Social security....

Well, I've been reading all the economic gloom and doom reports and it came to me that I wonder how long it is going to take before the federal government declares itself insolvent and the social security system bankrupt? I mean, that has to be a HUGE financial drain, and with the number of people coming up on retirement age real soon, and unemployment (meaning less money collected in taxes), you can kind of read that writing on the wall.

Yeah, with me just being around 4 years from being able to collect from it, this wouldn't surprise me in the least. Or else they will raise the retirement age to 99 years old.

Nope~ if they get rid of social security they won't have an excuse to collect all those social security taxes. NO WAY they are gonna give that up. They'll just cut, cut, cut the benefits until the only people left getting anything OUT of social security are the Bureaucrats (oh.....and the crack heads who can't work due to the "disability" of drug addiction and never have nor ever will contribute a single penny to social security)

Oh, I think they will be slick about it....... Possibly saying they are terminating new retirees "temporarily" from collecting benefits while raising the amount of social security taxes because of the rising expenses of the current people taking the benefits. As the people die off from old age, and no new people able to collect the benefits, the SS taxes will then just become pure taxation while everyone eventually forgets what it was originally for. They'll probably rename it to something else in order to help that forgetting process along.

And somewhere along the line, I would expect social security collecting retirees to suddenly find bad press showing up in the media painting them as leaches on the government and telling about how unfairly they are taking advantage of all the working taxpayers. Kind of like how the terms "patriot" and "militia" have been twisted around now to sound like cuss words.

Heck, I'm due to be able to collect my Florida state retirement by the end of January, 2010, and with the news of the budget shortfalls and some serious sounding cutbacks all across the board, I'm wondering if I'll be able to collect that at all when the time comes.

For that matter, even putting money in the bank is sounding very risky with bank failings getting to be a common occurence lately. Stuffing money under the mattress isn't going to help, because with the government just cranking up the printing presses to make more money, that stuff will eventually not be worth the paper it is printed on. I have a stamp collection that has some stamps from Germany back in 1922 or so where a postage stamp cost $20 MILLION marks. I'm sure anyone who had the foresight to start saving money back in 1918 had a rude awakening 4 years later when their life's savings became worthless.

Man, maybe this gloom and doom stuff is getting to me..... Probably the only thing I may have of value in a few years will be my remaining guns and ammunition (I sold off quite a chunk of my gun collection recently). That's assuming the government doesn't outlaw completely private ownership, which at this point, wouldn't surprise me in the least.

You can collect both state retirement and social security? I cannot collect both teacher retirement and social security even though I am separately eligible for each.

Don't save your money at home, or if you do, put it in a safe. There is a news story going around about how a dog ate the family's savings......

Why not make people contribute past the cutoff limit?
Everyone has to pay until they make $88.5K but once you pass that income level, you no longer have it taken out.
The rich don't need to contribute since they make so much money but everyone else does.
Fix that and you won't have such a shortage of funds.

Originally Posted by SPJ

Why not make people contribute past the cutoff limit?
Everyone has to pay until they make $88.5K but once you pass that income level, you no longer have it taken out.
The rich don't need to contribute since they make so much money but everyone else does.
Fix that and you won't have such a shortage of funds.

Then they would have to consider removing the HUGE tax bracket jump when the income increases........and since right now that jump in tax bracket when the SS tax comes off comes out as a similair amount of taxation......but the money is going straight to the Fed instead of going through the SS administration....................
They get it one way or the other~ but that tax bracket jump after the SS cut off is was put in there for a reason.......and it wasn't to reward people for working harder to earn more money.

I always thought SS was a scam (should be on the B.O.I.), I wanted out 20 years ago. However, once they have there hooks into you, you never get them out.

Once you make over 88.5k and they don't take SS out, you are in the top 5% and then they tax you at the highest rate, so they get the money they want one way or another. If that doesn't do it for them they will bail your industry out then pass ex post facto laws to take back 90% of everything. So no need to worry, the gov. will always get the money to keep operating, even if it puts the rest of us in the poor house.......or worse.