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View Poll Results: Can you retire without social security?
I count on some social security in my household, or I would not be able to retire as planned. 78 38.42%
I have sufficient assets/income, and could/can retire without any social security in our/my budget. 125 61.58%
Voters: 203. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 01-14-2011, 01:30 PM   #161
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I remember being 21 years old in my first Megacorp job and having people tell me that SS would be gone by the time I retired. That was 42 years ago and it hasn't happened yet. I get minimal SS due to my CSRS pension but it goes into a savings account and I haven't needed it yet.
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Old 01-14-2011, 01:34 PM   #162
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Originally Posted by GregLee View Post
In my view, the future of the SS system is as secure as the credit of the US government.
You said it. In the news today:

Quote:
Two major credit ratings agencies warned Thursday that the United States might tarnish its triple-A credit rating if its national debt kept growing.
It was not the first time the agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, warned that the nation’s gilt-edged rating might fall into jeopardy.
But the two statements, made within hours of each other, were seized on by deficit hawks as further evidence that the government must reduce spending and debt to avert disaster.
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Old 01-14-2011, 02:19 PM   #163
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I don't want a "sovereign wealth fund" here in the US, it would just create the next financial meltdown/bailout/ finger-pointing/hand-wringing/ "no one saw it coming" / "it is all the previous generations' fault" situation; albeit on a potentially unrecoverable scale.
Here's a hint, we already have a couple of them
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Old 01-14-2011, 02:52 PM   #164
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Here's a hint, we already have a couple of them
So, create another?
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Old 01-15-2011, 08:01 AM   #165
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Just thinking at this point ...but here are my initial musings:

SS1 would be our current system. Those already retired and in the system keep collecting based on the benefit formulas they paid into and are (in my mind ) owed.

SS2 would be the new system, whatever it looks like (new and improved with higher premiums, lower payouts, better payouts, lower premiums, a prize in every box- we don't know and can only speculate and argue about what it should look like at this point) People just entering the workforce would be covered under SS2.

Those of us caught in the middle (I'm 53 for example) would collect a pro-rated benefit based on their years of eligibility in either system. (in my case ~35 years of SS1 and ~12 years of SS2)

Seems like a good way to balance past promises with future realities. Similar programs are working with public and private pension plans, union contracts, etc.

YMMV.
I think that if you take this a little further you'll discover there's a shortage of dollars. To take the simplest example, suppose SS2 works like this "You pay the same tax rate, but 100% of your taxes go into your individual account". In your case, you'd expect to retire with 35/49 of your SS1 benefit, plus any income you can generate from your individual account.

That sounds good until you try to find the person who's paying taxes into SS1 15 years from now to fund your substantial SS1 benefit. All the active workers' taxes are going into their individual accounts.

We'd all like to believe there is some other structure for SS2 that will make this work, it's just a matter of fiddling with the variables. Lots of people have tried, AFAIK, nobody has succeeded.
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Old 01-15-2011, 08:08 AM   #166
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I've worked with pension plans for almost 15 years now, I'm well aware of how they run.

There is no reason the US couldn't establish something similar to a sovereign wealth fund
I can understand why people would be concerned about the politics of a gov't owned pile of private investments, but that's a second level issue to me.

The first issue is finding the money to buy those investments. If your work with private plans includes calculating an APO, you should be good enough with math to take a run at the numbers.

Every example I've seen of converting SS into a pre-funded (at least nominally pre-funded) plan runs out of money. Some generation ends up paying for two retirements (their parents and their own), or some generation doesn't get any retirement benefits at all, or two generations each get half the bad results, etc.

Have you looked at the numbers?
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Old 01-15-2011, 08:09 PM   #167
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The first issue is finding the money to buy those investments. If your work with private plans includes calculating an APO, you should be good enough with math to take a run at the numbers.

Every example I've seen of converting SS into a pre-funded (at least nominally pre-funded) plan runs out of money. Some generation ends up paying for two retirements (their parents and their own), or some generation doesn't get any retirement benefits at all, or two generations each get half the bad results, etc.

Have you looked at the numbers?
I have, but only out of my own curiosity.

Any time you take a "pay-go" plan and try to turn it into a funded plan you are correct that one generation winds up paying twice. I however would like to see what would happen if in years when the program is running a surplus we were able to earn returns of 1 or 2% higher that the program does by purchasing treasury securities.
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Old 01-15-2011, 08:20 PM   #168
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I however would like to see what would happen if in years when the program is running a surplus we were able to earn returns of 1 or 2% higher that the program does by purchasing treasury securities.
We'd have to hurry . . . we might have a couple more years of surpluses, depending on the economy of course.
Still, it's possible in theory that we might convert a portion of the pile of treasury securities (money we owe ourselves) into some type of sovereign wealth fund. But, to do that we'd have to either:
1) Pay ourselves off with real money so we'd have money with which to buy these private or foreign equities. I don't think we've got a source of real money for that, unless we print it.
2) Just offer to give some of these treasury securities to the holder of the equities we want--a simple exchange. I'm not sure that would send the right message to the world markets. The last thing we want is for foreigners to stop buying US treasury securities, but they might lose faith if they see even the US government doesn't want to hold them.

So, thank goodness, it's probably impractical.
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Old 01-15-2011, 11:04 PM   #169
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I'm hoping to retire in 14-18 years... and I am not counting SS in any of my calculations.
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Old 01-15-2011, 11:21 PM   #170
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This thread is getting old. SS is safe...probably as safe as the public pension system, but you don't see many posts about people saying they are not counting their pension in their retirement plans...
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Old 01-15-2011, 11:57 PM   #171
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This thread is getting old. SS is safe...probably as safe as the public pension system, but you don't see many posts about people saying they are not counting their pension in their retirement plans...
Like Robert Shiller says, almost everything is a to a large degree a media manipulated fad.

The dominant current manipulation is to make people assume, and thus accept, that they have no right to expect social security, and that they will thus not get it, or it will be greatly reduced, or that it is stealing from younger people, or that it is merely "welfare" or whatever.

The public workers' unions are a bit harder nut to crack, they may take a few more years of softening up first.

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Old 01-16-2011, 09:48 AM   #172
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This thread is getting old.
Thanks for doing your part.
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Old 01-16-2011, 10:04 AM   #173
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This thread is getting old. SS is safe...probably as safe as the public pension system, but you don't see many posts about people saying they are not counting their pension in their retirement plans...
The question wasn't whether SS is safe or not, it's could you retire without it. Being of fairly conservative bent (financially), ~60% of the people here say they could. When asked why they would bother, they said they don't count on it, but will accept whatever they can get. If you read through the thread, it's the people that are counting on it that have gotten all offensively defensive.

Personally, I believe SS is as safe as a federal gov't pension.
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Old 01-16-2011, 10:58 AM   #174
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The question wasn't whether SS is safe or not, it's could you retire without it. Being of fairly conservative bent (financially), ~60% of the people here say they could. When asked why they would bother, they said they don't count on it, but will accept whatever they can get. If you read through the thread, it's the people that are counting on it that have gotten all offensively defensive.

Personally, I believe SS is as safe as a federal gov't pension.

My point was why not count on SS if it lets you retire a number of years earlier than you could if you don't count on it? I guess if you really love your j*b, 40+hr work week, and commute, then you are well served by not counting on SS in your estimate of a retirement portfolio, but then I would also suggest that you not count your public pension (for those that have one) in order to be equally safe and conservative.

Maybe everyone in the 60% section of the poll is not depending on a public pension in their retirement plans, but I sure do see a lot of posts about FIRE where people say "I have x saved and will get a small pension" instead of "I have x saved and may get a small pension but have left it out of my calculations just like I am leaving out SS"
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Old 01-16-2011, 02:51 PM   #175
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I have, but only out of my own curiosity.

Any time you take a "pay-go" plan and try to turn it into a funded plan you are correct that one generation winds up paying twice. I however would like to see what would happen if in years when the program is running a surplus we were able to earn returns of 1 or 2% higher that the program does by purchasing treasury securities.
Almost all those surplus years are behind us. Looking forward, I'd say the answer is "too little to notice". The Trustees' Report has a lot of tables, IV. B1. seems relevant 2010 Trustees Report: Section IV.B, Long-range estimates
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Old 01-16-2011, 06:45 PM   #176
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Might of been a good option if they would of used it to support State muni funds in the past at set rates of 3.5% or 4% and have received return payments every 6 months for loans not to exceed 7 year periods of loan. They money available would of
doubbled in 15 years or so. This would of also given states lower borrowing fees to support only the AAA quality parts of the muni fund sector.

One thing that I have noticed as I travel in several countries over the last 35+ years is that there is alot of under 55 disabled people drawing ss that don't seem to have a whole lot wrong with them and some how they have gamed the system. Many have picked up foreign dependants who they try like hell to get under the ss system for the increases in their own benefit raises or to pass on a legacy to their much younger dependants who have not contributed much to the system.

This has the doubble whammy effect as the money is bled from our system and supports a foreign business to compete against us and as most of you know they do not have a 15.6% cost for their own businesses that ours do that we now compete against. No wonder why businesses move their production to other countries.

If you add in the state, fed and ss taxes our businesses operate under they can do the same in a third world country with a third of the taxes to be paid out. If we added a ss tax (half our rate) to all imports maybe it would be more fair or different.
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Old 01-16-2011, 07:12 PM   #177
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What if we went back 20 years and told all of the businesses that have moved employment positions overseas, they must pay the ss on each position for the next 3 to 5 years. In the past I think they received huge tax write offs for doing such, this may help the bleed of what our country has seen in the last 20 years.

I am sure I am missing a bit of the big picture but this sure does seem like a practicle fix to some of our ss problems.
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Old 01-16-2011, 07:26 PM   #178
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If we added a ss tax (half our rate) to all imports maybe it would be more fair or different.JMHO
Three words: World Trade Organization
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Old 01-16-2011, 07:47 PM   #179
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My point was why not count on SS if it lets you retire a number of years earlier than you could if you don't count on it? I guess if you really love your j*b, 40+hr work week, and commute, then you are well served by not counting on SS in your estimate of a retirement portfolio, but then I would also suggest that you not count your public pension (for those that have one) in order to be equally safe and conservative.

Maybe everyone in the 60% section of the poll is not depending on a public pension in their retirement plans, but I sure do see a lot of posts about FIRE where people say "I have x saved and will get a small pension" instead of "I have x saved and may get a small pension but have left it out of my calculations just like I am leaving out SS"
Truthfully, I wouldn't have counted on a pension from my megacorp either. I'm just not comfortable counting on money that's in someone else's control. I wouldn't put it past them to default on it in the future. Gov't employees may feel differently.

In my case and many others that I have read about in other threads, staying at the job was to get retirement medical benefits, not a pension. I stayed 3 years past when I reached my number so that I would not have to deal with pre-exisiting conditions on the open market. Although that may go away now with Obamacare. My megacorp was one of the first to be reported as considering kicking us to the curb once the details are worked out. [Edit] And that right there is a perfect example of why I don't feel comfortable counting on someone else, especially someone who is a gov't or a corporation. Promises mean pretty much nothing. [end of edit]

But still, I just am not comfortable counting on something (SS) that was 12 years out (minimum) when I retired. So I made sure I could stay retired without it. I just don't have enough control over it to count on it. That's my choice, my logic, and I'm happy with it. You go ahead and do things the way you want. I'm not trying to talk you into anything, just answering a question. And I can guarantee, no matter how logical your calculations seem to you, I'm not going to change my mind. Sort of like the paying off the mortgage thing. Different people have different opinions, and seldom get their mind changed.
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Old 01-16-2011, 07:58 PM   #180
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Maybe some how WTO needs to understand we run a debt with about every nation we trade with, we are at unsubstainable levels of debt. If we imported some of the same items many these countries export to us, there is a 100% import tax to do so.

Let's start an OPEC style of trading with grains and what not, this should open eyes.
When we are bancrupt (which we are for the most part) can we then use reciprical laws and regulation. We can't even ask if a person has an ID or visa so maybe the WTO needs to go the way as the U.N. and have some pressure put on it. Europe sure has been complaining much the last few years.
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