by Laurie Lord, Victor
In response to the Dana Hendricks letter in the Oct 25 edition: The issue of insolvency for SS is one of simple math. The first recipient in 1940 paid in a total of $24.75, and during her 35 years of retirement collected more than $22,888.92 in benefits, 924 times more than she contributed before her death at the age of 100. That sort of math continues today.
In 1940, there were 42 workers per retiree. Today the ratio is 3-to-1; by 2050 it will be 2-to-1. The number of SS beneficiaries is growing faster than the number of workers paying taxes to support them – the number of elderly between now and 2050 will increase 100% while the number of workers will only increase by 22%.
People are living longer and collecting more Social Security benefit checks. These days the life expectancy for women is 85; for men, 81. Most retirees will get SS for 15-20 years. It would be wise to accept what IS, rather than what IF. The truth IS, when you divide the total amount of money withheld from your lifetime of paychecks (on your SS statement) by the amount of your monthly award, you’ll find you are only ENTITLED to about 8 years’ worth of income. After that, you are drawing income from funds that were withheld from someone ELSE’s paycheck.
Considering you may continue to receive SS checks for many years past that 8-year mark, the reality is that you will actually receive WAY more that you paid into the system and to which you think you are ‘entitled’.
You’d have more in your individual SS account if Obama hadn’t cut the payroll withholding percentage (he called it a “payroll tax holiday”) from 15% to 12.4% in order to ‘help’ you, which is bunk, of course. Reducing the amount of savings going into a particular SS account by 2.5% for many of an employee’s working years reduced the total overall amount available at retirement time.
So, what is a solution? Sorry, Dana, but you won’t like the answer. It’s what the Republicans said: For the government to generate the needed funds to continue paying Social Security benefits, it must either raise taxes or reduce spending. If your Democrat leaders aren’t saying the same thing as Republicans about the need to cut something, or to increase the SS payroll tax, then they are lying to you by omission in order to retain your voting allegiance. And don’t be Pollyanna about your chosen leadership: Democrats ARE in business for themselves, and their wealthy donors, just as you accuse Republicans of. I’m not saying voting R is the thing to do (I’m a registered Independent for 13 years), but don’t continue to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to which party is doing the right thing by you.
hsabin says
To both Laurie and Dana, understand that it is NOT just one party or the other who are at fault for abusing the social security system, but both parties and all congress members that we elected who are at fault. It is congress who gives money to illegals for example to use the system they DID NOT PAY INTO! IT is the fault of the president Biden and the congress to NOT close our borders who allow illegals to access our medical systems for which they do NOT and have not paid!
Laurie – that was good information from you – thanks for putting it out.
Now consider that if congress would stop spending our money frivolously or giving it to Iran to spread out to terrorist groups like Biden did today, we might have enough to pay for social security and medicare in the future.
The lesson to be learned is to elect GOOD CONGRESS CRITTERS and TRUMP to be back in office. and to support the convention of states to stop the actions of congress and the federal government.