Thank You Seven Years of Bush VooDoo Eek Anomics

[Ravi]

because the only measure that we have of future performance IS past performance

Did you know that part of the reason we got into the subprime mess is because they did exactly that? Lenders based the future mortgage default rate on the past default rate but forgot to take into account the past default rate was from borrowers that made down payments and had assets. Not from people borrowing money with no income and no assets. When the average default rate rose from 2% to 15% and higher the entire thing fell apart and the mistake was realized.

And Wall Street kept pushing these loans. This is who you want to manage the future of millions of Americans. I'd rather stick with things as they are now.

 

[Dogger]

which is why you would still rather give your $$$ to SS despite the fact that i've shown you that you would be much better off taking care of your own retirement and DI.

I'm not talking about my money, I'm talking about everyone's money. I could possibly do a little better, but I'm willing to participate because I'm familiar with history and I see how the SS system has lifted seniors out of poverty. You make no provison for those who invest in Enron and get wiped out, those whose riskier investments don't pay off or lose, those who become victims of fraud, or those who live so long that their private account runs dry.

I'm willing to put some money into a public insurance plan like SS because it provides a basic safety net for millions. And I have other money I can still play with, so don't worry about me.

I've also seen studies that dispute your rosy projections, but haven't been able to locate them this evening.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Did you know that part of the reason we got into the subprime mess is because they did exactly that? Lenders based the future mortgage default rate on the past default rate but forgot to take into account the past default rate was from borrowers that made down payments and had assets. Not from people borrowing money with no income and no assets. When the average default rate rose from 2% to 15% and higher the entire thing fell apart and the mistake was realized.

And Wall Street kept pushing these loans. This is who you want to manage the future of millions of Americans. I'd rather stick with things as they are now.

Who is wall street?? wall street does not push loans, lenders do that and what does that have to do with investing in funds and companies that don't deal in rela estate and mortgages, which is most of them??

 

[Ravi]

Who is wall street?? wall street does not push loans, lenders do that and what does that have to do with investing in funds and companies that don't deal in rela estate and mortgages, which is most of them??

The world needed to invest its newfound riches. The US housing market became the hot place to invest. If you'd like to listen to an interesting one hour show on the IMF and how this all played out I'll find you the link.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I'm not talking about my money, I'm talking about everyone's money. I could possibly do a little better, but I'm willing to participate because I'm familiar with history and I see how the SS system has lifted seniors out of poverty. You make no provison for those who invest in Enron and get wiped out, those whose riskier investments don't pay off or lose, those who become victims of fraud, or those who live so long that their private account runs dry.

I'm willing to put some money into a public insurance plan like SS because it provides a basic safety net for millions. And I have other money I can still play with, so don't worry about me.

I've also seen studies that dispute your rosy projections, but haven't been able to locate them this evening.

I've told you already that the lifting seniors out of poverty argument doesn't hold up. Ss had its day and it should be shelved. unfortunately it's too late for people my age to benefit from a revamp but steps should be taken so that our kids should not be burdened by SS and then their futures will be better than ours.

The employees at Enron who got screwed made a classic mistake very similar to the one you are making, they put most of their retirement money in the company they worked for just as you are putting too much of your money into the government and better yet you actually trust the government to look out for your interests. and as a typical liberal you think that we should ALL base our lives on the minute percentage of cases where people lost out or got taken advantage of when 99% of people will never have a situation like that happen to them and no one would have it happen if they bothered to educate themselves in areas of finance.

I love how you like to use the term risk, it is riskier to trust the government than to take care of yourself, it is riskier to save money in CDs and low interest accounts than it is to invest in the market. my projections are not through rose colored glasses, i have studied finance and the market for years and history bears out my statements. so go find your study and I'll find 10 that refute it.

and if you are not saving 20% of your gross income on top of SS I might not have to worry about you but my kids will have to keep paying into an obsolete ill managed system so you can get your benefits because you trusted the government to take care of you rather than taking care of yourself.

you forget an obvious advantage of privately owned accounts and that is a huge boost to the economy. money you pay into SS is removed from the economy and the return small though it may be is paid by current contributions. can't you see the fault in this? its called a Ponzi scheme. there is no real growth there is no benefit to the economy therefore people benefit less. if you really cared about people as you say you do you would not want them to be screwed by the government. the way i see it SS is actually COSTING the public millions of dollars in lost opportunity not lifting us of poverty. retiring will 3 million bucks is lifting people out of poverty not retiring on 1500 a month

here is the SS payment for someone retiring in 2007 after maxing out all indexes in the SS tables

http://www.usmessageboard.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=688432

1598 a month. really??? you call that lifted out of poverty???????? good luck retiring on that. and why would you want anyone to have to live on 1598 a month if you cared about them?? wouldn't you want them to be better off?? if you would then you should be in favor of dumping SS

even when i have shown that SS disability is crap and the benefits are not only paltry but almost impossible to qualify for and that a private DI policy is less expensive and pays better benefits, you still cling to SS as if it is a good thing. and you say I wear rose colored glasses.

 

[Skull Pilot]

The world needed to invest its newfound riches. The US housing market became the hot place to invest. If you'd like to listen to an interesting one hour show on the IMF and how this all played out I'll find you the link.

ah yes the old bandwagon argument. the mortgage bubble was just that a bubble. in a few years we won't even know it happened.

 

[Ravi]

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless it happened and a lot of people are suffering because of the excesses of Wall Street. I thought you'd be interested in seeing how basing the future on past performance is no guarantee but of course I'm not really surprised at your lack of interest.

I also have to laugh over a claim that 19,000 a year is something to be fretted over (oh, those poor people! how could they possibly live on that!) except when it is used as a reason to raise minimum wage (anyone can live on 19,000 a year, why that's well above the poverty rate!)

Wingnuts are so amusing.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless it happened and a lot of people are suffering because of the excesses of Wall Street. I thought you'd be interested in seeing how basing the future on past performance is no guarantee but of course I'm not really surprised at your lack of interest.

I also have to laugh over a claim that 19,000 a year is something to be fretted over (oh, those poor people! how could they possibly live on that!) except when it is used as a reason to raise minimum wage (anyone can live on 19,000 a year, why that's well above the poverty rate!)

Wingnuts are so amusing.

i never said it was a guarantee. and hey if you want to work all your life to get ahead and retire at 19K a year be my guest personally i want better than that for me and my family

any one can live on less than 19K as well but do you want to???

the fact that 15% of my lifetime income is going into a Ponzi scheme pisses me off because i guarantee i would do better if i had control over that money and not the government. so go ahead and be afraid of the market and keep trusting the politicians who were smart enough to exempt themselves from SS because they knew it sucked to take care of you.

i'd rather be a wingnut than naive

 

[Zoomie1980]

Actually, Logue's math under-reports the value of Social Security. The whole time he was paying FICA, Logue was covered by disability insurance. Had he gone totally private, he would have had to pay premiums to obtain comparable DI coveage, yet he treated his entire FICA payment as though it was available for investment in private accounts. Under his math, he was able to get a better return from SS while treating the disability insurance as though it was free.

Although Skull points out one fund that performs well, it has greater risk and less security than payments guaranteed by the US Government. "Figures shown are past results and are not predictive of results in future periods." The fact remains, some will do better, some will do worse, and some will make catastrophic investments.

The other fact that remains is that before SS, most seniors lived in poverty or dependency, or died prematurely; today, very few do.

Actually when first enacted the age you could collect was two years AFTER the average life expectancy. And that was its original intent, an OLD AGE pension to keep the very old and decrepit from living and dieing in total abject poverty. But, generally, you worked up until a year or two of average life expectancy in those day. Average retirement lasted less than TWO YEARS.

By the original standards SS would not be collected until roughly age 80-81 today and we'd work to pretty close to age 80 as well, leaving us one or two years of expected life to save for.... As it is most EXPECT 20 or more years of "retirement" today. The original notion of SS NEVER had that intent.