[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Secret Negotiations! Jill Biden’s Demands for $2B Library, Legal Immunity, and $100M Book Deal to Protect Biden Family Before Joe’s Exit AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution. Rare Van Halen Leicestershire, Donnington Park August 18, 1984 Valerie Bertinelli Cameo If you need a Good Opening for black, use this. "Arrogant Hunter Biden has never been held accountable — until now" How Republicans in Key Senate Races Are Flip-Flopping on Abortion Idaho bar sparks fury for declaring June 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month' and giving free beers and 15% discounts to straight men Son of Buc-ee’s co-owner indicted for filming guests in the shower and having sex. He says the law makes it OK. South Africa warns US could be liable for ICC prosecution for supporting Israel Today I turned 50! San Diego Police officer resigns after getting locked in the backseat with female detainee Gazan Refugee Warns the World about Hamas Iranian stabbed for sharing his faith, miraculously made it across the border without a passport! Protest and Clashes outside Trump's Bronx Rally in Crotona Park Netanyahu Issues Warning To US Leaders Over ICC Arrest Warrants: 'You're Next' Will it ever end? Did Pope Francis Just Call Jesus a Liar? Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) Updated 4K version There can never be peace on Earth for as long as Islamic Sharia exists The Victims of Benny Hinn: 30 Years of Spiritual Deception. Trump Is Planning to Send Kill Teams to Mexico to Take Out Cartel Leaders The Great Falling Away in the Church is Here | Tim Dilena How Ridiculous? Blade-Less Swiss Army Knife Debuts As Weapon Laws Tighten Jewish students beaten with sticks at University of Amsterdam Terrorists shut down Park Avenue. Police begin arresting democrats outside Met Gala. The minute the total solar eclipse appeared over US Three Types Of People To Mark And Avoid In The Church Today Are The 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse About To Appear? France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront Facts you may not have heard about Muslims in England. George Washington University raises the Hamas flag. American Flag has been removed. Alabama students chant Take A Shower to the Hamas terrorists on campus. In Day of the Lord, 24 Church Elders with Crowns Join Jesus in His Throne In Day of the Lord, 24 Church Elders with Crowns Join Jesus in His Throne Deadly Saltwater and Deadly Fresh Water to Increase Deadly Cancers to soon Become Thing of the Past? Plague of deadly New Diseases Continues [FULL VIDEO] Police release bodycam footage of Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley traffi Police clash with pro-Palestine protesters on Ohio State University campus Joe Rogan Experience #2138 - Tucker Carlson Police Dispersing Student Protesters at USC - Breaking News Coverage (College Protests) What Passover Means For The New Testament Believer Are We Closer Than Ever To The Next Pandemic? War in Ukraine Turns on Russia what happened during total solar eclipse Israel Attacks Iran, Report Says - LIVE Breaking News Coverage Earth is Scorched with Heat Antiwar Activists Chant ‘Death to America’ at Event Featuring Chicago Alderman Vibe Shift Status: Not Logged In; Sign In United States News See other United States News Articles Title: Bush: People Should Work More Hours To Grow Economy Source: Daily Caller URL Source: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/08/b ... rk-more-hours-to-grow-economy/ Published: Jul 9, 2015 Author: Blake Neff Post Date: 2015-07-09 09:31:10 by buckeroo Keywords: None Views: 8211 Comments: 97 Democratic operatives are all over Jeb Bush for declaring in an interview that Americans need to “work longer hours” for substantial economic growth to return. The Republican presidential candidate was conducting a recorded interview with New Hampshire’s The Union-Leader and was answering a question about his tax plan, which he used as an opportunity to state his goals for economic growth. Democratic operatives are all over Jeb Bush for declaring in an interview that Americans need to “work longer hours” for substantial economic growth to return. The Republican presidential candidate was conducting a recorded interview with New Hampshire’s The Union-Leader and was answering a question about his tax plan, which he used as an opportunity to state his goals for economic growth. “My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see,” Bush said. “Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.” According to OECD data, U.S. workers average 1789 hours of work per year, above the global average for developed countries. Among those with full-time jobs the average work week is 47 hours, according to polling by Gallup, while for part-time workers the average is about 26 hours per week. Democratic operatives are all over Jeb Bush for declaring in an interview that Americans need to “work longer hours” for substantial economic growth to return. The Republican presidential candidate was conducting a recorded interview with New Hampshire’s The Union-Leader and was answering a question about his tax plan, which he used as an opportunity to state his goals for economic growth. “My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see,” Bush said. “Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.” According to OECD data, U.S. workers average 1789 hours of work per year, above the global average for developed countries. Among those with full-time jobs the average work week is 47 hours, according to polling by Gallup, while for part-time workers the average is about 26 hours per week. According to the Department of Labor, about 6.5 million Americans are stuck in part-time rather than full-time jobs due to economic conditions. An aide told the AP that Bush’s intent was to highlight how many Americans have been working less than they want to due to President Obama’s policies. “Under President Obama, we have the lowest workforce participation rate since 1977, and too many Americans are falling behind,” the statement said. “Only Washington Democrats could be out-of-touch enough to criticize giving more Americans the ability to work, earn a paycheck, and make ends meet.” The average hours worked of part-time workers has fallen sharply from just 15 years ago, something critics claim is partly due to Obamacare classifying a 30-hour job as “full time.” (RELATED: Obamacare’s Biggest Impacts: Americans Losing Hours, Losing Coverage) Update: A transcript of the event forwarded to The Daily Caller News Foundation by a Bush campaign spokeswoman shows that Bush clarified his comments to New Hampshire reporters Wednesday night. When asked whether working “more hours” meant more Americans getting full-time work, Bush replied people needed to be “given the opportunity to work.” “Incomes need to grow,” Bush said. “It’s not going to grow in an environment where the costs of doing business are so extraordinarily high here… If anyone is celebrating this anemic recovery, then they are totally out of touch. The simple fact is people are really struggling. So giving people a chance to work longer hours has got to be part of the answer. If not, you are going to see people lose hope. And that’s where we are today.” Get the lazy, fat, do-nothing bureaucrats off their asses and force them to get a real job. OOPPSS! I forgot, they can't. In effect, a governemnt job is just another form welfare. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 90. #5. To: buckeroo (#0) What is most disappointing here is Bush's total lack of ideas. Rather than asking the 50% who do work to work longer hours, unemployed people should be returned to work instead of getting endless checks and "food stamps". And the retirement age should be raised, say, a couple months per year until the minimum age is 65. Or 67. Social Security was never intended to be a retirement plan lasting 20 years or more for most retirees. It was predicated on half of all payees dying before retirement and the majority who did retire collected 5-10 years on average. To see real economic improvement, you have to raise the employment rate and the retirement age. I would give bonus points to any pol who just admits this fundamental but unpopular fact. Tooconservative  posted on  2015-07-09   13:27:13 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #7. To: TooConservative, buckeroo, All (#5) Social Security was never intended to be a retirement plan lasting 20 years or more for most retirees. It was predicated on half of all payees dying before retirement and the majority who did retire collected 5-10 years on average. Yet I and my employers on my behalf (in lieu of paying higher wagers to me) paid more into the SS system than I will ever get got, even if I live to 100. SOSO  posted on  2015-07-09   17:14:42 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #16. To: SOSO, Too Conservative (#7) Yet I and my employers on my behalf (in lieu of paying higher wagers to me) paid more into the SS system than I will ever get got, even if I live to 100. Not true at all. My employer and I have paid the maximum Social Security tax on me for the past 16 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The amount has changed over the year, as the cap on the amount of the income taxed moves upward. In 1999, the cap was at $72,600. This year, the cap is $118,500. Social Security tax is 6.2% from me, 6.2% from my employer. So, using 2015 as the measuring point (highest it's ever been), my employer and I pay a combined total of $14,694 per year. If I were age 70 and retired right now, having paid into the system at the top rate for most of my working life, my monthly benefit would be $42,002 per year, which is $27,318 per year more out than I pay in this year. Also, if I die first, my wife will get my Social Security until she dies. And it will all be adjusted upwards over time for inflation. Fact is, there is no investment program you could have done with that Social Security money that pays better, or that has better features (inflation adjustment and survivor benefits are huge advantages). And if you get crippled between now and retirement, you get disability insurance. And if you die, you kids get survivors benefits. Fact is, Social Security is an investment whose combined features cannot be purchased in the private sector at a reasonable price, or at all. Add Medicare into the picture and it becomes even better. Social Security will be the primary payor in your retirement, for your income, and for your medical costs, which will spiral upwards. Without Social Security, most people would be destitute in their old age. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-10   9:47:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #18. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative (#16) Not true at all. It's totally true. You neglect the imputed interest rate that would be earned on what you and your employer "invests" into your SS account. Over a 30-50 year period of contributions that will much more than double the amount paid in. And what about those whose spouse also works and pays into SS? The surviving spouse is only entitled to the payment they have earned or just 1/2 of what the deceased spouse has earned, which ever is higher. As for Medicare, I have private insurance which is primary over Medicare. It is unlikely that I will ever enroll in Medicare B or D. FYI we just had a super major medical event which to date has racked up over $300,000 of medical bills and Medicare hasn't paid one cent and will not pay anything in the future. SOSO  posted on  2015-07-10   11:05:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #22. To: SOSO (#18) It's totally true. You neglect the imputed interest rate that would be earned on what you and your employer "invests" into your SS account. I did neglect that imputed interest. (I also neglected the taxation of the interest in any real account.) This is an easy calculation. Actually, the amount I have paid in over my working life is easily determinable: I get that Social Security statement every year that says what I have paid in, and I can double that number for the employer contribution (which, lest we forget, is tax-deductible to the employer). Then we look at the IRS imputed interest chart on long-term loans or, if you prefer, at the treasury rate, the bank deposit rate or CD rate during each year since 1981, when I started working and paying taxes. One aspect of this investment is that it's a government entitlement, so the risk is the same level as treasuries: full faith and credit of the US government. I guarantee you that after going through all that work, we'll discover that, no, the total will not "more than double the amount paid in". Especially not on a risk-adjusted basis. Also, bank interest, CDs and bond interest is taxable, so we'd have to chop down your return every year for taxes. I suppose we could go ahead and consider that some of the money was invested in an IRA, but IRA's have upper- levels. It all depends on how detailed you want the analysis. I'm going to do it back of the envelope now, and demonstrate it. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-10   12:55:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #26. To: Vicomte13 (#22) I did neglect that imputed interest. (I also neglected the taxation of the interest in any real account.) And the taxes that may have to be paid on the SS payments if one's total income exceeds a very modest level. SOSO  posted on  2015-07-10   15:01:50 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #30. To: SOSO (#26) Those taxes on the SS Payments are deferred for 50 years, assuming an age 70 retirement. The taxes on the interest are due and payable at once, year by year. The average savings account interest rate since 1981 when I started working was 6.007%. It's a lot lower today; it was higher in the early 80s. The mean over that time is 6.007%. Income taxes have been around 28%, which puts the net interest rate earned at approx. 4.325%. I'll base the calculations on that. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-10   15:30:02 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #32. To: Vicomte13 (#30) Those taxes on the SS Payments are deferred for 50 years, assuming an age 70 retirement. The taxes on the interest are due and payable at once, year by year. Payments into the SS sytem are with after tax dollars, i.e. - you paid income taxes on the contributions when made. So add that into your calculation as well. "Income taxes have been around 28%, which puts the net interest rate earned at approx. 4.325%. I'll base the calculations on that." You may start at that but I suggest a better rate would be on tax free A+ bonds and forget about the tax on interest earned. Also, one may total defer any accumulated interest until the retire or 70 1/2 which ver is older for a traditional IRA or never for a Roth IRA (remember the tax free traditional IRA to Roth IRA rollover period in you calcualtion if you wish to be totally accurate). If you use 4.325% investments made 50 years ago will more than quadruple. Investments made about 29.9 years ago would have tripled. In fact investments made just years about 16.5 years ago would have doubled. Are you going to assume that the maximum payment into SS is made by you and your employer in each of the 50 years? SOSO  posted on  2015-07-10   15:45:53 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #35. To: SOSO (#32) Are you going to assume that the maximum payment into SS is made by you and your employer in each of the 50 years? No, because that is not the life that I've lived or that most people live. I'm going to use the actual amount I earned and paid into Social Security during each of the years. I can see that a back of the envelope is not going to work, because you're going to pick at the result. So I shall have to be precise, and use the actual IRA contribution limits each year. And there will be a few other things that must be factored in. One is the cost of disability insurance, because Social Security is not simply a retirement fund, it's also permanent disability insurance. My uncle had a massive heart attack in his late 40s, did not die, but could not work. He had two children. He got disability until retirement. Had he died - a distinct possibility - his wife and children would have gotten survival benefits, inflation adjusted. That is real, valuable insurance that would have to be purchased in the private market (if it existed). Likewise the death benefit for the surviving spouse. Inflation-adjusted insurance annuities don't exist, so a discounted present- value of money calculation will have to be made. The cost of that premium must be factored into the expenses of the "without Social Security" model. You don't get to take the ENTIRE Social Security amount and invest it at 3% interest. Some of that money has to pay for disability insurance, and for survivor benefit annuities, year by year. And the amount has to be adjusted upward for age and inflation. And a guaranteed insurability rider has to be placed on it. Private insurance will cut you off if you don't pay the premium, or when the policy expires and is reupped, and you can't buy the policy with a pre-existing condition. But Social Security disability insurance adjusts upward for inflation, has guaranteed insurability, and has guaranteed "premium payment" (it's paid out until retirement) with no further contributions. Some of these features don't exist in private insurance. Some do, and they are expensive, and all of the money spent on that insurance each year is not available to sit and grow without interest. ALL of the features of Social Security must be priced out and paid for, to REPLACE Social Security in all of its protections at each stage. We cannot pretend that Social Security is merely a retirement annuity. It's also disability insurance and a survivor annuity. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-10   17:19:38 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #41. To: Vicomte13, TooConserative (#35) Go ahead, add in the cost of the equivalent cost of a 50-to-life time term life insurance policy that your Uncle could have bought when he was 18 or 20 (which probably was well under $500/year average over the past 50 years). Also add the cost of a similar disability insurance policy (which was also likely well under $500/year average over the past 50 years). However, I will concede $1000 year as the average cost over the past 50 years for the private equivalent of what you claim is de facto SS life and disability insurance policies. If you choose a different amount please document the basis and justification for it. HINT: The cost of a $1 million today for 20 year term life policy for a 30 year old man in good health is less about $37/month. For a 40 year old man it is about $56/month. These are to costs today and are much, much higher than what they were in 1965 or 1975. BTW, did your Aunt and any of her dependent children that were factored into the SS disability payment have to pay any taxes on those payments? If so please factor that in. But remember what TooConservative claimed, i.e. - that ON AVERAGE (statisically) one will get back from SS what one had been paid into one's account. So you may wish to tailor your analysis to the AVERAGE SS recipient, e.g. - a white male who paid into the system since 1965 and retired at age 66 at full reitrement benefit and a life expectancy of 76.4 years old. If you chose to do this I would use the assumption that this person earned the national median individual (not family) salary for each of the 50 years he worked and what he and his employer(s) paid into the system each year was based on this earned income amount. Good luck to you. SOSO  posted on  2015-07-10   19:10:25 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #46. To: SOSO (#41) Ok, I'm going to buckle down to do this analysis. It's going to take time, so I'm going to have to be radio silent on everything else until it's done. It's hard for me to resist hitting back at taunts, so if you want me to complete this task, don't taunt me! If you have further thoughts on the analysis, please DO post those, here, because I want it to be a full and comprehensive a study as I can do in a reasonably short period of time. I can see a couple of divergences in our views that I will have to address. The first we touched on already: you want me to include the employer portion in the analysis. I don't think that it should be. The employer contribution is a tax. If employers did not have this tax, they would not pay over this money as salary. They would keep most of it as profit. When employers illegally hire people "off the books", they don't pay them the difference of the payroll taxes. They pocket it. Also, we know the assumption that if people weren't paying Social Security, they'd invest the money for their retirement is wrong. They didn't before Social Security was instituted, and most recently, they didn't do that when the Social Security personal tax was cut during the first couple of years of the Obama Administration. The public at large did not take those percentage savings and put it into retirement accounts. They used it to pay bills. All experience has shown that people live close to the margin and, without forced savings, will not save enough for retirement. I would assert that this is because in an industrialized urban society, most people CAN'T save enough for their retirement needs, which is why we need Social Security. But regardless whether one agrees with me or not on that score, the fact is that when people did get their Social Security taxes substantially cut, they used the money to retire debt. They didn't use it to save for retirement. Another thing that I will factor in is that the employer contribution is not a 1:1 match, for the employer gets to deduct the amount s/he/it pays for Social Security payroll tax. With a corporate tax rate of 35%, this means that the real economic contribution of the employer is a little less less than 2/3rds of the employee contribution. Because we don't agree on whether or not the employer contribution should be included at all (as that money is not the employee's), I will prepare the analysis both ways, using the employer contribution, and not using it. As far as insurance goes, I cannot look at healthy insurance policy, because Social Security covers morbidly obese diabetics with cancer also, automatically. Also, Social Security survivor benefits pay in the event of suicide. Life insurance policies don't. The premia don't change for health conditions, and there is no pre- existing condition waiver. Social Security has to cover everybody. The alternative is more massive welfare. Social Security is social insurance whose price is a fixed aspect of income. Also, there is a feature of Social Security insurance that does not exist in private life insurance policies or annuity: inflation adjusted payouts. Life insurance and annuities are for fixed amounts, but Social Security adjusts upwards year by year for the Cost of Living. Now, it doesn't always adjust upwards to fully match the inflation rate, but it does adjust upwards in correlation with inflation. Private insurance and annuities do not. So, to simulate this effect, we have to periodically increase the amount of life insurance purchased, to match the cost of living adjustment in Social Security, and we have to take into account that life insurance and disability insurance premia rise with age and pre-existing conditions, and some people are not insurable, but Social Security is guaranteed insurance with no change in premia for existing conditions. Also, as mentioned above, there's no suicide exemption from this life insurance. As far as tax advantaged investment goes, I agree that the only fair way to calculate hypothetical performance is by looking at the amount of income that could be sheltered by an IRA during the periods of time in question. This will cover some of the principal and interest. The 401(k) should not be used for comparison, because many employers do not offer it. Personal IRAs are open to all. I agree that the tax-deferral on payments should be taken into consideration. IRA distributions are taxed upon withdrawal, so the taxes will be taken into accounts. Social Security payments are taxed or not taxed by states depending on state laws. As I will be using my own data, I will apply the tax laws of the state of my current residence: Connecticut. I have no real idea where I'll be living at 70. My wife would prefer New York City. I would prefer northern Michigan, Finland or Siberia. So there's a bit of a difference there. I expect that we'll settle on Paris as a compromise. How awful. As far as the investment goes, I will look at what you suggested. It must be a very safe investment, something insured. Or something that has never defaulted. Bank deposits are insured by FDIC, but muni bonds, which pay better, HAVE defaulted in some cases. US Treasuries have not. Nor have US Savings Bonds. Equities, common and preferred, are out of the question: a third of the companies on the Dow when I was born went bankrupt and ceased to exist. Social Security has never defaulted on payments, and the only thing comparable are other things that have never defaulted on payments since the 1930s. There are not many instruments like that, but that is the only true comparison. Of course that inevitably means a lower rate of return than can be obtained from riskier investments, but that's part of it too. In any pool of nesters, some people will lose money. But with Social Security, the social safety net, people who lose their retirement or disability money still have to eat, so they'll just pass onto the welfare rolls and continue to be a cost to government. That is why the only comparable securities are those that cannot take a loss - Social Security must have a 100% payout, by it's nature. No default on payment is really possible, because the government will then just have to pay the money out anyway, out of a different pocket. Even life insurance companies can go out of business, and do. Same with disability insurance companies. Once again, that is not permissible for Social Security, because the government ends up paying anyway, in the form of welfare, if the security fails and people are destitute. Therefore, the only insurance companies that are comparable are those of the top rated insurers. And they usually charge a little more in premium precisely because they offer a lower risk. Zero risk is a feature of Social Security that is hard to replace in the private sector, but we must get as close as we can. And that means higher rated, safer securities, which means lower returns. Zero risk with guaranteed insurability and no termination ability are features of Social Security that are invaluable to the young, terminally ill worker with a family who must nevertheless have disability and survivor benefits, who cannot be refused coverage, and who must be able to get the insurance at a fixed proportion of salary. It's not simply "retirement savings", it's social insurance, and quite comprehensive, and it cannot have any exclusions. You can't really find that in the private sector, because for-profit insurers cannot afford to cover people on whom they cannot possibly make a profit, but the need to manage social welfare needs means that the state has to. You either do it through Social Security, or you do it through outright welfare paid out of the general fund. Social Security taxes recoup some of the costs. By making the pool include everybody, the risks on each are lowered. Finally, once we get to the end of the period and to the time of payout, we have to start measuring outcomes. One can retire at 62, or at 70 for maximum benefits. How much one gets depends on how long one lives. Different scales can be used to show when Social Security has paid for itself in terms of retirement annuity. Obviously if you die the day after you retire, you lose. Obviously if you live to 122, you win big. So it's a matter of longevity, and that can be demonstrated. This is an analysis with a lot of moving parts. I don't have a particular stake in the outcome. In other words, I'm not going to jigger the numbers to prove what I believe to be the case. I am pretty sure that, all in, Social Security will prove superior, hands down, to every other private alternative. I've done a weaker form of this analysis before and came to that conclusion - I don't state opinions about this on emotion. Still, a more thorough and detailed analysis will be useful, not just for me, but for anybody who reads it. If I am right, the analysis should be so clear an forthright that anybody looking at it will see it and agree. If I am wrong, then i will change my own views on it. I don't love the idea of social insurance because I love the state. I don't like authoritarianism very much at all. I believe that social insurance is necessary to avoid starvation and shortened lives and premature deaths for old people, and miserable suffering by the children of the disabled. I have thought, more than once, that instead of the farce of Social Security accounting (It all really goes into the General Fund, there is no lockbox), that we should just frankly abolish Social Security and Medicare, call all of it Welfare, greatly simplify the tax code, and just pay the costs out directly, perhaps even abolish taxes and just print the money that the government needs to operate, instead of printing the money and "lending" it to banks to invest to expand the money supply. (I speak of "print" conceptually, not referring to ACTUAL printing.) But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let me consider the investment vehicles and then begin. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-10   20:32:13 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #57. To: Vicomte13 (#46) You should read this full report (the PDF) before you start your analysis. I suggest you stick to the closest representation of the "average" SS payer. Probably this would be: - a married two income white couple, - the male born in 1945 and spouse say in 1948, - the male entering the work force in 1965 (46 years of working and contributing to the SS system)), the spouse say in 1985 (i.e. - after the kids get old enough for her not to have to be a stay at home Mom), - each retire at age 66, - the male earning the median individual income in each year of employment, the spouse 50% of that when she works (i.e. - the spouse will be entitled the higher of 1/2 of the male SS payment or what she is eligible for based on her employment history, which likley would be 1/2 of her spouses payments), - no disability payments for the spouse or kids, - both live to their respective life expectancy, - a reasonable imputed interest earnings rate on the IRAs of both the employees and employers contributions to their respective SS account (i.e. - taxes on investment earnings deferred until retirement). From the foregoing you can calculate: - the total contributions made by the couple and their employers, - the number of years SS payments will be made to the couple and the surviving spouse, - the combined annual SS payments to the couple and to the surviving spouse, - total amount paid by SS to the couple and the surviving spouse. You then can compare the total amount paid by SS to the amount of the combined payments invested at the assumed interest rate. Then reduce the later by $60,000 ($1000/year for 60 years) for the cost of a $1 million term life insurance policy and disability insurance for the male. I am certain that you will find that the amount paid to the couple and the surviving spouse will be significantly less than the payments invested at the assumed interest rate less the cost of the insurance. I know this is true for my wife and I as we closely match this "average couple" except that I earned near or more than the capped SS taxable income for my working career and my wife never earned 50% of my annual income (about 25 years of full time employment after our daughter was sophomore in HS). SOSO  posted on  2015-07-11   1:40:46 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #60. To: SOSO (#57) I will use myself as the basis for the analysis, because I have the exact income figures and the exact taxes paid. I was the average earner for many years when I was in the military, a below-average earner when I was in law school, and an above-average earner as a lawyer. The normal pattern for people is to earn little when young, and gradually earn more over time. In my case, today I earn about ten times what I earned as a man right out of college. For most people, that number is more like five times. So, the point you are trying to make about Social Security will be better made, for you, by my case than by the average case. The average person doesn't hit his peak earnings until a few years before retirement, and so doesn't pay the peak into the fund until the end. He ends up getting the benefit of the high years without having paid into it for decades at the maximum level. In my case, from 1981 to 1998 I paid into it at lower levels, but from 1999 onward I've always had to pay the maximum amount. This will skew the numbers more towards your argument, but I believe it will still come out to have been a great investment. I will assume retirement at 62 (the earliest one can retire) and at 70 (when benefits hit their maximum), and give the numbers for both. As I have no idea when I will die, I'll simply give the numbers on a going-forward basis, year by year. Obviously the longer I live, the better Social Security will look. If I die in a car crash a month after I retire, it was a bad investment. But then, if I won the lottery and died the next day I'd be in exactly the same place: you can't take it with you. As far as the employer portion goes, we will have to agree to disagree on this. From my perspective, money the employer pays to the government in taxes, for which he gets a tax deduction, is not pay to me, and doesn't belong to me. If the tax were not there, he would not pay that money over to me. It is not an investment that I made, and I am looking at the situation from the perspective of the individual, not from the perspective of an account. What the individual pays is what makes it a good investment or not. I grant the truth of what you say: that if the employer didn't pay that portion of the account, the account total would be less. But that doesn't perforce mean the benefits would be less. Rather, taxes might overall be the same and the difference be paid over from the general fund. (In ultimate truth, dollars are fungible, "personal accounts" are an accounting fiction myth, and everything is really just paid out of the general fund, but politically people have not been willing to address things so directly, so we have all of the various fictions). In any case, although our philosophical views on the employer contributions are different, I will present the numbers both ways, with and without the employer contribution. As an individual, what I experience is what I have to pay into it, so that's the cost TO ME. The employer contribution is a cost that has been pressed out onto the general public as a tax. Employers do not pass along the entire cost of taxes onto their customers. When LLC owners cross a tax threshold, they don't suddenly jack up their prices to account for the higher marginal rate. Prices are driven by the market, and can only partially recapture tax costs. Taxes cut into profits. If they did not, business owners would not scream so much when they are raised, because they would simply hike prices by the added tax. In truth, they do not and cannot do that. When taxes go up, businesses are squeezed on profit margin precisely BECAUSE they cannot pass all of it along to customers. If the employer contribution were removed, the employer would not pay me that difference. The Social Security surplus, of which you spoke, is the product of the fact that the since Social Security was implemented, the work force has streakily grown due to population increase, immigration, and longer life spans, all of which have brought more people into the system than there have been people paid out of the system. The system has not profited on individual people, it has simply accumulated a surplus because more is going in than going out. This, ultimately, is the fatal aspect of contraception. The population would have decreased, and Social Security have become a net outflow, but for the immigration to fill the hole. But these are macro- issues that go well past tax policy. Contraception policy ultimately drives demographics, which drives everything else (for people are literally everything in a polity), but those vast forces and factors are not what you or I experience when money is taken from our paycheck for Social Security. We experience what we pay, and what we get paid. That is why I believe that the proper measure is only what the worker pays. But I'll present both sets of numbers, because there is obviously a direct nexus between the employers side of the contribution and the size of the benefit that the government has paid out. I content that the size of benefit is based roughly on needs of life, and that if the employer were not paying the payroll tax into the simulated "lockbox" - the "personal account" that only exists as a bookkeeping fiction - that the government would have to pay out at least the welfare and food stamp and public housing amount anyway, because those address direct needs that, if unaddressed, would result in starvation and mass homelessness of the elderly. Welfare money doesn't come out of the "Social Security" side of the fictional ledger, but welfare benefits would substitute for the portion that is called "Social Security" now, if the Social Security payments were less. Without the Social Security surplus, if we just abolished Social Security and paid all old people straight welfare, the cost would be a lot less…but the politics would be unbearable: old people are not willing to have worked their whole life to live in utterly penury, hand-to-mouth on welfare, in their old age. Want to abolish Social Security and have everything cheaper? Then build public housing for retirees, give each means-tested retiree an apartment in public housing at retirement, and give them food stamps and Medicaid and some spending money stipend. Welfare would be a lot cheaper than Social Security, and there would be no money trapped in a simulated trust fund. If I were king, that is probably how I would do it: no Social Security at all, and no Medicare. Just welfare. Most old people would be on welfare. That would be cheaper. But you'd have to be a king to pull that off, because retirees don't like to think of Social Security as welfare, and are not willing to live at bare-bones welfare and Medicaid levels. Social Security and Medicare are the "Gold Plan" versions of welfare. If we really want things cheaper, abolish all of it, use the trust fund to eliminate debt, and just have a "Tin Plan" welfare program for everybody who is poor. Allow people to go on welfare permanently at age 70. Means test them and deplete all of their savings first, then gradually raise their benefits as their own means run out. This would be far cheaper, and would be just as direct "socialism" as Social Security is. But it would never fly in a democracy. Social Security and Medicare is the grand political compromise to achieve a middle class standard of living for retired and disabled people, as opposed to just having all of the old and disabled be at lower-class welfare subsistence levels. Really, THAT is the choice that we're all on about: do we have Social Security and Medicare and seek to maintain retirees at a middle class standard of living, or do we just have Welfare and have retirees and the disabled at a lower class standard of living. Having no safety net at all means Calcutta, and that's not politically sustainable in a Christian country. Maybe it IS sustainable in a post-Christian country, to which we seem to be hurtling, but the examples of Europe, including the Soviet Union, show that people will not accept utter penury, and will instead demand at least a US-welfare standard. And that's what we'd be talking about, policy-wise, if we got rid of Social Security (assuming it were even politically possible to cram down a lower-class welfare standard on the Social Security middle class0. I'm going to get away from policy, though, and get to this analysis, so that at least we'll have it to compare to the costs of public housing, food stamps and Medicaid. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-11   10:19:31 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #67. To: Vicomte13, SOSO, A Pole (#60) And that's what we'd be talking about, policy-wise, if we got rid of Social Security (assuming it were even politically possible to cram down a lower-class welfare standard on the Social Security middle class0. All advanced nations have a social security system pretty much like our own. I don't get why so called American conservatives act as if it is some new idea that does not work. Why do American so called conservatives want to adopt the way Somalia or Haiti or the Congo is? I mean there are not taxes and limited govt there and thus I assume they are paradise on earth. Meanwhile I assume the socialist Scandinavians are living in poverty and are starving. Pericles  posted on  2015-07-11   19:10:59 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #68. To: Pericles, Vicomte13, A Pole (#67) All advanced nations have a social security system pretty much like our own. I don't get why so called American conservatives act as if it is some new idea that does not work. Who on this thread claimed SS doesn't work? SOSO  posted on  2015-07-11   21:42:56 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #69. To: SOSO (#68) Who on this thread claimed SS doesn't work? All SS is about: another tax collection scheme that has been abused by the US government to pay for other federal operations consistent with creating wars around the world. Ronald Reagan made borrowing from the SS "funds" an easy proposition, whereas before his approach for federal revenue generation, there was only begging, borrowing and cheating. buckeroo  posted on  2015-07-11   21:50:10 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #82. To: buckeroo (#69) SS is not about that. Social Security is about providing income security for workers and their dependents, for life, no matter what happens to them, and regardless of the particular circumstances of the individual. The most unlucky, star-crossed worker in America - the guy born with all sorts of congenital diseases that cannot be cured - or insured - is covered. The alcoholic, depressed, chain-smoking worker who reaches retirement age is covered. That's the point: cover EVERYBODY in the safety net. It's not a particularly generous safety net. SOSO is right that Social Security Disability, Survivor, and Retirement Benefits, all on their own, provide a lower-middle-class living wage, nothing more. This is higher than the lower-class, bare-bones subsistence provided by Welfare. Social Security disability recipients, and those on survivors benefits, or those living solely on the Social Security retirement check, take home more than those who are just on food stamps and living in shelters or government apartments. Social Security is not a tax collection scheme, it's a comprehensive salary insurance program. It's expensive, and taxes are assessed to pay for it. Because of political resistance to the idea of simply taking money out of the general fund to pay these costs (and raising general taxes to cover the costs), the FDR- Era politicians established a separate tax and a structure to make Social Security look and feel like an annuity. That was window-dressing to make it politically palatable. Social Security preceded welfare. Social Security does an exceptionally good job at what it was designed to do. That is why it remains such a popular program. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-12   13:55:32 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #87. To: Vicomte13 (#82) Your post reminds me of people describing government as a great benefactor; as a deeply religious man, government is somewhat a patron saint in your book, correct? buckeroo  posted on  2015-07-12   14:31:26 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #90. To: buckeroo (#87) No, government is no patriot saint. Government is a force, a tool. It is like fire: useful, but deadly if it is not watched and bounded. Our government has been abusing people horrendously. The greatest abuse of everybody is the endless wars of empire. They are a bottomless pit of injury, death, expense…and defeat. We never win these things. And yet we persist, like drug addicts. This is government at its worse, claiming "national interests" that don't exist. As a religious man, I look at how my God set up the world: with limited resources. And I look at his moral code: limit your needs and wants to what is right, and I will provide enough, but part of the way I provide enough is by those to whom I have given more turning and giving much of what they have been given to those who have less. I never made any of that option, God says. His laws are: Do this or else. Kings were accountable to God for the well being of all of their people. They were not elevated to power by God in order to enjoy luxury and license, but to lead and to provide for the weak and poor in their realm, and to defend everybody. Our realm engages in reckless war, which is murder under God's law and must stop. Internally, the society engages in reckless license, which is sin and under God's law must stop. And then there are the poor, who are always there, part of the structure of the world that God provides to cause men to follow him. When we had a revolution, we decided we would have no king. We took the crown off the King's head and divided it among ourselves, as the vote. So collectively we, as a people, ARE the king, and we thereby inherit all of the moral duties of the king. The king could never escape the legal duty before God to use his power to redistribute the resources of his realm to make sure that all of the poor were provided for. In a democracy, we are the king, and the same social welfare - the need for which is caused by human sin, and the solution to which is ordained by God to lie in redistributing wealth, in tithes and alms and through kingly acts - the same social welfare is needed. The poor you have always with you, and they are with us as a test. As the King, we have to meet the test, and we have to use our piece of the crown to address the poverty. Of course, the men of great wealth have the personal liability before God to directly provide such help. As poor individuals who are not free, under God's law, because we don't have our plot of land free and clear, and don't have an excess as long as we are indebted and under service, our obligation is to get ourselves out of debt and treat others as we would be treated. But as The King, we each ALSO have the obligation to use the scepter and crown - powered by our vote - to make sure that the King, which is our sovereign rule over our state, does HIS duty. Welfare is a physical need, and a moral duty. The QUESTION, then, is to how best do it. Until the 1930s in America, we had no formal permanent social welfare system from the Crown. There was private charity, mostly through Churches, but there was not enough wealth in that, nor focus, to actually provide for everybody. The poor, and particularly the unemployed and elderly, were DESTITUTE and HOMELESS, living in tents and boxcars and eating whatever they could get from handouts. Old people were dependent on their children, and their children had children of their own to raise, and were themselves out of jobs because of the crisis. The American structure up to that point had failed, and the crown was not living up to its moral duty before God to do it. Now, were I King alone, I would not have addressed the problem through Social Security, and then later Medicare and Medicaid. But I am not King alone, I have only a one three-hundred-ten-millionth fractionated share of the crown. Just like you. The collective political will created Social Security and Unemployment Insurance, then Medicare and Welfare and Medicaid. Now ObamaCare. These are not the ideal way to go about it. However, they are SOMETHING, and they are in the direction of fulfilling God's command to the King to care for the poor, the orphan, the sick and the elderly. Heretics pretend that God only laid this burden on individuals, to give if they wanted to. That is a lie. God laid it on the State itself, in the Law, on the King, and Jesus said that the law would not pass away until the end of the world. So we are, in fact, bound by the commandments of God to provide for the needs of the poor individually, AND through the church, AND through the Crown, all three. We are bound and it is a sin to evade the duty, and it is always a sin to lie and to say that God did not command such a thing. It's also illiterate and ignorant: it's right there in the Torah for anybody who would read. It's also right there in the example of Jesus, the Apostles and the Church. However, charity was NEVER the province of Church and individual alone. It was also, by repeated commandment of God, the duty of the King - a primary duty - and it is a sin for the state to not provide that help, and also a sin to deny God's law on the matter. So, when I see men snarl at the notion that the state, too, is involved by ordinance of God in poverty relief, I see the snarling fangs of Satan speaking out of minds poisoned by the lust for the idol of money. Yes, the state behaves evilly. And so do all of the Churches. And so does every man. And no, that fact does NOT therefore exonerate any man from the duty of charity as an individual, OR as a member of the Church, and it lets no King off the hook either. In a democracy, born in revolution, we CHOSE to BE the King, and therefore we, and the state we collectively rule, is bound by the law of God to provide social welfare. It is lie and sin to deny it. It is defiance of God. The state is no saint. Our state is pretty crappy. Virtually all of them are. Men handle power poorly. So what? We're all sinners, that doesn't let us off the hook. We're not made as islands, we don't live alone. We have overlapping duties. As kings, collectively., we have a duty to charity. Social Security is the charitable response to the problem of aging and disability. It's not holy. It's a structure only. I've said and I'll repeat that it is not the BEST structure, by any means. But it is CERTAINLY better than the result of simply abolishing it and doing without, or pretending that the private market will cover the need. The private market never did, anywhere, before Social Security and Welfare, and the Churches did not fully fill the gap either. Social Security and Welfare remove the very worst effects. So any sort of principled, Christian opposition to Social Security - which I could make - has to start with the proposed alternative, and the alternative cannot be based on magic pixie dust. I have pointed to two facts above, regarding disability insurance and survivor annuities. These are FACTS of Social Security: it's not just a retirement savings program, it is ALSO insurance against catastrophe at any point in life, and insurance against the death of a spouse and parent. It provides the monthly money to go on for all people caught in such disasters. Before it did, the Churches and private charity did NOT cover the needs, or even come very close. If they had, we would never have gone to the system. But they did not, and they DO not, anywhere, in those places left in the world without Social Security systems. God made the ancient state of Israel such that the state government DID have a NECESSARY role, a fundamental one, in poverty relief. The state agents - the Levitical judges - collected the tithes (which were not voluntary but mandatory taxes) - and they distributed those to the poor. The Kings were held to account by God for not caring for the poor. Jesus called everybody to account for it. Rather than expending energy fighting against a duty that has been imposed on individual AND church AND state, by God, a Christian who dislikes Social Security and Welfare from the state must, if he is true to God, propose a workable alternative THROUGH THE STATE, as well as through individuals and Churches. God's law ALWAYS incorporated the state into HIS way of relieving poverty, and he made it clear that WAS a duty of the King. So, no proposal that refuses to acknowledge the GOVERNMENT'S rule, under God's commandment, for ALSO providing for poverty relief, is Christian. Poverty relief is an INDIVIDUAL duty, AND a Church duty, AND a State duty, a duty of the King. All three. It's all right in Scripture and it's not debatable. Now, I've stood up for Social Security against those who would gut it, because I see no true, honest, Christian, good and sincere proposal for a replacement through the State. It's only "Kill and it and let everybody keep his money", and that means starvation and privation, just like it did before, and that is evil and walking away from God. I already HAVE, in this thread, given the basis for what I think the state should do. I think that a proper welfare structure that is much more in keeping with God's direct example is in order, and that it would both provide MUCH better poverty relief AND cost less. But I haven't bothered to spell out my OWN belief in the proper structure of personal, Church and State charity, because really, who cares? You don't. SOSO doesn't. I'm just a man. Nobody cares what I personally think. We HAVE Social Security and Medicare, and Welfare and Medicaid, and universal public education. We HAVE those things already. We cannot abolish them or tear them apart without replacing them with something as good. And nobody will accept the changes, because conservatives (like you) are constantly attacking God's wisdom regarding charity through the STATE, specifically, and insist that it should only be through Church and individual,. which is in direct opposition to what God said and did in his law. So, I know that we're stuck with Social Security. I know it because "conservatives" are STILL not reconciled to the moral and Christian obligation for the EXISTENCE of the GOVERNMENT program that does that. So I know that the discussion, here and everywhere, is always over whether to ABOLISH Social Security and throw everything back to the private market. All I do, then, is show why the private market DOES NOT, IN FACT cover what Social Security covers. That you CANNOT replace the protections of Social Security AT ALL - nobody sells anything like that. It doesn't exist, and it WON'T exist, because there's no profit in the hard part of it, but it's PRECISELY the hardest party of social insurance that God commands us to cover: as you treat the LEAST of these poor people, so shall I treat with you. Jesus said that, and he is the final judge of every man and woman on the planet. If you are MOCKING me for demanding that everybody obey God, you are deluded, friend. If you love God,and love his commandments, you should stop arguing for the devil, and start understanding why Social Security has to be defended. Perhaps you might want to talk about what sort of state program should REPLACE it, but in the course of that discussion, the notion of destroying what already is and belongs does not belong. And no discussion of God's will should contain the lie that God commanded only private charity. He did not. He explicitly set up a STATE STRUCTURE that provided poverty relief through MANDATORY TAXATION, enforced by legal force, through the judicial agency of the state (who were also religious agents). And he said flatly that if his law were FULLY followed, there would be no poverty AT ALL in the state. All of those things are in Scripture. So when any man mocks me for insisting that individual, church AND STATE must work to eliminate poverty, that man is mocking God - for it is written, in God's law. And everybody who claims to be a Christian, especially a Bible-based Christian, OUGHT TO KNOW THAT ALREADY, because IT IS NOT SUBTLE. It's across pages and pages and pages. Whole books of the prophets are God SCREAMING at Kings of Israel that they are to be destroyed BECAUSE they do not keep the commandments, do not care for the poor, do not respect his laws. To overlook all of that and to claim to be a BIBLE-BASED Christian is to be a willfully blind liar, an agent of Satan, not a good person. Paradoxically, CATHOLICS, who generally DON'T read the Bible, COULD make the argument. But THEY don't, because THEIR Church has correctly taught the duty of Catholics as individuals, and as voting citizens, and as members of the Church, to provide for the poor at ALL levels of activity. And it's the Catholics who provide the poverty relief and education in those African shitholes where the states are totally corrupt and there's no Social Security or other welfare. Government is no patron saint. It's a force, an organization. And God gave laws commanding what it must do - when men as individuals and as religious actors AND as governors must do. And it's the SAME LAW for all three statuses. The pretense that, somehow, government is exempt from poverty relief is a lie from Satan, and ever man who preaches that is an agent of the Devil, repeating a poisonous lie. Scripture-based Christians have NO EXCUSE for that argument, because Scripture is FULL OF directives to rulers. When Christians nevertheless make those arguments, they are idol-worshippers, with the idol being an evil obsession with the idea of the power of personally accumulated money as the bulwark against loss. But what did Christ say about accumulating money as insurance? He said not to do that - to give away the excess to those who need it and trust in God. That is the LAW OF GOD. To fight it is to fight God and enable the Devil. if you think of yourself as a good man: STOP IT. And stop attacking ME for simply telling you what GOD SAID. If you didn't know God said that, go read the Torah again, and Jesus, and prophets: Amos, Joel, Malachi. Stop fighting with me. I am telling you the truth. Get your mind right. The problem of poverty is one of the challenges of a fallen world. We could do better. And proposals for that are welcome. But in the meantime, any proposal that would tear down the protections we already have, to replace it with…nothing. That's Satan talking, nothing more. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-07-12   16:10:56 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   Replies to Comment # 90.         There are no replies to Comment # 90. End Trace Mode for Comment # 90. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register]  Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com