There is NO RISK in privatizing SS and investing in stock market!!!

[Vandalshandle]

They are worthless to the government because they are liabilities to the government. I don't know how may times this has to be repeated. How many times do you numskulls have to be told that you can't loan money to yourself?



There's no account in your name, so those treasuries are worthless to you. They are also worthless to the government because the government issued them. When it comes time to redeem them, the party paying them off will be the government and the party collecting the proceeds will be the government. In other words, the government will be paying money to itself.

You really have to be ******* stupid to believe that the so-called "trust fund" has real money in it.

My mutual fund IRA's have no "real money" in them, either, and I am not "******* stupid".

There are so many flaws to the privatization of SS argument that it is hard to decide where to begin. I guess that I will go with what happened to my brother. He has two master's degrees, and used to own his own airplane. He made very good money all of his life. A major portion of it was in stock in the company he worked at for 40 years. The stock made him more than a millionaire, and more. Then came the 2008 meltdown. He rode it all the way down. Then to meet his mortgage, medical expenses, and other obligations, he was forced to cash in, near the bottom. Now, he is 74 years old, and worth about 35% of what was worth in 2007. The airplane is gone, the cruises have ended. Yes, he still has a few hundreds of thousands in savings and investments, but he now lives on his SS earnings. He could have easily been wiped out completely. Oh, and BTW, he DOES have a professional financial advisor.

 

[OnePercenter]

None of which is to say soc sec is a good investment. It's not. Most likely you'll never need the insurance provisions that would save your family from poverty. But it was never intended to be a retirement program. It was intended to reduce the % of the population living in poverty.

Yep, so many of the arguments against it are apples and oranges by trying to compare an investment account balance to a social security program that doesn't have an account balance.

It is a tax, and a benefit. Not a defined contribution plan.

And if you're in the top 2 quintiles and have only one or at the max two kids, and if your employment does not subject you to risk such as that seen by a truck driver or construction worker, you may be able to get a better return by 1) obtaining disability and term life insurance at a young age with premiums rising as you grow older, and 2) investing early on in a stock index fund, and later on in actual bonds or cd type vehicles, rather than in any mutual fund.

But, soc security's purpose is to keep families of workers who have risk and/or are lower earners out of poverty too.

The purpose of Social Security is to buy the votes of old people. Any other claims are pure moonshine.

Is that why you cash the checks?

 

[OnePercenter]

A sociopath is one who preys on other members of society. That would describe all those who believe they are entitled to have other people pay their bills, like all the supporters of the Social Security Ponzi scheme.

It's a personality disorder. ie; YOU!

 

[bripat9643]

A sociopath is one who preys on other members of society. That would describe all those who believe they are entitled to have other people pay their bills, like all the supporters of the Social Security Ponzi scheme.

It's a personality disorder. ie; YOU!

Yes, it is a personality disorder. However, you failed to show that I suffer from it. On the other hand, I showed clearly that all the ticks on the ass of society who post in this forum suffer from it.

 

[bripat9643]

None of which is to say soc sec is a good investment. It's not. Most likely you'll never need the insurance provisions that would save your family from poverty. But it was never intended to be a retirement program. It was intended to reduce the % of the population living in poverty.

Yep, so many of the arguments against it are apples and oranges by trying to compare an investment account balance to a social security program that doesn't have an account balance.

It is a tax, and a benefit. Not a defined contribution plan.

And if you're in the top 2 quintiles and have only one or at the max two kids, and if your employment does not subject you to risk such as that seen by a truck driver or construction worker, you may be able to get a better return by 1) obtaining disability and term life insurance at a young age with premiums rising as you grow older, and 2) investing early on in a stock index fund, and later on in actual bonds or cd type vehicles, rather than in any mutual fund.

But, soc security's purpose is to keep families of workers who have risk and/or are lower earners out of poverty too.

The purpose of Social Security is to buy the votes of old people. Any other claims are pure moonshine.

Is that why you cash the checks?

I don't collect Social Security, nimrod.

 

[OnePercenter]

None of which is to say soc sec is a good investment. It's not. Most likely you'll never need the insurance provisions that would save your family from poverty. But it was never intended to be a retirement program. It was intended to reduce the % of the population living in poverty.

Yep, so many of the arguments against it are apples and oranges by trying to compare an investment account balance to a social security program that doesn't have an account balance.

It is a tax, and a benefit. Not a defined contribution plan.

And if you're in the top 2 quintiles and have only one or at the max two kids, and if your employment does not subject you to risk such as that seen by a truck driver or construction worker, you may be able to get a better return by 1) obtaining disability and term life insurance at a young age with premiums rising as you grow older, and 2) investing early on in a stock index fund, and later on in actual bonds or cd type vehicles, rather than in any mutual fund.

But, soc security's purpose is to keep families of workers who have risk and/or are lower earners out of poverty too.

The purpose of Social Security is to buy the votes of old people. Any other claims are pure moonshine.

Is that why you cash the checks?

I don't collect Social Security, nimrod.

Didn't pay enough in while you worked?

 

[bripat9643]

None of which is to say soc sec is a good investment. It's not. Most likely you'll never need the insurance provisions that would save your family from poverty. But it was never intended to be a retirement program. It was intended to reduce the % of the population living in poverty.

Yep, so many of the arguments against it are apples and oranges by trying to compare an investment account balance to a social security program that doesn't have an account balance.

It is a tax, and a benefit. Not a defined contribution plan.

And if you're in the top 2 quintiles and have only one or at the max two kids, and if your employment does not subject you to risk such as that seen by a truck driver or construction worker, you may be able to get a better return by 1) obtaining disability and term life insurance at a young age with premiums rising as you grow older, and 2) investing early on in a stock index fund, and later on in actual bonds or cd type vehicles, rather than in any mutual fund.

But, soc security's purpose is to keep families of workers who have risk and/or are lower earners out of poverty too.

The purpose of Social Security is to buy the votes of old people. Any other claims are pure moonshine.

Is that why you cash the checks?

I don't collect Social Security, nimrod.

Didn't pay enough in while you worked?

I'm not old enough, numskull.

 

[healthmyths]

Yes there is. There is lots of risk.

NO THERE ISN"T if you are NOT a dummy and would put ALL your retirement funds in the "risky stock market" at retirement!

YOU still don't get it do you?? YOU evidently have NO idea of what compound interest is!

EVEN EVEN if the 25 year old puts all his SS payments into a savings account yielding 1% he would have $400,000 accumulated.. at no risk! ALL in totally secured NON RISKY stock market!!!

So, you are saying the stock market if guaranteed?

If it's so guaranteed, then why isn't everyone a millionaire?




You are wrong. There is ALWAYS risk in the stock market.

Well you tell me.
If I were to invest in the same securities that Social Security invests in i.e. US Treasuries...
Where is the risk??? After all you are touting SS as guaranteed payments...
So why wouldn't it be the same way for me... I just cut out the middle man, i.e. SS!

 

[healthmyths]

When you issue an IOU to yourself, it's absolutely worthless. Try it out and see. Write "IOU $10 trillion" on a piece of paper. Then put it in your pocket. Now go out and see if you can buy a yacht with it.

The so-called "Trust Fund" is full of IOU's the government issued to itself. They are worth exactly as much as the IOU you just put in your pocket: nothing, in other words.

The IOUs are owed to you. .

Wrong. They are owed to the government.

Though its technically correct that the government "owes it to itself," what that means is that the government owes it to a government agency. But that government agency then owes you the money worth the IOUs plus unfunded liabilities.

Nope. Legally the government owes you nothing. The Supreme Court has even ruled accordingly. Even if it did, the only way it could pay you is by taking the money from taxpayers, of which you are one. So the government takes the money from you or some other taxpayer with one hand, and it returns it to you with the other. The net gain to taxpayers is zilch.

i.e. a Ponzi scheme defined as and your comment describes SS as such..
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulentinvestment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator.

 

[Toro]

Treasury securities are worthless to the government because they are liabilities to the government.

Treasury securities that accrue to others held in trust by anyone, including the government, are most certainly not worthless.

They are worthless to the government because they are liabilities to the government. I don't know how may times this has to be repeated. How many times do you numskulls have to be told that you can't loan money to yourself?

If the government opened an account at a bank in your name, then issued bonds and put them into your account, they wouldn't be worthless. In the case of SS, instead of the account being held at a bank, its held at the Treasury. And instead of issuing bonds, the government issues securities similar to IOUs, which is what a bond is anyway.

There's no account in your name, so those treasuries are worthless to you. They are also worthless to the government because the government issued them. When it comes time to redeem them, the party paying them off will be the government and the party collecting the proceeds will be the government. In other words, the government will be paying money to itself.

You really have to be ******* stupid to believe that the so-called "trust fund" has real money in it.

The liabilities of the SS trust fund are owed to the beneficiaries of the trust. The Treasury owes the SS trusts, and the SS trusts owe the money to the beneficiaries. The liabilities of the Treasury to the SS trusts flow through to you, and you receive the benefits from the payments. You do have an account in your name. It is your SS number. The amount you pay in is credited to your account, your account accrues interest, then when you start collecting SS, the account is debited.

SS is structured like a government bond fund that invests 100% of your money into government bonds. The cash flow of the SS trusts funds are exactly the same as any passive government bond fund run by PIMCO, TCW, Vanguard, etc.

If you open an account at Fidelity and buy a government bond fund every month in your 401k, you buy interests in a Fidelity commingled pool, and then Fidelity lends your money to the government. The government then spends it. The value of your Fidelity government bond fund units goes up when the government pays interest. A picture of your cash flows to the Fidelity government bond fund look like this

You saving: Your money --> Fidelity --> government --> spent
Government: Tax revenues --> interest and principal payments --> Fidelity --> your account
You retiring: Your account --> money to you

SS is similar except it cuts out the middleman and issues nonmarketable obligations, i.e., IOUs, rather than securities. Every month, your taxes are transferred to the government, and the SS trusts credits your account for the amount you put in. It builds up over time, and when you start drawing on SS, your account is drawn down. A picture of your cash flows to SS looks like this

You saving: Your money (SS taxes) --> government --> spent
Government: Tax revenues (SS taxes) --> credits SS tax payments and interest --> your account
You retiring: Your account --> money to you

The cash flows are effectively the same. Both US Treasury bonds and SS liabilities are liabilities of the US government.

The big difference is that if the government cuts SS benefits in the future, they are effectively defaulting on the SS trusts. But the market would probably like this and US Treasury securities market would likely rally, which would be a very different market reaction if the government said it was going to haircut Treasury bonds.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[


Do you think I wrote ALL of the above?? Are you that f...king stupid???
Geez... right in front of your eyes and you still don't believe it!
What is the problem with people like you? Are you congenitally stupid?
AGAIN AND AGAIN... THESE aren't MY words!
Is factcheck.org making shit up?
Is The White House Office of Management and Budget making shit up??
How stupid are you really? Blaming ME?

Let me repeat. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes have to be spent on SS and Medicare. They can't be spent on anything else, unless you consider the investment of the surplus in securities as something else. That is LOANED money.

 

[Toro]

When you issue an IOU to yourself, it's absolutely worthless. Try it out and see. Write "IOU $10 trillion" on a piece of paper. Then put it in your pocket. Now go out and see if you can buy a yacht with it.

The so-called "Trust Fund" is full of IOU's the government issued to itself. They are worth exactly as much as the IOU you just put in your pocket: nothing, in other words.

The IOUs are owed to you. .

Wrong. They are owed to the government.

Though its technically correct that the government "owes it to itself," what that means is that the government owes it to a government agency. But that government agency then owes you the money worth the IOUs plus unfunded liabilities.

Nope. Legally the government owes you nothing. The Supreme Court has even ruled accordingly. Even if it did, the only way it could pay you is by taking the money from taxpayers, of which you are one. So the government takes the money from you or some other taxpayer with one hand, and it returns it to you with the other. The net gain to taxpayers is zilch.

SS is owed to the beneficiaries of the trusts, i.e everyone who pays SS taxes. You have an account with your name and a specific number called a Social Security number. You are a beneficiary of the SS trust. The US government owes you, not itself. You will receive payments from the government.

The government legally owes you something just like the government legally owes holders of Treasury bonds. There is a law for both which describes the rights of beneficiaries and holders under the law for both. Of course, the government can default on the obligations of both, but so can anyone who is a borrower of any monies for any reasons. The only differences are the legal standings of borrowers and lenders.

 

[SteadyMercury]

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulentinvestment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator.

No comparison to SS.

A ponzi scheme is fraudulent because investors are misled as the nature of their promised returns, since there is no actual investment and only the initial players at the top of the pyramid achieve any return on their money. The pyramid needs a constant massive increase of investors to stay afloat, doubling over and over to where it cannot stand but for a very brief time.

Social security does invest and it is 100% transparent, issuing very detailed reports on the finances and participant's expected returns with caveats that returns are only an estimate and may be impacted by future legislation. Social security makes regular payments to millions of people and has for decades, and with relatively minor tweaks can actually stay afloat with a projected smaller future participant base, which isn't a characteristic of a ponzi scheme.

 

[Toro]

When you issue an IOU to yourself, it's absolutely worthless. Try it out and see. Write "IOU $10 trillion" on a piece of paper. Then put it in your pocket. Now go out and see if you can buy a yacht with it.

The so-called "Trust Fund" is full of IOU's the government issued to itself. They are worth exactly as much as the IOU you just put in your pocket: nothing, in other words.

The IOUs are owed to you. .

Wrong. They are owed to the government.

Though its technically correct that the government "owes it to itself," what that means is that the government owes it to a government agency. But that government agency then owes you the money worth the IOUs plus unfunded liabilities.

Nope. Legally the government owes you nothing. The Supreme Court has even ruled accordingly. Even if it did, the only way it could pay you is by taking the money from taxpayers, of which you are one. So the government takes the money from you or some other taxpayer with one hand, and it returns it to you with the other. The net gain to taxpayers is zilch.

i.e. a Ponzi scheme defined as and your comment describes SS as such..
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulentinvestment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator.

SS is not a Ponzi Scheme. SS is backed by taxes of the US government, which are generated from economic activity in the country. A Ponzi Scheme is also characterized by unrealistic return streams. SS is compounding at a rate of interest on Treasury securities, or around 1%-2%.

 

[bripat9643]

[


Do you think I wrote ALL of the above?? Are you that f...king stupid???
Geez... right in front of your eyes and you still don't believe it!
What is the problem with people like you? Are you congenitally stupid?
AGAIN AND AGAIN... THESE aren't MY words!
Is factcheck.org making shit up?
Is The White House Office of Management and Budget making shit up??
How stupid are you really? Blaming ME?

Let me repeat. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes have to be spent on SS and Medicare. They can't be spent on anything else, unless you consider the investment of the surplus in securities as something else. That is LOANED money.

That's simply a lie. If it were true, then were is all the surplus cash the FICA tax has been generating? The fact is it was spent the minute the government received it on whatever the politicians wanted to spend it on. As I have explained ad nauseum, the securities in the so-calleed "Trust Fund" are worthless. They can't be converted to cash without imposing additional taxes on the American people. Any claims to the contrary are the sign of brain damage.

 

[bripat9643]

When you issue an IOU to yourself, it's absolutely worthless. Try it out and see. Write "IOU $10 trillion" on a piece of paper. Then put it in your pocket. Now go out and see if you can buy a yacht with it.

The so-called "Trust Fund" is full of IOU's the government issued to itself. They are worth exactly as much as the IOU you just put in your pocket: nothing, in other words.

The IOUs are owed to you. .

Wrong. They are owed to the government.

Though its technically correct that the government "owes it to itself," what that means is that the government owes it to a government agency. But that government agency then owes you the money worth the IOUs plus unfunded liabilities.

Nope. Legally the government owes you nothing. The Supreme Court has even ruled accordingly. Even if it did, the only way it could pay you is by taking the money from taxpayers, of which you are one. So the government takes the money from you or some other taxpayer with one hand, and it returns it to you with the other. The net gain to taxpayers is zilch.

i.e. a Ponzi scheme defined as and your comment describes SS as such..
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulentinvestment operation where the operator, an individual or organization, pays returns to its investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from profit earned by the operator.

SS is not a Ponzi Scheme. SS is backed by taxes of the US government, which are generated from economic activity in the country. A Ponzi Scheme is also characterized by unrealistic return streams. SS is compounding at a rate of interest on Treasury securities, or around 1%-2%.

SS has no "rate of return" because the money is not invested. It's spent the minute the government gets its hands on it. SS is the largest Ponzi scheme ever devised.

 

[NYcarbineer]

I find it interesting that the biggest bitcher's of Social Security are the one's collecting it......

I find it interesting that FACTS don't mean anything to people like you!
You make some type of comment without ANY basis...just throw crap on the forum!
Everything I wrote comes from the EXPERTS and researchers.. NOT my words!

As more informed and better qualified people then me have suggested:
a) raise retirement to age 68 for anyone UNDER age 55 and SS will be fine. That simple!
b) Allow ANY one under age 55 to chose
1) Self directed investment into savings accounts, treasuries,yes even the stock market!
2) or use the traditional method...
But give people a choice!
This ONE freedom of choice i.e. self directed into savings,etc. would generate so much more growth in the USA economy it would be unbelievable!
Obviously no one on this forum has ever heard of the Venture Capital Insurance Corp.. VCIC...
and the absolute guarantees that can be provided to the small investor!

You have choices. You get all sorts of tax exempt tax deferred options to put retirement savings into.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[


Do you think I wrote ALL of the above?? Are you that f...king stupid???
Geez... right in front of your eyes and you still don't believe it!
What is the problem with people like you? Are you congenitally stupid?
AGAIN AND AGAIN... THESE aren't MY words!
Is factcheck.org making shit up?
Is The White House Office of Management and Budget making shit up??
How stupid are you really? Blaming ME?

Let me repeat. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes have to be spent on SS and Medicare. They can't be spent on anything else, unless you consider the investment of the surplus in securities as something else. That is LOANED money.

That's simply a lie. If it were true, then were is all the surplus cash the FICA tax has been generating? The fact is it was spent the minute the government received it on whatever the politicians wanted to spend it on. As I have explained ad nauseum, the securities in the so-calleed "Trust Fund" are worthless. They can't be converted to cash without imposing additional taxes on the American people. Any claims to the contrary are the sign of brain damage.

You need to shut up because you don't know what you're talking about. If the Trust Fund was worthless then SS would not have been able to draw on interest received on those securities to supplement incoming payroll taxes for the last 3 years.

You're more clueless on this than anything, and you're a ******* retard in everything else to start with.

 

[healthmyths]

They are worthless to the government because they are liabilities to the government. I don't know how may times this has to be repeated. How many times do you numskulls have to be told that you can't loan money to yourself?



There's no account in your name, so those treasuries are worthless to you. They are also worthless to the government because the government issued them. When it comes time to redeem them, the party paying them off will be the government and the party collecting the proceeds will be the government. In other words, the government will be paying money to itself.

You really have to be ******* stupid to believe that the so-called "trust fund" has real money in it.

My mutual fund IRA's have no "real money" in them, either, and I am not "******* stupid".

There are so many flaws to the privatization of SS argument that it is hard to decide where to begin. I guess that I will go with what happened to my brother. He has two master's degrees, and used to own his own airplane. He made very good money all of his life. A major portion of it was in stock in the company he worked at for 40 years. The stock made him more than a millionaire, and more. Then came the 2008 meltdown. He rode it all the way down. Then to meet his mortgage, medical expenses, and other obligations, he was forced to cash in, near the bottom. Now, he is 74 years old, and worth about 35% of what was worth in 2007. The airplane is gone, the cruises have ended. Yes, he still has a few hundreds of thousands in savings and investments, but he now lives on his SS earnings. He could have easily been wiped out completely. Oh, and BTW, he DOES have a professional financial advisor.

IDIOT for a brother! NOT one person who accumulated that much money and was smart would have had it ALL in the stock market at AGE 68!
That was totally stupid on his part!
And he was an even BIGGER fool to have all that money by his "advisor" in the market!
Should have at age 68 had 20% in the market THE REST in SECURED investments!
DUMB F...k!

 

[SteadyMercury]

SS has no "rate of return"

Correct, SS promises no rate of return.

Therefore doesn't have a key characteristic of a ponzi scheme... a promised rate of return.