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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-14-2005, 09:01 PM   #41
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Re: retirement trends

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What I want my health insurance to do is take care of me if I am really banged up, have a serious heart attack or stroke, kidney disease, etc. If I am feeling depressed, I can find my own way with or without help. If I want help, I will be happy to pay for myself.
That's because you are strong-minded and understand that if you don't pick yourself up on your own, nobody else can.

However, there are too many mental cases out there that are weak-minded and just can't figure out how to help themselves. These people turn to booze and drugs that are advertised to them everyday on the evening news. I hate to pay for these people too and I wish they just had mental-case insurance so I wouldn't have to pay for something I know I will never use.

Remember what the Godfather said to a depressed Johnny Fontane when he couldn't get the movie part he needed to make him a star?
http://www.jgeoff.com/godfather/gf1/actman.wav
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-14-2005, 09:04 PM   #42
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Re: retirement trends

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Mikey, If you're feeling depressed, you'll probably be unhappy to pay. MJ
Yeah, come to think of it I probably would be. I guess by definition a depressed person isn't happy to do anything.

Mikey
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 02:23 AM   #43
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Re: retirement trends

I love the Godfather films. Have a boxed set of all 3.
Didn't check the link but I think Vito said "don't cry like a
woman...be a man!" Something like that.

BTW, isn't a "neo-con" a one-time lib who converted?
That was always my understanding.

Now, as to government programs in general. I have
already confessed (several times) that without SS and
Medicare my retirement would be in deep doo-doo.
In general, I prefer the government to be as small and
unintrusive as possible. They are not, do not and will not
follow that line. In fact, government (all levels) constantly is more intrusive, larger and more stifling,
in perpetuity. Therefore, I will take all I can get.
If the pigs would never leave me alone, there is no
immorality in dining on pork at this time in my life.
It's almost poetic justice.

JG
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 07:01 AM   #44
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Re: retirement trends

I did some very crude excel numbers on what the money a typical person pays into social security from age 20 to age 62 would be worth at that point. With interest, I'm getting low seven figures! If you bought an annuity for that amount, you get 5-6 grand joint survivor a month. I could be way off, but dang, I don't think ss checks are anywhere near that!

-o.k., wait, after factoring inflation, it's worth 2300 in today's dollars.....
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 07:09 AM   #45
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Re: retirement trends

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I did some very crude excel numbers on what the money a typical person pays into social security from age 20 to age 62 would be worth at that point. *With interest, I'm getting low seven figures!
Have you made sure to either set the contributions to historical levels or to take inflation into account? If you work it out for someone today taking SS you would have to use the contribution amounts of the past. If you are working it out for someone who's 20 now then you have to make sure that you use inflation to reduce the value of current contributions. I think that a "crude" spreadsheet will miss this very important factor.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 09:02 AM   #46
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Re: retirement trends

Couldn't correct my post in time, caught me, Hyperborea!
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 09:21 AM   #47
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Re: retirement trends

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Just to get this absolutely straight: *You (and Galt and xprinter and Helen and ...) believe it's wrong to commit robbery. *You condemn it. *However, when a person is robbed, they then have your blanket permission to rob others.

What are your addresses? *I'll send some robbery victims over. *Be sure to let them help themselves to anything they like. *Your principles could hardly have you do otherwise.

Of course, I may have misunderstood y'all's principles. *Mebbe they're more along the lines of "What's mine is mine and some of what's yours is mine too." *That's especially ironic for a group with a member who claims the name John Galt.
Holy crap, how does collecting social security equate to commiting robbery ? * This is the system I've been paying into for years and years, yet somehow when I start to collect this money at age 62 I'm commiting robbery ? *

I'd really like to debate this with you, but I am so confused on where you are coming from that I really can not.

-helen
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 09:39 AM   #48
 
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Re: retirement trends

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I don't have any problem with Medicare .... been
using it for 5 years with my company provided
insurance as secondary. Don't know anybody in
my age group who would give it up, Democrat or
Republican. How does that make me a liberal?
SS and Medicare are large government programs designed to solve social problems -- financial security and health care for the elderly. Generally conservates are opposed to large governement programs to solve these kinds of problems. Expanding Medicare to cover everyone isn't consisent with conservative ideology. I find it interesting that the conservates and 'right-wingers' here support these programs. Is it only because you are the beneficiaries? You're all certainly entitled to the benefits that you paid for. I'm just surprised that you support 'the programs' in the long run.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 10:43 AM   #49
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Re: retirement trends

Speaking of stealing from Social Security:

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/op...ists/42486.htm

"Every year, far more gets paid into Social Security than the program pays out. But Congress simply spends it all — on top of what's usually reported as "the deficit."

Over the past 15 years, those raids — money paid into Social Security, but spent on other government programs — have totaled more than half a trillion dollars.

As former Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacoca once declared, any CEO who tried this with a private firm's pension fund would be thrown in jail. "

-helen
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 10:55 AM   #50
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Re: retirement trends

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Holy crap, how does collecting social security equate to commiting robbery ? This is the system I've been paying into for years and years, yet somehow when I start to collect this money at age 62 I'm commiting robbery ?

I'd really like to debate this with you, but I am so confused on where you are coming from that I really can not.

-helen
Ditto!
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 10:57 AM   #51
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Re: retirement trends

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Holy crap, how does collecting social security equate to commiting robbery ? This is the system I've been paying into for years and years, yet somehow when I start to collect this money at age 62 I'm commiting robbery ?

I'd really like to debate this with you, but I am so confused on where you are coming from that I really can not.
I apologize, Helen. I mistook you for someone who was complaining about having to pay into Social Security. Your previous message in no way implied that and I am sorry to have lumped you in with the rest.

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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 11:02 AM   #52
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Re: retirement trends

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Ditto!
Jeff
Ah, Jeff. If only it were as easy to apologize given what you wrote ...
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If we have all contributed to this program why should we not take our money if we are conservatives. If on the other hand we could have opted out of this ponzi scheme in the first place most of us would have.
That is, you know it's a fraud - else why call it a ponzi scheme? - and, because you are now on the receiving end, you're perfectly content to stick it to your fellows.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 11:12 AM   #53
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Re: retirement trends

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Couldn't correct my post in time, caught me, Hyperborea!
Actually, another big factor that isn't counted in simple calculations is the disability and survivor insurance components. That will reduce the retirement benefit as some of the funds go to that.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 12:08 PM   #54
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Re: retirement trends

NFS I also wrote
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If only we had a choice. Our wonderful government forces (with high taxation) us to rely on their programs.
As stated by others if we could have invested our money ourselves instead of being forced into a forced government retirement program, we would be considerably better off. At my age 50, my wife and I could retire in comfort. Instead we must wait to get our pittance from the government largess.
Jeff
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 12:52 PM   #55
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Re: retirement trends

We're guilty of painting our skills and abilities across others. This is a big problem in a lot of discussions where you might say "I'm a reasonable and well balanced person and believe I should be able to own/have/do xyz...so everyone should". With the problem there being not everyone is as reasonable and well balanced as you are.

Without social security we'd have a lot of old folks working well past their ability to do so in order to eat, and a huge elderly class in deep poverty. Simply because people in general are inherently unable to plan past the end of their noses. As ER's who have the special gene that allowed us to figure out how to put our own money away, its natural that we feel that if we could only have had more money to put away, the better. From that, transference to the rest of the population that they'd have done the same.

You know, the same 'rest of the population' thats got 2 people living in a 4000 square foot house with 4 cars, 25k in credit card debt, 500k in mortgage debt, 150k in car debt, with next to nothing set aside for their retirement.

And yep, conservatives dont like these sorts of programs at all. Its 'paddle your own canoe'...err...kayak.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 05:18 PM   #56
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Re: retirement trends

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Actually, another big factor that isn't counted in simple calculations is the disability and survivor insurance components. That will reduce the retirement benefit as some of the funds go to that.

Yes....yes, missed that too. O.K., it's official, that was a lame calculation. I am humbly chastened
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-15-2005, 07:44 PM   #57
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Re: retirement trends

TH I see your point.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-16-2005, 04:12 AM   #58
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Re: retirement trends

It seems like most of us here--left or right or center--support having social security and medicare. Is it not a small step to extend medicare (or some variation) to all, not just the elderly? To appeal to the conservatives, it would help small businesses that restrict their hiring in part because of insurance costs or the inability to obtain insurance for their group. It would promote hiring of older workers because the employer wouldn't have the worry that the older worker would result in higher health insurance costs.
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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-16-2005, 06:01 AM   #59
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Re: retirement trends

I agree with Martha and perhaps go one step beyond her.

In an advanced industrial state, one of the functions of government is to ensure that its people have access to at least a minimal level of medical care and a minimal "social safety net" for their old age. Western Europe is clearly ahead of us in this regard, and yes, they're economy does not function as well as ours, but people seems to enjoy their lives a lot more. I think that is in part because they don't have to worry about health care or having to eat cat food in old age -- and those six weeks vacations to start with are a boon too.

Politically, I'm so middle-of-the-road that it's boring, but at some point, I think we have to realize that people do matter. (Meanwhile, not trusting the government, I've been a good little capitalist and accumulated enough to live well once I do FIRE - and I'm really looking forward to that day.)

Best wishes to all.

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Re: retirement trends
Old 03-16-2005, 06:36 AM   #60
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Re: retirement trends

As much as we enjoy slamming our officials in Washington, our government does reflect our values. What works in Europe, I believe, would not work here, at least not yet. Europeans live in smaller homes, often don't own more than one car, and spend lots of time in public areas (Parks, resturants etc.) with their families. The sense of "one big community" etc. is much stronger there. Here in America, we want our ranch estate, even if it's on 1/8 acre, with 8 foot fences all around. We drive 50k cars in mind numbing traffic and skip vacations for years, meanwhile Euro's take 8 week vacations in their 3 cylinder roller skates. Until the things we value change, I don't see a major change in our safety net.
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