The reality may be that, in order to keep transferring wealth upwards in the overall economy, middle/working class retirement as we know it must cease to exist.

“Traditional working place pensions are becoming less common”

Traditional working place pensions are not common at all and haven’t been for years. Don’t play into right wing product positioning.

Growing Number of Americans Expect to Rely Mostly on Social Security

Then they better not vote for Obama.

Uh oh. Time for the Koch-paid sock puppet trolls to swing by to condescendingly lecture us DFHs for being insanely LAZY slackers with our hands out expecting to suck off the govt tittie.

How DARE citizens, you know, have the nerve to expect rely on the Soc Sec insurance program for our retirements??? Despite the fact that we paid into Soc Sec after working hard all of our lives, we have a hell of a nerve to expect to get our money back.

Lazy! Slacker! Commie! Socialist! yadda yadda

Lather, rinse, repeat…

Given the current state of the economy nobody expects job creation let alone wages to recover for years SS might have to be give people more money because homes and stocks are not giving people the return they need.
White voters tend to collect more SS because African Americans die sooner and illegal Hispanics don’t collect SS.
White women live longer than White men they need SS more because they will be more likely to outlive their home and stock nest egg.

Yep, I was disappointed the way the discussion got de-railed last week.

We can’t privatize SS in this environment. But if we don’t throw SS cash into the Stock market the market will crash sooner rather than later. A wave of SS cash would cause a stock bubble everyone in the 1% would borrow on margin ahead of time in the market then sell a few years later ahead of the bubble’s collapse while we would be stuck with stocks as the bubble bursts.
But in order to privatize SS you first need a good market where people are bragging about their returns even then Bush had all that and he failed.

I had to leave. I’m DONE with being condescended to by twits.

You made some reasonable points, although I didn’t agree with all of them. But that’s fine. Differing viewpoints are fine, esp if offered graciously.

People work hard to put their hard-earned money into Soc Sec. Simply lecturing citizens that they are idiots or miscreants or welfare slackers for expecting to get their money back is beyond the pale. Bah humbug.

There was a time when Wall ST wasn’t quite the casino that it has become. Possibly if this was still the case – which it most emphatically is not the case – THEN it *might* make some sense to invest perhaps a portion of Soc Sec funds into Wall ST.

But that’s not the case. Wall ST is a casino. The end.

If I *choose* to invest some of my money in a casino, then I do so with eyes wide open to the risk, the potential benefits, etc.

The main reason why citizens want Soc Sec is that it is *safe.* We get a certain return, and we don’t have to consider our options, hire financial advisors, and so on.

It’s really one plus one = two.

Pensions – whether in the private or public sector – are increasingly thin on the ground, tend to pay out less, and most often the company or public sector org no longer provides health care benefits in retirement.

Citizens need a safe harbor. That is what Soc Sec & Medicare are for.

Better not vote for Romney either.

Uh-oh. That’s a problem!

We Texans are nothing if not “gracious”. Thank you for noticing.

But that’s not the case. Wall ST is a casino. The end.

—-
Wall St. is a “rigged” casino. There, fixed it.

Romney will have a harder time dismantling the social safety net than Obama will. Obama would have done it already with his “Grand Bargain” but we were saved by the Tea Party’s intransigence. I bet that won’t happen again.

Sorry NCG have to disagree. You are being redundant.

They don’t say “the house always wins” for nothin’!

Thanks,

I was a pretty average American a few years ago in that I didn’t care to know much about SS. Then I started coming to FDL. Some of the vague claims didn’t seem credible so I started looking into it, and I’ve learned a lot.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with my opinions, so instead I (usually) try to post only quoted facts from the SS Admin.

Then “founding father” comes along and argues his right-wing opinions and everyone jumps in their bunker and no one listens to any opposing view.

Oh, well.

I really don’t see the concern or outrage in suggesting alternatives to the current program which this article clearly demonstrates has significant shortcomings. I think if we all opened our minds a bit we could find a better solution than relying on the current program which was created almost 80 years ago.

Created almost 80 years ago, but tinkered with hundreds of times since, including earlier this year with the extension of the 2% tax holiday.

We can debate alternatives or changes to the program, but “it’s my opinion” that an opt out is a non-starter. Too many of the “wrong” people would opt out.

And not only is it unlikely that things like ending the job outsourcing needed to bring about independence from subsistence while on Social Security, then there is the whole situation of how lower income go bankrupt when they get sick.

My household lost our retirement savings to our need to use it when M. was ill. Fifty five K down the drain. And over 700,000 other households went bankrupt due to medical problems during the same year we did.

The Mitt Romney Care “Health Care reform” that was brought about in 2009 doesn’t change much of anything for those of us who are older. The fact that the “reform” forces older Americans to pay over $ 1,000 a month for insurance guarantees that most of us forego insurance.

Although we have rebuilt our lives since the bankruptcy, we still would be in big trouble should one of us get sick. And this time, we wouldn’t have any funds available to help us see specialists and alt medical practitioners should the local hospital misdiagnose and mis-treat us.

An opt out could be as simple as a move to private accounts that people are able to watch day to day with greater investment options. This improves both transparency and flexibility and is likely to result in far better returns than currently under the SS program. Filling up the SS trust with treasuries yielding 2% is not benefiting anyone.

Here’s an argument I’ve made before. Obama has effectively provided all working Americans a 15% opt out for the last year and a half. Reducing the employee side payroll tax by 2%. What percentage of Americans would you say invested that money in retirement accounts? I imagine lots of people with disposable income did, but they’re not the ones who will need SS.

And when poorer folks get old and don’t have enough to live on, your answer is let them rot in the streets. No thanks. I’ll pay into a crappy system during my working days rather than have a crappy world to live in later.

Thank you, Alan. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Not sure what’s not clear about the situation that you just described. Well said.

wbgonne we will get the same from Romney so we are between a rock and a hard place.

What would have happened had that 2% been invested into a private account? The people you worry about would not have access to the cash to spend on consumer goods. Rather it would be in a private savings account similar to a 401k or IRA. Its a better alternative to the sub par returns currently being generated by the SS trust and allows better transparency and control while still maintaining the social safety net you crave.

My co-worker has been on the job for 35 years. She had a 401k like the one you describe and when the stock market fell she lost so much that she cannot retire now . Got any other ideas?

The real crises in the system is that after taking the surpluses over the years and issuing bonds, repugs do not want to make good on those bonds by raising taxes, if necessary (and it is necessary to raise taxes). If they succeed, then the value of any US Treasury bond would be worthless because if you reneg on the obligation to your own people (the taxpayers) what foreign nation would not think you would reneg on them as well?

I have been on SS since 2004 (40 months early). The savings and loan debacle of the 1980s took my 401k and massive medical bills took care of the rest of our savings in the 1998-2000 time period. Still, I was fortunate to have earned a decent living over the years which allows a decent SS income for my wife and I (she gets 50% of my FRA benefit because it is more than the FRA SS income on her own account).

It’s worse than it looks here. First, because the younger people are the more the overestimate how much they will be able to amass. And second, because so many people have been conned into thinking Social Security won’t be there for them.

The number of people who will rely mostly on Social Security is much greater than the number of people who THINK they will rely on it.

funny the way the market has almost completely rebounded since the ’08 crash. If he/she was planning on retiring in 08 or 09 it was probably not wise to have all her assets tied up in the stock market. Its called diversification. I don’t understand why you jump to the conclusion that private accounts require all assets to by tied to high risk securities. No reason treasuries couldn’t be an option in a private account. They are in my 401k and IRA. It sounds like you co-worker was the victim of some poor decision making. Perhaps better education would have been the answer in that isolated instance.

From my four-year-old post from the last time the Social Security privatizers were on the march:

The amount of bullcrap the privatizers have slung over the years is amazing. Apparently their new trick is to conflate Medicare (which is in trouble — that’s why the privatizers want nothing to do with it) with Social Security (which is not).
Why is Social Security safe? Because the sky-is-falling projections used by the Trustees are based on unrealistically gloomy economic forecasts (less than 2% per year forever), as if we were going into a permanent recession or depression. The reality is that even with growth that averages below-par — 2.7% — Social Security never runs out of money. Ever.
But get this: In order to convince Americans to destroy Social Security and hand their pensions over to the brokerage firms, the privatizers tout phenomenal rates of return on stock-market-based accounts of as much as 7% per year. These rates are possible only if the economy is growing at 1998-peak-boom-year levels every single year to the end of time. So the privatizers aren’t just arguing Permanent Recession — they’re also arguing Permanent Boom. At the same time!