillar]

I'm A Teacher. Here's Why I'm Cheering My New Freedom From Unions

I know exactly how she feels,my mother was a teacher for 15 years and went ABOVE and BEYOND her normal duties and she never got paid more for it. It was literally based on seniority which is BS...

Of course, without a union, employment may be based upon who will do the job the most cheaply. The most experienced and highest paid teachers may be replaced by new teachers fresh out of college who are willing to work at the bottom end of the pay range.

 

[Timmy]

Standardize test scores are a poor way to measure performance.

1- students are different . Many have issues at home , many have disabilities.

If you have a class with a lot of learning disabled kids, they are not going to score well no matter how good a teacher you are .

2. Everyone starts to teach to the test . Instead of teaching the children .

1)Well they have classes for that, and yes students are different, but it's not an excuse to suck.
2)IF you make the test around what you want to teach, what are you losing?

“Have classes for that”? This is America pal. You can’t just throw special needs kids into the basement .

In any class you’ll find that 15-20% of kids are on IEP’s. Which are special needs plans .

 

[buckeye45_73]

Standardize test scores are a poor way to measure performance.

1- students are different . Many have issues at home , many have disabilities.

If you have a class with a lot of learning disabled kids, they are not going to score well no matter how good a teacher you are .

2. Everyone starts to teach to the test . Instead of teaching the children .

1)Well they have classes for that, and yes students are different, but it's not an excuse to suck.
2)IF you make the test around what you want to teach, what are you losing?

“Have classes for that”? This is America pal. You can’t just throw special needs kids into the basement .

In any class you’ll find that 15-20% of kids are on IEP’s. Which are special needs plans .

They do, if they are bad enough. I'm sorry ADD is not a learning disablitiy nor a real condition, it's called being hyper......we used to do just fine. Don't use those excuses.

 

[Unkotare]

It has sucked 3+ Trillion dollars form the economy over the last 30+ years, ate a huge chunk of that money in administrative costs, then doled out what's left to the schools with big time strings attached. The result has been higher dropout rates and lower test scores.


.

It is so sad that you have such little grasp of why dropout rates are an indicator of anything involving educational practices.

I have a full grasp on how useless the Ed Dept has been. I'm aware there are a wide variety of reasons kids drop out, but one of the main reasons is poor teachers. I only takes one to sour a student on school. I had a lot of teachers over the years, most were very good, however I only remember the names of the bad ones almost 50 years after I graduated form high school, they were both in Jr. High. Good teachers motivate kids to show up and learn, others make you want to stay in bed.


.

You do realize that they survey dropouts as to why they left school and bad teachers are not the cause.

One of the chief reasons that kids drop out of school is they have not learned the basics and reach a point where they no longer understand what is being taught. The school system has failed them.

Bull crap! Kids drop out because they are too lazy to do what is necessary to learn. That is why kids who have parents involved in their education rarely if ever drop out. I saw it it for 20 years.

Where I teach, kids drop out because they want to work full-time. Or more often, to work two full-time jobs.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I'm sorry ADD is not a learning disablitiy nor a real condition, it's called being hyper......we used to do just fine

I'll disagree with you on that one. With ADD, it's hard to stay focused which can lead to learning disabilities depending on the severity. It's like when you are sitting in your rocking chair barely able to keep your eyes open, and without notice, you're out like a light.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

True parents are important, probably the most important factor. But we can't do anything about that. The closest would be to threaten to kick them out, then maybe the parents would wake up.

Sure there is something you can do about it. My sister had problems with her daughter, and she made sure that kid passed because she was paying 12K a year for her private schooling.

What happens (at least here in my state) is that parents pay the same for schooling (property tax) as those without any kids in school. Maybe if parents paid more towards the system so that those not using it could pay less, they would have a dog in the race. People are more concerned if it's their money being wasted instead of everybody else.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I'm expecting them to cut our social security benefits by about 25%. They will tell us, "in order to save it we have to make these cuts" and the American people will bend over and take it.

And the Democrat solution is to make people work later in life which many people can't do depending on the work they're in. People in construction trades barely make it to 65 now. Many retire yearly at 62 because their body can't take it any longer.

Will the private accounts pay more? For a lot of poor people they put in a little and there are hidden fees/administrative costs that end up eating away the gains. I had this myself on one small investment I had for about 10 years. I kept noticing that the $2000 never hardly ever grew. In 10 years it was still $2000. Why? Because there were fees the bank was charging me for managing this investment. Inactive fee. So to stop this I had to invest $50 every year to avoid the inactivity fee.

That's the idea of a growth fund. You keep putting in. My employer and I only contribute a third of what we have to put into SS every month, and my IRA is six figures now. We only had it about 20 years or so. I can only imagine what that account would be worth today if I invested all my (and my employers) SS contributions all these years. I would easily be a multi-millionaire today, and I'm still seven years until retirement age.

 

[sealybobo]

I'm expecting them to cut our social security benefits by about 25%. They will tell us, "in order to save it we have to make these cuts" and the American people will bend over and take it.

And the Democrat solution is to make people work later in life which many people can't do depending on the work they're in. People in construction trades barely make it to 65 now. Many retire yearly at 62 because their body can't take it any longer.

Will the private accounts pay more? For a lot of poor people they put in a little and there are hidden fees/administrative costs that end up eating away the gains. I had this myself on one small investment I had for about 10 years. I kept noticing that the $2000 never hardly ever grew. In 10 years it was still $2000. Why? Because there were fees the bank was charging me for managing this investment. Inactive fee. So to stop this I had to invest $50 every year to avoid the inactivity fee.

That's the idea of a growth fund. You keep putting in. My employer and I only contribute a third of what we have to put into SS every month, and my IRA is six figures now. We only had it about 20 years or so. I can only imagine what that account would be worth today if I invested all my (and my employers) SS contributions all these years. I would easily be a multi-millionaire today, and I'm still seven years until retirement age.

For poor people that’s a bad investment that shouldn’t even exist

And real liberals want it to be 62. So do I. Do you? Then you’re not a republican

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I'm expecting them to cut our social security benefits by about 25%. They will tell us, "in order to save it we have to make these cuts" and the American people will bend over and take it.

And the Democrat solution is to make people work later in life which many people can't do depending on the work they're in. People in construction trades barely make it to 65 now. Many retire yearly at 62 because their body can't take it any longer.

Will the private accounts pay more? For a lot of poor people they put in a little and there are hidden fees/administrative costs that end up eating away the gains. I had this myself on one small investment I had for about 10 years. I kept noticing that the $2000 never hardly ever grew. In 10 years it was still $2000. Why? Because there were fees the bank was charging me for managing this investment. Inactive fee. So to stop this I had to invest $50 every year to avoid the inactivity fee.

That's the idea of a growth fund. You keep putting in. My employer and I only contribute a third of what we have to put into SS every month, and my IRA is six figures now. We only had it about 20 years or so. I can only imagine what that account would be worth today if I invested all my (and my employers) SS contributions all these years. I would easily be a multi-millionaire today, and I'm still seven years until retirement age.

For poor people that’s a bad investment that shouldn’t even exist

And real liberals want it to be 62. So do I. Do you? Then you’re not a republican

Of course I do. That would only be four more years of working for me, and I'd be delighted. But liberals always want things they don't pay for.

If you want these programs, the solution is simple: pay for them. Increase SS contributions by about 20%. Increase Medicare contributions by 50%. Hey, if that's what you want, pay for it, but don't expect others to pay for these programs for you.