Should Social Security be voluntary?

only if you are not a liberal

Please take my money, I would have put it into Wall St. or the Banks and lost it all without the taxpayers bailouts.
What would you do with the senior who did not, could not save and didn't join Social Security-- let the rot on the streets?

You are clearly assuming that the government will be more successful at protecting your money. The system is short 20.5 trillion (according to the Trustees), which is more than the system has collected in every form from every American since its inception.

The question you are asking is wrong : it should be What will you do with the senior who put a life's saving into Social Security once it is broke -- let him rot on the streets?

The level of trust you put in the promises of politicians is astounding.

Great Point!

That’s not true.
This is theft, attempted theft of the Social Security Trust Funds.
TODAY THERE IS TWO AND A HALF TRILLION DOLLARS IN THE TRUST FUND.
He effort is to get their hands on the money by tax cuts or by investing ? In Wall Street.

My mistake, I forgot to add the link
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgD...

Jim, If you have a bank account with $100 and you write checks for $1,000, you can say I have $100 in the bank. Excuse me. "THERE IS ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS IN MY BANK ACCOUNT". It is true that there is 2.5 trillion in the trust fund, but the system has written about 23 trillion in checks. After you substract the 2.5 trillion in cash, the system is short 20.5 trillion dollars.

The politicians in DC want to renege on those promises. Maybe you feel those promises aren't really promises, but they have been made.

Page 15 2012 Social Secuity Trustees Report for 2012.

Not checks, US Treasuary bonds. We agree that the money has been spent and the fund was given bonds. What remains is if they will default on the treasuary notes.

Jim, We don't agree. The checks of Social Security represent the promises that have been made to future retirees. The Treasury bonds are completely separate. They are part of the Trust Fund. It is really irrelevant because the promises outweight the assets or the Trust Fund by 10 to 1. It makes no difference how the Trust is invested when it is outgunned 10 to 1 by promises.

Social Security was instituted in the 1930s to help keep people who were no longer young enough to work to have something. Since then, every working taxpayer has put money into Social Security and Medicare. Lyndon B Johnson, a DEMOCRAT decided to fund the Viet Nam war with social security funds, making the mess that we have today. I personally started at 14 doing summer inventory at several stores to pay for my back to school clothes. Now the generation Xs want to make like this is something THEY are paying us for. When you have a family and work as hard as you can to make ends meet, you can FORGET about saving money to any extent. We always gave to our church, and were thankful for what we had. When our kids went to college, seriously, every CENT I made went to their tuition, books and dorms. If we did not pay for their tuition, and later have social security, our kids would have had to fund their own tuition and such, and they would have graduated most likely with debt. All you young folks turning your noses up at Social Security need to really think about how you will fund your retirement. Will you make enough to be sure of your well being? We did as well as anyone else we know, except for the rich, and are very thankful for Social Security that WE funded ourselves through pay role deductions.

I've been funding my retirement since I was 19, I'm now in my mid 30s (with 4 kids) and might be able to retire between 53-57, depending. Sold a house and am now renting. Took proceeds of house sale and paid for all the kid's college (florida prepaid is awesome). Smart saving a managing money coupled with living within your means produces enough to retire early, while you can enjoy it.

Wow! Enjoy your kids while you can, once they grow up, they have lives of their own, and that is a good thing. Retirement can and should be great, and my husband and I spend a lot of time gardening, and we travel as much as we can.

Thanks, I will!

Joan, You commentary on LBJ is an internet myth. Every penny that he borrowed was repaid with interest by 1983 - when the Trust Fund reached zero. The fact that it reached zero had to do with the first 40 years of workers failing to pay the full cost of the benefits that they were promised. In 1944, the man who ran SS told Congress repeatedly that payroll taxes would need to be tripled. Instead of rising taxes, Congress raised benefits and expanded coverage to the applause of voters everywhere. Basically, Congress agreed to give dollars to you for dimes - that is why the system has problems today. Let me know what sources you want to see.

Actually, your Gen-X friends are right. In 1983, Congress preserved benefits for people who had paid a faction of the cost, and pushed costs onto non-voters, late-boomers, Gen-Xers, Ms and the like. Now they are able to vote, and the system is in trouble. If you want specifics...

http://www.fixssnow.org/blog/...

www.FixSSNow.Org is one stop shopping for people interested in Social Security reform.

Your plan implies that young people do not consider themselves immortal and there retirement as eons away. Society would end up picking up the slack for these destitute old people anyway so why not keep the system the way it is?

If you take away someone's safety net, they will be forced to create their own. You can't assume people are going to be irresponsible, that's what got us into this mess.

Actually what created the mess was allowing Congress to give to current voters at the expense of non-voters. In the 1950s, Social Security benefits were increased every election year. We increased benefits, we expanded coverage, we created brand new things to give away. This is why the Trust Fund was empty in 1983, and the system had to borrow money to pay scheduled benefits.

YES! people entering the work force now should have the option of opting out. and the government should be forced to honor contributions already made by existing workers.

If young people "Opt-Out", and the government uses general tax dollars to pay existing retirees, how have the young people "opted-out" of anything. All you are doing is switching the pocket from which the money comes.

The fact is that the system contains 20.5 trillion in promises (above the 2.5 trillion dollar Trust Fund). That is more than the system has collected since inception. Seriously how do you expect to 'force' the government to honor the promises of the system?

I should have clicked none of the above, I think it should be voluntary but that if you opt into that then you should have to show that percentage of your income is being invested in some type of retirement savings account or program of your choice.

You can do that on your own w/o the Fed telling you. It is your money.

and I would but other citizens live in the moment and given a choice they will blow the money they should be saving for retirement which when they reach the age where they can no longer work, we will end up having to keep them up by way of tax money either that or have thousands of elderly living on the streets which would make our country look like cruel heartless jerks. so the only way to guarantee we will not end up having to keep up those who dont consider the future is to make sure they are doing it themselves.

So the Nanny State will tell you where to put your money? People are inherently worried about the future. IF there's no one to provide a safety net, they will create their own.

You are aware the country managed to thrive w/o SS for 150+ years?

Actually societies where the elderly were taken care of have existed long before people even heard of a Nanny state. In most cultures taking care of the elderly has always fallen to the youth. Unfortunately now days we are raising a bunch of selfish lazy little twits that would sell their grandma for a few hundred bucks if they thought they could get it or stick her in a nursing home and take everything she worked her whole life for.

Pessimism never gets anyone anywhere. Cynicism perpetuates pessimism. You and people like you are the reason we can't keep our money.

People like me are the reason a lot of people still get to keep some of their money. Instead of focusing on throwing elderly people out in the streets we'd rather some of those fat cat politicians give up a little of their salaries and benefits. We would like see government waste done away with, the majority of welfare programs limited extremely in time and given to those who actually earned them, tax credits like EIC gone, if it were not for people like me, not only would we be giving the shirts off our backs but also a leg and an arm also but I am not going to see my country brought to the low of throwing elderly people and children into the streets.

Getting to keep your money doesn't mean old people get tossed on the streets. People don't have to live off the system. There is such a thing as personal responsibility.

That view is unrealistic, for one people do save their entire lives and still end up not having enough to pay for their care in their later years. People get different disabilities where their savings may end up handled by someone else and those people misuse their funds, the elderly often face mental deterioration where even remembering to pay an electric bill gets forgotten.

If all of the elderly were able mentally and physically your argument might be logical but they are not, if everyone made the same in this country and a person could estimate what their end of years would cost your argument might be logical but non of that is realistic. People retiring today are finding themselves falling short even after saving what they were told was a good amount. Healthcare costs is another problem. If health care was reasonable and based on cost instead of greed you might have an argument but one major illness can totally wipe out a life savings.

You seem to be only thinking about the bums, the people who have never took care of themselves and never will but the elderly population in this country is not only bums, some of them worked longer and harder than the youth in this country ever will.

How will you pay existing beneficiaries : If young people "Opt-Out", and the government uses general tax dollars to pay existing retirees, the money comes from the young people as general taxpayers. The only thing that these young people "opted-out" of is benefits. All you are doing is switching the pocket from which the money comes.

There are a lot of other areas in government spending we could make cuts in to make up the difference.

The shortfall in Social Security according to the Trustees is 20.5 trillion dollars. That is about 5 times the WHOLE budget.

I don't know your age, but I can tell you that younger Americans get a little incensed about the debt that has been left to them. If you cut spending that is great, but younger Americans want that money to go to pay down the debt. Here is what one writer said : "Cut the spending to pay off the debt not the people who created it."

What do you tell that person?

I'll try to put this in a better perspective, I dont advocate the system we have now, let those who have paid in get out exactly what they have paid in, no more no less. Let the younger generation decide for themselves to either opt in or out but if they opt out than they need to have arrangements in place to take care of them once they reach retirement age, I also support raising the retirement age. If even a portion of what Id support could be passed, it would help drastically with any shortfall.

Also I dont want to hear the younger generation whining about social security debt especially when they are the largest sector receiving government benefits in the form of welfare, government backed housing loans, and government grants for education and the largest sector receiving EIC tax refunds. They want help they can give a little in return.

I seriously doubt that young people would see the priority of saving for retirement. Their freedom to opt out would mean someone else might have to support them when they get old.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. It by defintion means that someone else will have to support them when they get old. Social Security for the next 20 years does not invest a penny of what young people pay into it. Social Security's receipts are smaller than its outflows. Every penny in is paid out to someone else who got old.

Tell that to those who paid all that money in over an entire career. Those who paid none would be very much more dependent.

I miss the point about those who paid none. People who don't contribute can't collect unless they are survivors. Technically they are collecting based on the contributions of others.

Paid is a loose term that gets thrown-around a lot. Paid implies a willing buyer and a willing seller. Here you have a willing buyer, and a seller (the future workers who do not have a vote) that is forced into the transaction. Paid is the wrong word.

The fact is that the people who worked in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and into the 70s simply didn't pay what they were taking. That is according to the SSA. Let me know if you want to see the source. These people voted for Congressmen to increase their benefits at the expense of their children. I have no idea how that is 'paying' anything.

The point is that our egalitarian society does not let our people starve or be totally without medical care options. At least it tries. If one has not earned benefits by making lifelong contributions, they simply default to the care of a lesser but taxpayer funded program. What we need is people who appreciate the need to prepare for their own care or who are forced to participate in such a plan rather than be a burden to those who are responsible for themselves.

I am reminded of local ambulance and EMT care, that rely on contributions until funds are insufficient and then the program falls under the tax supported system of the county budget.

Today, we don't let people starve or go without care because we can push the cost onto our children. At some point, that model breaks and does so with frightening consequences.

"What we need is people who appreciate the need to prepare for their own care or who are forced to participate in such a plan rather than be a burden to those who are responsible for themselves."

How do you get there before we go through option 1.

Don't you have to allow examples of what happens when you don't prepare and when no one else is there to take care of your sorry ass? We aren't going to have millions of destitute people living in cardboard boxes and starving to death or dying prematurely, possibly of exposure. Enter option 2, taking up where churches and other private efforts cannot fairly handle the load.