Nope. I’m all for SS, just think it needs to be paid for instead of the money being loaned out to cover the deficit. We were on the right path but then borrowed all the money. I also think our kids should have some choice on how to have their money invested but that would have to be done very carefully.
Also in favor of company pensions but put in a lock box and transferable from employer to employer but fully funded and not able to be raided by the Harvard MBAs.
ACA as it stands is abhorrent. Aspects like guaranteed insurability though are good steps. I just cancelled my group Blue Cross plan for $270 a month in favor of a comparable Blue Cross plan for $109 plus a $15 drug plan. Thats without the help of ACA but of course with the help of Medicare. These types of plans should be available to our kids instead of the high ACA rates and extreme deductibles. We can do much better than this. The ACA has promoted part time jobs instead of full time and discouraged company provided health care which is a step back.
Back to cars. I just read that the price of gas in Venezuela is 18 cents a gallon. I haven’t seen it that low here since 1967 during a gas war. I could fill my VW for $2.
@Bing
Great to hear you about SS. Apologize for getting off track but, a good friend whose wife had a stroke has very high medical costs. She was a doctor and the primary bread winner being younger then he. He told me they had a meeting with her provider and a rep from the hospital and primary care. He was worried that his coverage would be dropped or at least adjusted to custodial care and they would have to start dipping into their savings and ultimatly take out loans on his retirement income to cover the ongoing medical costs.
The next day he sounded so relieved. They told him that just wanted to change doctors, perhaps go to a more advance treatment center and try another approach to get better results they thought they should get. He was relieved. He wondered why it was different then his wife had experienced with insurance companies when she worked with her patients. I just said to him…ACA. They operate on different rules. These rules will up the cost a little for some…but you will have guranteed insurance coverage. I don’t know what the solution is. We may not like the compromises thrown in there, but it’s a work in progress that saves lives and the majority of private bankruptcies. We can do better then this…well, let’s do it. We should Come up with better ideas on both sides and pass the legislation and not just the rediculous, defeat it with no alternative. It has begun to save lots of lives.
I am neutral in just raising taxes on gasoline. I don’t know enough about the effects on the economy in the costs on other goods. Everything has a ripple effect and I am too dumb to see it now. IMho, it should be tied to the overall efficiency. I like you, don’t want to just throw additional money in until I feel comfortable about where it goes. Pay roll taxes I get…general fund taxes where the infrastruture and more weapons are bought from and each has to fight for a peice of the pie…I don’t. You can’t just say the additional taxes go for infrastructure when by definiton from the CBO, it’s more then roads and bridges and more then just federal oversight.
I don’t see what’s wrong with ACA. It is a national version of Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts universal health care, and got good reviews from a conservative think tank; I think it was the Heritage Foundation. Without ACA, the poor will go back to the emergency room for medical care, at about 10 times the cost of seeing a doctor. We will pay for it no matter what, so we might as well pay less for care of the poor. That will leave us more money for our hobbies, like cars.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with ACA. It is a national version of Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts universal health care, and got good reviews from a conservative think tank; I think it was the Heritage Foundation.”
+1
Actually, the concept behind “Romneycare” in MA–which is 98% identical to The ACA–was originally formulated by the folks at The Heritage Foundation, and the idea was pushed hard by Newt Gingrich. It was a great idea then. However, once it was advocated by somebody of the other party, it became evil. Imagine that…
Mitt Romney is probably a decent sort, but he was never able to explain why The ACA is evil when it was essentially copied from the plan that he advocated and put into effect in MA.
And, just to keep this on an automotive theme–Mitt’s wife drives two Cadillacs!
I suppose that she doesn’t drive them simultaneously, however.
well like car insurance, I believe the ACA un necessarily enriches a fairly useless middleman.
I say useless because we already have a mechanism in place that makes insurance companies un necessary.
wage attachment.
if patients would agree to a voluntary garnishment, at what ever percentage we deem fair, of income and whatever govt benefits they receive , and have that sent straight to their provider, we could eliminate the profiting middleman.
the patient would receive affordable care and the doctor would have a guaranteed income stream well into retirement, even until death probably.
I have time and know math. I have a masters in it...show me YOUR math.....10,000 to 1 hmmm.
Are you freakin’ kidding me?!? You ask me to show “the math” behind how much I PERSONALLY PREFER one outcome to another?
Okaaaay...upon further review, I'd prefer being able to invest my SS money in a mutual fund, over the current setup, by a 4,209.8737:1 ratio, with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.427:1. Proof to follow.
What I CAN give you: Suppose a person with a 40-year working span. He starts putting money into a S+P 500 index fund, 40 years ago, and retires today. The S+P 500 was at 62.34 then; it’s at 2002.33 now. That’s a 32:1 ROI over the rolling 40-year period. (By comparison, your own stats show SS paying out a piddling 1.21:1…which is a pretty certain downer in constant-dollars.)
32:1…or less than 3:2…it’s a no-brainer! Go ahead–show me ANY cherry-picked 40-year period in which the S+P underperforms Social Security. I’ll bet you a warm 6-pack you cannot do it! The mere fact that a (supposed) mathematician cannot comprehend the miracle of compounding interest makes me doubt your credentials.
Remember what they said about Manhattan: sold for $22 in trinkets…and if invested at 10% compounding interest…the indians could buy it back today, with money left over! Einstein called compounding interest “the eighth wonder of the world”; Einstein was right.
so…, sell me your truck for 50 bucks and you ll be rich in 300 yrs.
seriously, if all the money was left in the social security fund, accumulating interest, it would have remained solvent for ever. instead it was spent on other things.
@meanjoe75fan
You keep jumping over the main difference. All your numbers are for amounts invested securely over the same number of years and the growth rate IS substantially less then the average return of a balance portfolio that is well managed. That does not happen with the majority of low and those with less then median income. It did not happen with my dad with with a middle income and a large family and it does not happen now. Retirement funds are at the discretion of the market. Retirement during and after a recession and you can retire in poverty. Fail to keep your contributions consistent and you fall way behind your projected comparisons. Your figures are near ideal conditions.
Amercicans are forced to live during varying times of employment when in this day and age, means employment and opportunity changes. You may not get the distinction if you worked consistently for many years with the same employer, but those who are less fortunate will never approach the returns you have manufactured for yourself. Secondly, full dependence on the stock market has never been recomended by any broker I have worked with for those various reasons but mostly this. SS is a stabile entity like any income insurance is, and always cost a little more, in this case, the security means lower returns and is recomended even if when owning a business, you have some choice.
it is guranteed for those who will never have the investment capital as you do. You NEED at least three retirement incomes to live comfortably. Anyone who tells you anything else is either a millionaire, a thief or just doesn’t know. SS is preferred by the vast majority who enrolled in it, and if you read the factual returns for the contributions remained, is a great deal for those who can never make the contributions necessary in the stock market. I have fallen prey to the Social security off set penalty which was an attempt to get more people enrolled in private retirement by an administration that did not give a poop for the security of my retirement. Even after earning all my qualifying quarters, I am forced to take a reduction in real SS income by 60% plus lost four years of my regular retirement contributions. That my friend is what happens when you privatize retirement. Others get your cut.
Sorry. It’s the same as privatizing healthcare. Your returns are no where near after you pay your income tax on your amounts when you take them out and pay the brokers to manage your accounts. The figures in actual amounts favor the security of SS for a base. Now scream. You earned it. Btw, it’s still not 10000 to 1, but much less and hyperboly does not make you right. I doubt your credentials when you can’t even reach your own standards. If you bothered to read my references, they do make the point of deminished returns for SS as an acceptable trade off for security.
As long as people who try to balance the federal budget, regulate the stock market and hold bankers responsible for their actions, I might go along with you. Unfortunately, the same people who promote your stock market retirement only faux approach, also don’t want to balance the federal budget, want to deregulate Wall Street and continue to bail out bankers, and it makes no sense. Read the recent budget proposal !
well, then I’ll take that warm 6-pack. Keystone Ice is my wretched beer of choice!
Over four decades, market ups and downs fade into background noise. A true mathematician would know that increased iterations reduce the importance of random vairation per the square root of # of tries. Similar to the gambling house tolerating gamblers’ winning streaks because they play for the “long run”; paying in over 4 decades, and out over 2, makes short-run fluctuations (almost) meaningless. That’s why I said–pick ANY rolling 40-year period (since the inception of Social Security) in which SS has out-performed the stock market. It can’t be done!
On one hand, lefties claim capitalists make “immorally large” profits; OTOH, capital investment is “too meager to retire on.” You can"t have it both ways, dag!
“[SS] is a great deal for those who can never make the contributions necessary in the stock market.”
Don’t you mean for those who refuse to save for their own retirement? I agree most people must be forced to save via federal taxation. The welfare nanny state is here to stay. That horse is out of the barn, over the hill, and in the next county…
@wesw, what about people with no income? One serious illness or accident will put most people, including middle income people, in debt forever. They will never be out from under their problems. It would be a boon to bankruptcy lawyers, representing the poor that can’t pay the bills. So you and I end up paying anyway, including the lawyers fees. I don’t like that concept, and i doubt that you do either.
I have to disagree. A good mathematician knows that growth is a variable over time and cannot be dependent upon to have the same rate of change at any particular point. Calculus shows a different slope of a tangent line at every point on a graph used to illustrate this change in rate. People are human beings with variable existence when at times, continuity is the only thing that separates them from proverty. You have only to look at rates of change resented by these slopes of tangent lines as they became zero to negative during recessions and depressions to know that the individuals un fortunate to live into old age at that time suffered dearly.
The math is a demonstrative way of representing this fact. SS was initiated to moderate the existence of those who did live older during bad economic times. You can always tell when times are good, because people come out of the wood work and argue against SS and medicare. NO ONE ever won an election arguing agaisnt social programs during the the eight years around the minima of the graph of the last depression or any recession since including the last.
Most people with memory will not adopt a full privatization of their retirement. Even if they don’t know the math, they will remember the pain. People are willing to sacrifice the ability to buy a Rolls Royce and then fall into poverty for the ability to own a Chevy…continuously. Because, continuity in life, as in a math model has defining principals that promote well being and understanding. . Discontinuity, as in math, needs constant readjustment and change of rules, always at the expense of uniformed and less able to adjust. It will be at the expense of you and I. I think we are both at that age.
what s the difference between paying an insurance company forever and paying a doctor forever?
one provides a service, the other makes it more expensive. I think we could find it in our hearts to provide the very few people with no income at all medical service
