I Hate Social Security
Anybody who knows anything about my politics knows that I hate social security. I hate it with a fiery passion. And you know something…I believe every working person under 30 should hate it as well. Do you realize how bad it is for us? Here’s the deal, the government takes 12% of your earnings each year. This in turn gives you retirement (also including medicaid and medicare), disability, and spousal benefits. Retirement begins after the age of 65. When social security began in 1935 as part of the New Deal it wasn’t a bad thing but it is no good for us today. Lets do some math using my life. If I were to make an average of only $30,000 a year from age 22 to 65 I will have made $1,290,000. Social Security will have taken $154,800 or about $3,600 each year at its current rate. If I were allowed to have that money and invest it in a Roth IRA making 10% (not difficult to do) I would have $1,730,000 saved for retirement when I turn 65. What would social security give me you ask? If I were to live until age 85, social security would give me a total of about $722,000 for retirement. Yes, a million dollars less. If I don’t live to 85 that number obviously goes down and certainly can’t pass that money along to my children like I could with a Roth IRA. And here is the real kicker folks, because of large amount of boomers about to retire, the government in order to keep the program running at full capacity will need to raise the amount they take from us (currently that 12%) and give us less benefits in return. So yes, I hate social security and I actually liked Bush’s plan to faze it out by offering individual accounts, its not perfect but it is better than what we have. Too bad he got nailed from both sides on it.
If you are interested more on this topic Dick Armey just wrote an article for Fox News and it can be found athttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258763,00.html. Enough of my ranting, I will post a video of a tarantula and a scorpion fighting to the death later.
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007