Your Social Security - Did You know?!?

[Bang]

Bang -

I was 22 when I realized that the SS program was a sham. I wanted out. I wanted nothing to do with it.

The difference is, I'm seven years older than you. You seem to be placing the blame on us Baby Boomers. Dude, it's not our fault. I agree that the program will be wiped out - or so diluted that the payments will be virtually meaningless in just a few more years, but blaming us Baby Boomers is wrong. I would blame the idiots before us who organized this whole mess.

Yeah, the X generation is getting screwed, but so are (admittedly to a lesser extent) the Baby boomers. The people who made out are the ones who put this thing together and are drawing off it right now.

Bottom line is, does it friggin' matter, with the inevitable global economic collapse just over the horizon?

It's not a matter of blame, it's a matter of simple numbers. There's more of them than any other generation in history. The system can't sustain them as they retire en massé.

I don't mind ever providing for those in need. Ever. But means testing in my opinion is necessary to even try to make it work, and no one will hear of it. My mom is a prime example. She and her husband are retired on over 70k per year. She doesn't need her SS check, but she'll be damned if she will even consider giving it up.

For anything in this country, and I mean ANY of the major problems that confront us to ever have a hope of working, some things are going to have to be sacrificed. People are going to have to make sacrifices. Some inevitably will make more sacrifices than others, but the idea behind the notion of 'sacrifice' is not just to lose something, but to lose it with the purpose of making something else better.

And frankly, I feel like my entire lifetime of paying into the SS system is nothing but a sacrifice, and for it there will not be a greater good. Not for me or for anyone. It will simply be gone, and there's nothing I can do about it short of emigrate.

It used to be that the willingness to make sacrifices in order to persevere was considered a proud American trait, something that set us apart from everyone else.

No longer. (Or that was a lie, too.)

~Bang

[Mark The Homer]

I agree.

There it is, folks! Two people agreed on something in the Tailgate. If that's not a sign that the world is about to end, I don't know what is.

[jnhay]

Whenever you get an e-mail that blames the Democrats or Republicans for everything, just assume it's lying to you.

[The 12th Commandment]

I'm as dubious as the next guy when it comes to being able to retire on it and it meaning something significant to your income stream. But boy is it going to make my life livable on disability. I have a partial pension too and without that it wouldn't be so rosy but I could still live. And here's the thing, it's going to help me because I made decent money and paid into it. I can compare myself directly with one of my friends who's been disabled since he got shot when he was 18. He gets about $800 a month and I'll get about $2K. He worked intermittently and never made a very high salary while I worked full time the whole time and was in middle management when my health tanked. My point is that there is a rather harsh element of fairness to it (at least on the disability side) that most people probably don't realize.

It's a good thing and we can't let it die. Nor can we let it play on the dangerous side of the street where private pension funds and 401 K's play and get run over. My folks are in prime retirement time and my dad is still working because they haven't recovered from '08 enough to stop. They had to sell their retirement cabin in the mountains due to the irresponsible greed of the private sector. Where's the chain emails complaining about how criminal and indefensible that was? There is a redeeming quality to SS there doesn't seem to be one for the private side (unless you were one the exec who made out). I have little trouble determining who does a better and more responsible job of it.

added: I have a sneaking suspicious that when I post my personal experiences with this stuff people might not be replying due to some sense of propriety. That, to me, is much more insulting than any argument that what I'm to get isn't appropriate or fair or maybe fiscally responsible. Hell it might even be viewed by some as the evil face of socialism, I'd love to hear someone make that argument. Maybe I'm just being paranoid but...