Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

pan6467 · 12-16-2004, 07:00 PM

Social Security CAN be there for the rest our lives and our children's lives. What it will take though is a raising of the age from 65 to 72, to have companies allow their workers to take their pensions to another company, and a sliding scale type payment based on income and assets to those who get it (the way it was suppose to be to begin with).

If I make $30,000 a year in retirement from my pension and investments I made in my youth, there is truly no need for me to make the $868/ month they pay out now (that's the max, I believe, it's what my grandmother gets, after Medicare takes out its premiums), especially when there are some who don't even recieve that.

As for spouses being able to collect their deceased spouses SS, it is a necessity in some cases, and if you disallow it, you really take away ANY incentive for a parent to not work yet raise kids (which is a F/T job in itself), because then you are telling the stay at home parent when they get old if their spouse dies they won't get ANY money to live on and that's BS. One of the greatest societal problems we have in this country now is the fact, in most cases, both parents have to work.

DEALING WITH MYTHS ON SS:

It hasn't just been Bush raping SS, other presidents and congresses have also.

They didn't just start raising the retirement benefits age. I believe it started at 55 or 60, then went to 62.

20 some years ago, they were talking about how they saw a huge problem coming with SS and wanted to raise the age from 62 to 72 but settled at 65.

Another massive problem and one the pro-business, pro-free trade, export manufacturing jobs, crush union sector people forget to mention is that the factories and unions had great pensions until the 80's, 90's and now when companies were allowed to rape the pensions. Even Ohio teachers pensions are heavily in debt and may not be there soon because of mis management allowed by the federal government.

Pensions were supposed to be a place where an employee would pay into and buy stock of the company, and into safe low return but high longterm yeild investments (like bonds), however, in the 80's Reagan (with a DEMOCRATIC House) passed laws allowing companies to borrow off pension funds, eventually to the point where you had Enrons, Adelphias, WorldComs, Eastern Airlines and so on totally rape their systems. You also had all these mergers where companies were allowed to take over other companies then rape their pensions. We need to stop allowing this.

We can have a continuance of a great retirement system, but it takes work and laws that hurt the pension plans repealed. Once we rebuild the company pension plans, then SS can return to what it was truly created for and we won't have any problems.

We need to do this real soon though or we will miss our window of oppurtunity.

12-16-2004, 07:00 PM	#35 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	Social Security CAN be there for the rest our lives and our children's lives. What it will take though is a raising of the age from 65 to 72, to have companies allow their workers to take their pensions to another company, and a sliding scale type payment based on income and assets to those who get it (the way it was suppose to be to begin with). If I make $30,000 a year in retirement from my pension and investments I made in my youth, there is truly no need for me to make the $868/ month they pay out now (that's the max, I believe, it's what my grandmother gets, after Medicare takes out its premiums), especially when there are some who don't even recieve that. As for spouses being able to collect their deceased spouses SS, it is a necessity in some cases, and if you disallow it, you really take away ANY incentive for a parent to not work yet raise kids (which is a F/T job in itself), because then you are telling the stay at home parent when they get old if their spouse dies they won't get ANY money to live on and that's BS. One of the greatest societal problems we have in this country now is the fact, in most cases, both parents have to work. DEALING WITH MYTHS ON SS: It hasn't just been Bush raping SS, other presidents and congresses have also. They didn't just start raising the retirement benefits age. I believe it started at 55 or 60, then went to 62. 20 some years ago, they were talking about how they saw a huge problem coming with SS and wanted to raise the age from 62 to 72 but settled at 65. Another massive problem and one the pro-business, pro-free trade, export manufacturing jobs, crush union sector people forget to mention is that the factories and unions had great pensions until the 80's, 90's and now when companies were allowed to rape the pensions. Even Ohio teachers pensions are heavily in debt and may not be there soon because of mis management allowed by the federal government. Pensions were supposed to be a place where an employee would pay into and buy stock of the company, and into safe low return but high longterm yeild investments (like bonds), however, in the 80's Reagan (with a DEMOCRATIC House) passed laws allowing companies to borrow off pension funds, eventually to the point where you had Enrons, Adelphias, WorldComs, Eastern Airlines and so on totally rape their systems. You also had all these mergers where companies were allowed to take over other companies then rape their pensions. We need to stop allowing this. We can have a continuance of a great retirement system, but it takes work and laws that hurt the pension plans repealed. Once we rebuild the company pension plans, then SS can return to what it was truly created for and we won't have any problems. We need to do this real soon though or we will miss our window of oppurtunity. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"