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Privatized Social Security

I

I'm Supposn

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Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
I'm Supposn said:
Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
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Not enough information.

Explain what you mean by privatization, and how it is supposed to work. Please don't cite a generalization like "how current employer's" do it. Be specific as there are several different methods, and not all are necessarily good. For example, there are those where one must work a certain period of time to be "vested." But if you lose your job prior to that point, you lose all the funds you've already paid in.

Then there are those which go belly up if the employer goes out of business. Again, employees either lose it all or get a small refund from any assets.

The devil is in the details, so what are your suggested "details?"
 
I'm Supposn said:
Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
Click to expand...

SS takes 15% of your lifetime income and gives you back dog food money is you live to collect a penny. In private accounts an average American would retire with estate of 1.4 million. Capitalism made us all rich and then liberals wasted all our money.
 
I'm Supposn said:
Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
Click to expand...

SS takes 15% of your lifetime income and gives you back dog food money is you live to collect a penny. In private accounts an average American would retire with estate of 1.4 million. Capitalism made us all rich and then liberals wasted all our money.
 
Captain Adverse said:
Not enough information.

Explain what you mean by privatization, and how it is supposed to work. Please don't cite a generalization like "how current employer's" do it. Be specific as there are several different methods, and not all are necessarily good. For example, there are those where one must work a certain period of time to be "vested." But if you lose your job prior to that point, you lose all the funds you've already paid in.

Then there are those which go belly up if the employer goes out of business. Again, employees either lose it all or get a small refund from any assets.

The devil is in the details, so what are your suggested "details?"
Click to expand...
Captain Adverse, you can google and obtain descriptions of proposals for creation of individual’s owned social security accounts. Currently, Social security benefits are individual’s entitlements, they do not “own” an individual account.

Currently, employers and employees are equally taxed to fund the Social Security retirement system. Employers and employees do not own or participate in directing any employees' individual account; their are no such existing accounts.
Within the proposals I’ve read, it was not suggested that employers’ participation would entail anything beyond that. Beyond the amounts of employees’ annual earnings, employees proposed accounts would not be affected by employees changing jobs or employers.
Respectfully, Supposn

[Excerpted from
Progress for America - Wikipedia : ”Push for privatized Social Security
After winning re-election in 2004, Bush emphasized changes in Social Security as a major domestic goal of his second term. He called for partial privatization of the system”].
 
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I don't support privatization. I'll take the arrangement that I agreed to when I started working, thanks. If there isn't enough money, raise taxes.
 
I'm Supposn said:
Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
Click to expand...

Over the course of a working life, the benefits accumulate at an amazingly constant rate. The economic cycles are pretty short compared to a normal working life.

In my personal example, the investment experience of a single dollar applied to the amount used by Social Security from my employer and from me in the first year of my employment are impressive.

It would have rolled up to be >$130,000 at the time or retirement. this is just investing in the averages of the DJIA with no exotic gyrations or insider knowledge.

The investment experience of the other 40 plus years would only add to that. The total would have rolled to be a pretty good sum, but the math to figure it out is beyond me.

Let's assume that the each of the other 40 years would accumulate to equal only half of what the first year yielded. That makes the total just shy of about $3 million. the later years were higher income, but shorter investment experience.

Using the standard formula of 5% taken out each year to finance retirement, that would yield about $150,000 per year for me today. SS Payments are significantly below that level.

Also, under a preivatized system, if I died the day before retirement, that "just short of $3 Million" would be distributed to my heirs.

The goals of the Social Security program are noble, but the execution is a wasteful and inefficient system based on poorly conceived notions of short sighted vote grubbers.
 
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code1211 said:
Over the course of a working life, the benefits accumulate at an amazingly constant rate. The economic cycles are pretty short compared to a normal working life. … if I died the day before retirement, that "just short of $3 Million" would be distributed to my heirs.

The goals of the Social Security program are noble, but the execution is a wasteful and inefficient system based on poorly conceived notions of short sighted vote grubbers.
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Code1211, our nation’s economic concern is also for the majority of people and their families’ survivors that do not die before they reach retirement age.
The depression’s years of duration were 1929 – 1941. Most families live from payday to payday. How many lost paydays could your family financially survive if your income were interrupted and the values of your assets declined? Respectfully, Supposn
 
I'm Supposn said:
Code1211, our nation’s economic concern is also for the majority of people and their families’ survivors that do not die before they reach retirement age.
The depression’s years of duration were 1929 – 1941. Most families live from payday to payday. How many lost paydays could your family financially survive if your income were interrupted and the values of your assets declined? Respectfully, Supposn
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thats not issue. issue is libcommie bureaucrats take 15% of your lifetime income ($1.4 million on average) and give you back dog food money if you live long enough to collect it. Do you want $1.4 million estate or dog food money?
 
Helix said:
I don't support privatization. I'll take the arrangement that I agreed to when I started working, thanks. If there isn't enough money, raise taxes.
Click to expand...
yes rip off your kids to pay for your welfare
 
James972 said:
SS takes 15% of your lifetime income and gives you back dog food money is you live to collect a penny. In private accounts an average American would retire with estate of 1.4 million. Capitalism made us all rich and then liberals wasted all our money.
Click to expand...

That 1.4 million would have hefty 14% handling fee subtracted from the gross amount if in private hands...If there is any funds....
 
Moonglow said:
Me neither I just make sure it is deposited in the checking account every month...Then spend it on hookers and blow.
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i just pay in and hope that the assholes don't steal it before i can at least retire for a bit. i'm a below 55 worker, though, so your guess is as good as mine.
 
Helix said:
i just pay in and hope that the assholes don't steal it before i can at least retire for a bit.
Click to expand...

Gee you don't trust the liberal deep state with your life savings??
 
The reason the Bush Admin dropped the idea of privatizing SS was because of the staggering cost, coupled with total rejection by the population. SS is a pay-as-we-go system, where the current work force pays for the current SS beneficiaries. To keep payments streaming to current beneficiaries while the current labor force diverts SS funding to their own personal accounts, the US taxpayer will have to come up with one to two trillion dollars.

Since we've seen that Republicans have no problem with adding trillions to the federal debt, maybe more massive deficits won't be an impediment. But Democrats will never support it, so Republicans would have to win another seven Senate seats and win the House and retain the White House. Pretty unlikely.
 
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Social Security benefits lift more Americans above the poverty line than any other program. Without Social Security, 22.1 million more Americans would be poor, according to analysis using the March 2018 Current Population Survey. That includes 15 million elderly and 1 million children. Social Security provides the majority of income to most elderly Americans. For about half of seniors, it provides at least 50 percent of their income, and for about 1 in 4 seniors, it provides at least 90 percent of income, across multiple surveys and the recent study that matches survey and administrative data.

Women tend to earn less than men, take more time out of the paid workforce, live longer, accumulate less savings, and receive smaller pensions. Social Security brings 9.1 million elderly women out of poverty, as Table 2 shows.

3% of benefits go to young survivors. Like Paul Ryan.
 
I'm Supposn said:
Privatized Social Security:
It would require at least a generation’s duration, and/or substantial federal expense, to privatize our Social Security retirement system. Since Social Security’s enactment, the practice was current employees and employers paying the current monthly benefits.
Any shortfalls must be replaced with federal loans and/or increased taxes, and/or reduction of benefits. (I‘m strongly opposed to reduction of benefits).

Within a privatized system, there’s certain to be incidences of participants’ poor judgement or misfortune. When an individual reaches retirement age and there’s insufficient wealth accumulated within their account, do we propose providing them with Supplemental Security Income? SSI is a public assistance, (i.e. a government administered charity). Even for a generation of employees with excellent judgement, there are business cycles and financial mishaps that are beyond individuals’ control or foresight.

What’s the difference between public assistance for privatized retirement accounts, or for those playing in casinos? Social Security retirement and survivors benefits substantially reduced poverty among our elderly and employees' surviving families.

Respectfully, Supposn
Click to expand...

If you are interested in some numbers, I did a lot of the math Here and Here.


BLUF: the transition would be massively expensive, but, by taxing the private accounts at a flat rate of 50% at the time of death, we can pay it back in a couple of decades.
 
I'm Supposn said:
Code1211, our nation’s economic concern is also for the majority of people and their families’ survivors that do not die before they reach retirement age.
The depression’s years of duration were 1929 – 1941. Most families live from payday to payday. How many lost paydays could your family financially survive if your income were interrupted and the values of your assets declined? Respectfully, Supposn
Click to expand...

I'm retired. Already made it through all of those considerations.

Doesn't change anything I said.

The retirement portion of SS is the lion's share of the expenditures from that program. The share of SS money paid out to all recipients each year is about 25% of total Federal Outlays.

Privatizing the system and moving those other payments to a separate program would be the route to take.

Privatizing the retirement side of it would take ALL of that expense away. When the future retirees retired, they would be harvesting their private funds in monthly installments and paying taxes on them.

It is very likely that the funds paid in taxes from the retirees would support the payments made to others getting pre-retirement benefits.

I had not previously considered this aspect, but this is making more and more sense with every passing thought.

It would still require about 30 years to transition. During that period, more and more retirees would be dying off and more and more would be enjoying a system with increasing privatization.

Right now, I'm getting two payments monthly, one from SS and one from an annuity established from monies from a 401K. The annuity functions like a pension.

Under the transitionary scheme, I suppose a retiree would get three payments: Regular SS, the privatized SS and their personal annuity.

Personal income would not change.

Federal Deficit COULD evaporate if our lying thieves elected to Congress could be somehow restrained from grabbing the extra cash. I guess that's a pipe dream.
 
Code1211, privatizing Social Security retirement would increase our federal government’s net expenses.

[I suppose IRS Current regulations still allow for tax deferred income to be invested in self-directed retirement accounts and there’s tax deductions for employers that choose to contribute to their employees’ accounts?

I suppose these tax reductions have eventually been of been of net detriment to many taxpayers who were tempted by the tax reductions. There are penalties for early withdrawals and it’s not unusual for people to need cash within a current year. Availing themselves of this tax savings may have been of net detriment to aggregate lesser income earners].

Tax deferred retirement accounts are the current available tax provisions for people that have sufficient incomes and confidence in their own abilities to direct their retirement funds.

In addition to the additional federal expenses incurred for during the two generations experiencing the transition between the current and the privatized SS accounts, there will be the ongoing increased federal SSI, (Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries. Due to poor investment decisions or misfortune, the accumulated value of many privatized accounts will be insufficient to support their owners’ retirement.

SSI is operated as a public assistance program to augment Social Security retirement payments. SSI (I believe) is funded by general rather than FICA payroll tax revenues. For people of lesser wealth, privatized SS is a poorer gamble and they’ll be gambling with both their own and the public’s money. Taxes to fund Social Security retirement are of little concern to the wealthy.

Respectfully, Supposn
 
jpn said:
Without Social Security, 22.1 million more Americans would be poor,.
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silly liberal lie of course. Without Social Security an average American could retire with an estate of $1.4 million( 15% of his lifetime income) rather than the dog food money they get from SS if they live long enough to collect a penny.
 
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