Reply to High earners/savers: How do you feel about social security?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This happens on every thread about SS.  People think they have paid into some kind of savings account and they are owed the money back.  THAT'S NOT HOW SS WORKS.

The money that current workers pay in, supports current retirees (/disabled people).  Your Social Security checks will be coming out of the deductions from paychecks of the people who are still working/paying in when you retire.  There's not a big pile of money that you personally contributed to, tied to your SSN, waiting around 35 years for you to start withdrawing from it.

The first generation of people to receive Social Security never paid a dime into it.  It's not a return on investment, it's a social program funded by current workers to keep old people from living in poverty.[/quote]

This, plus all the people who think it would be fine to get rid of social security altogether for high earners since "they don't need it" and don't understand the whole point of the program is keep us from having millions of destitute elderly people in this country which would become a totally untenable situation very quickly. Social security is how most elderly people have homes and can feed themselves even after they are too old to work full time. We have to have some kind of plan for these folks, it's not like they just disappear after 65. Social Security and Medicare are what keep the US from being a total dystopia.

Also our taxes constantly pay for things we don't want. I don't want the war in Iran and didn't want the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq either, and yet the vast majority of my tax dollars over the 30 years I've been working have gone to pay for those wars. The idea that some tiny fraction of my taxes go to keep elderly people from being put out on the street to die (and coming with the promise that when I am old, if something were to happen to ruin me financially, I too would get some minimal income to keep me from becoming homeless or starving to death) is really not a source of upset for me.

Interesting how many supposedly high earners don't understand these basic notions.[/quote]

You chastise other people for not knowing basic things and then you say this?

"I don't want the war in Iran and didn't want the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq either, and yet the vast majority of my tax dollars over the 30 years I've been working have gone to pay for those wars."

We spend more every year on social security than the entire defense budget and the wars, let alone Medicare.[/quote]

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