By TRAVIS LITTLE
I'm worried. I just got a letter from the socialist, er, Social Security Administration reassuring me nonchalantly that, by the way, when I reach retirement age, Social Security will have enough funds to pay me 73 percent (yahoo!) of what I was promised in our glorious "contract between the generations". Considering the poor payout
Social Security provides to begin with, about as
much as my MasterCard Incentives program, and considering I could be making 4-5 percent in a CD or 8-11 percent in the stock market with that money, this is unacceptable. It was already silly for me to pay 12.4 percent of my salary into a fund that only returns 1.5 percent interest In 40 years. It is even more unacceptable to be promised just 73 percent of THAT.
Here's a promise for all of you people who're stealing my money: when my generation starts getting elected to public office, this government
ponzi scheme is going to find its way over to history's "unmarked grave of discarded lies."
Democrat John Kerry said, "We must uphold the promise of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson,
Carter, and Clinton and never allow the president and his Republican friends to threaten Social Security by putting it on the Wall Street trading block."
Kerry echoes the whines of his liberal friends who complain that privatizing the system will only make stock traders richer by increasing "administrative costs."
But the truth is that privatizing Social Security will make everyone richer. According to boycottliberalism.com,
"The S&P 500 has returned more than 10 percent over its lifetime. Therefore, if you invested $300 a month in an S&P 500 mutual fund for 40 years, at the end of that time you would have approximately 2 million dollars. "This means you could withdraw almost $200,000 or 10 percent a year and never
exhaust your money. Social Security does not sound so good any longer."
And if you've got $2 million in the bank you can afford to shell out a taaaaad more to "administrative costs", right? Ditwads.
And what about the typical complaint that if we privatize Social Security Americans will spend all their money and have nothing on which to retire?
To that I say, go read the "Little Red Hen" again. This issue should be about rewarding people who take personal responsibility for their own
welfare, not impoverishing us all in the name of equality.
Boycottliberalism.com argues that the poor are better off without Social Security because "The rich invest money in 401K plans. The poor, the clerk at a convenience store or a customer service
representative doesn't have excess funds to invest, and so their only investment vehicle is Social Security, which in reality is just a [low yield] bond fund."
It's not the government's job to save our money for us. We can do that for ourselves, and as the percentages show, we'll do a better job of it than they will.
And, while I have your attention, may I add that retirement age has been moved from 65 to 67. And if you retire any earlier, you can forget about getting all of your money back. Sorry for the inconvenience!
I love how all of the graphics and literature from the Social Security Administration are all so
unemotional and even numbing, in contrast to the feelings evoked in those (like myself) who encounter them and are informed that their money is being stolen, and there's nothing they can do about it. It's kind of charming, actually.
Copyright Brigham Young University 3 Aug 2004
