Social...Security?

From My X. O., 1LT Kevin "Sky" King:

SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT'/ENTITLEMENT

Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?

I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment." This isn't a benefit - its earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.

It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both your and your employer's contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment.

Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it - it's a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They "forgot" that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.

And they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently, they've told us that the money won't support us for very much longer. But is it our fault they misused our investments?

And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a "benefit," as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. Just because they "borrowed" the money, doesn't mean that our investments were a charity! Let's take a stand.

We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.

..to add to this screed's math are the following facts: You cannot collect Social Security at age 62 and still work. Well, you can, but for every $3 you earn, you lose $1 of your Social Security payment. When you finally reach the age where you can take your payment without this penalty and you still work, then you pay Federal taxes on 80% of your payments -- the same ones that you paid taxes on when they were withdrawn from your paycheck over the years. If you still work, Social Security is still deducted from your paycheck yet your payments only increase by the pittance of a COLA (usually 1-2%) the assholes in government deign to give you.

So, even with this little Ponzi Scheme, the assholes in D.C. still can't keep it solvent.

The money you had withdrawn from your paychecks along with the rest of us? In a lock box? Actually, it's in a file cabinet in a government office someplace in the form of IOUs from the feds to the Social Security Administration ever since the crooks in D.C. started raiding the fund and spending the loot.

The more you find out about that stuff, the more it turns your stomach.

Tom Clancy wrote two books: Debt of Honor and Executive Orders. The ending of the first book was about a mad Japanese commercial aircraft pilot driving his 747 into the Capitol building while a joint session of Congress was being held. The latter was all about the effort President Jack Ryan went to to get a new Congress elected to replace the one that got wiped out. He reveled in the fact that the replacement process was sending mostly common folk -- businessmen and workers instead of lawyers -- to Washington to do the people's business.

Good idea (he first one). Now if we could only find an angry JAL airplane driver..

-30-