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I too fully recognize that I will never see any money from SS and have adjusted my own retirement savings accordingly. I have always thought of SS as a sort of empty political promise that was never really meant to be carried through anyway. At the time that SS was introduced, the life expectancy of the average American worker was near or lower than the age for SS benefits to kick in. I always saw it as the government saying, "Hey, we know you are not going to make it to 65 anyway, but if you do, we'll kick in some money to help you until you do die at 65 and 1/2." The equivalent today would be, what, 80-85 years of age? The government has only now started to raise the age for SS benefits to kick in and they are doing it very slowly so as to not piss off the seniors (very large voting block).
This hurts me more than you can know, but I agree with Bush on the idea of making SS private. I don't agree, at all, with his idea of sending us into even more massive debt in order to do it. I would like to see the manditory contributions to retirement cut from the pay check just based on the idea of personal liberty. That is, it is my money and I should be allowed to do what I want with it. But I do believe that the majority of Americans need to have someone holding their hand when it comes to retirement savings. As a nation, we are far too involved in the here and now, instant gratification, gimme-gimme, commercialism and not capable of thinking any further down the road than a few months toward a new plasma screen TV or chrome fenders for the SUV. So, I reluctantly support the idea of having some minimum amount deducted from our paychecks to fund into our own retirement savings. I have never liked the idea of paying into a system that is paying my money out to other people right now instead of leaving it to mature for my own retirement.
So, that is my rant for now. I'll check back on this thread later as I am interested to hear the opinions of some of my fellow TFPers.
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