The Social Security "Fix" of 1983
How many believe that the legislation passed in 1983 raising taxes, base and retirement age from 65 to 67 for those born after 1937 fixed social security? How many believe that all congress did was legislate a patch that cost workers since 1983 $7.67 trillion?
Did you know of the total $8.957 Trillion taxes paid by workers to social security OASI since 1937 that $8.053 Trillion as been paid out in benefits to retirees? 90 cents of every dollar paid into social security has been paid out in benefits.
Baby boomers of not which one of us has retired and drawn an OASI benefit, have paid over $4 Trillion in taxes to OASI. The value of this amount is very close to $9 Trillion! The problem is the OASI trust fund does not hold $9 trillion in US Treasury notes or anything close to this. It has a total value of about $1.82 Trillion as of the end of 2006.
If the "FIX" of 1983 were truly a fix, the trust fund would contain or total over $9 trillion. Our representatives have used Enron Style Accounting to swindle, con and steal our hard-earned money. Mark Souder has been in Congress for 12 years and all he has to say is:
Social Security as a "shell game." He stated, "For people under 30 its probably going to be income based. I am not saying we're going to pass that. It will probably be passed after I am dead." He continued "If you're 40, you might make it through the system. But if you're under 40, and certainly under 30, you had better start planning because if you want to have a decent retirement you’re going to need supplemental funds." Prime Time 39 on 3-12-2004
If you do not speak up now, your representatives are getting ready to "fix" social security again! What is left? Raise taxes, cut benefits, raise retirement age? Pay more for the same benefit? Maybe pay the same for less? Maybe pay more and retire later resulting in less. Anyway you slice it, dice it or cut it, you and your children will pay for their ineptness. The only good thing is that there are over 117 million potential voters under age 46, only 36.5 million over age 62 and less than 40 million between age 46 and 62. If you want to take control of your future and keep congress out of your retirement, I ask for your support in 2008.
Check out my plan.
posted by William Larsen @ 11:21 PM
2 Comments:
William,
Would you kindly share your stats and
input on the other FW blogs too.
Where do you share your input and ideas besides here, just wondering?
Thanks
Where do I get my statistics are from government web sites. You can find my list of reference links at http://www.justsayno.50megs.com/favorite_links.html.
Specifically there are three sites that I deal with for Social Security Old Age Benefits. All sources are from the SSA.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/t4a1Income.html
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/t4a1Outgo.html
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4a1.html
Since 1975 I have attempted to project the cash flow of Social Security OASI. Starting in 1984, it became much easier using personal computers. With the internet, obtaining data on tax rates, population numbers (individuals 0-100, female, male, married, divorced, widowed and single) also eliminates having to project populations, cpi, US Treasury Rates, Wage Growth, etc has made modeling SS-OASI rather simple and straight forward. I use the Social Security Administrations own 1941 to 2080 actual/projection. I have also used the United States Census Bureaus projections and have found no significant in the cash flow projections of for SS-OASI.
The benefit formula is straight forward. This formula makes modeling simple. Your initial benefit is based on your wages earned subjected to SS-OASI taxes, not taxes paid. Past years wages are indexed by the change in the US Average Wage in the year you turn 60 and previous years US Average Wages. In simple terms, if the US average wage increases by 5% this year, those who turn 62, two years from now will see their initial SS-OASI benefit rise by 5%. If the US Wages drop by 5% this year, then their initial SS-OASI benefit will be 5% less. This means as the US average wage changes, so does every future benefit. Knowing the average wage of any given cohort allows the average SS-OASI benefit to be determined to within 1/2 of 1% for that cohort.
http://www.justsayno.50megs.com/math.html
I visit Leos' blog http://blogs.fortwayne.com/opening_arguments/
http://allencountylp.blogspot.com/
I also have visited and participated in many others, but not recently. I wish I had more time. Do you have some recomendations?
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