Hadn’t heard this. The vast majority, eh? Hmmm.
I guess I’m reading it differently. I think that there are probably millions of Floridians who rely on Social Security to be there for them in the future, but ARE NOT CURRENTLY RECEIVING IT. If McCain’s plan had come true, all of those people would currently be out a whole bunch of money, and would be hoping that it comes back again in the next 10 years or so.
I rely on the solvency of my pension plan, even though I’m not currently retired.
LOL, but as I said, I probably don’t belong here anyway
My husband receives ss. He’s 47 and disabled.
My coworker’s sister receives ss. She’s the minor daughter of someone who’s disabled.
I don’t know if disability ss is exempt from the privatization schemes, but there are exceptions to the “over 62” rule.
I do feel for those in the US who will be reliant on SS benefits for retirement. For those who don’t know, here’s what happened in Canada:
In the early 1990’s it was recognized by the Chief Actuary of the Canadian pension plan* that the “pay as you go” system was due to run out of money by 2015 due to changing demographics and birth rates (sound familiar?)
A review in 1996 led to an increase in the CPP rates payable by employers and employees to 9.9% of earnings (to a maximum), and the creation of the CPP investment board, that tries to get the maximum return on CPP investments.
The net result is that the CPP is pretty healthy in Canada, and is expected to be this way for the forseeable future.
In a nutshell, we had similar demographic problems as the US, but we took the hard medicine in the early 1990’s and we are now fine.
*interestingly, a non-political position, that gives non-biased information for the benefit of the country.
Wow, lots of ignorance in this thread. Hard to know where to start.
I’ll just start with this. The stock market has returned 10% annualy over every rolling 20-year period since 1929. The “return” on social security is around 1%, which doesn’t even keep pace with inflation.
Privatization doesn’t have to mean that everyone’s social security is invested solely in the U.S. stock market or any one type of investment over the course of a person’s contribution period. Because many Americans don’t know that you are supposed to scale back your risk as you get old, it would probably be best to have a social security privatization plan that does this automatically.
Therefore, the current stock market downturn doesn’t mean that privatization of social security would have been bad or would be bad. It’s just an object lesson in why any privatization strategy needs to force Americans to scale the risk back as they approach retirement.
If we raise Canada’s rent, that could help relieve the pressure a bit.
Also, the statement seems a little too unclear to cry “lie.” Obama referred to the “millions that rely on” social security, but it wasn’t clear that he meant only those currently collecting social security (after all, people currently in the contribution phase still currently rely on their future entitlement to some extent). It was definitely a stupid and misleading statement though.
However, given the lax standards here on the dope for what is and is not a “lie,” I’m sure those Dopers who think lying is the worst thing a candidate can do will run in here screaming at Obama and will reconsider voting for him.
Not diagreeing, just need a cite for your statements.
Those of you saying privatization would cause “Social Insecurity”: when has the stock market gone down over a long period of time without going back up since 1929?
I support full privatization of Social Security. As in, you have to put money in an account, but you can put it anywhere (maybe require it be put in a bank or spread over a broad area to keep idiots from screwing themselves). And with a minimum payout for people who’ve never had opportunity to put money it the account.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind much if it were eliminated entirely for people less than halfway to retirement (followed by a large payout to those people to give them any extra money back.) It was never meant to be a permanent dependency of the government, anyway. The money would be much better spent in completely private accounts, (and again, I challenge anyone to give me a time since 1929 when net savings have gone down without going back up even higher in short order.)
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Great idea Vox, maybe they could be required to put it in AIG and Lehman Brothers and Enron and Worldcom and…
You win, sir.
Are you serious? I really thought both of those numbers were very well known.
I’ve got two OK but not perfect cites for you. It’s too late to spend a lot of time on this right now.
Here’s a cite ( http://icf.som.yale.edu/pdf/Supply(v5).pdf ) from two guys at Yale business school that says “The average compounded annual return for the stock market over the period 1926-2000 is 10.70%.” This doesn’t substantiate my “rolling 20-year period” claim, but there’s a chart on page 20 that pretty much does show this.
Here ( Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Social Security: 83% Welfare ) is a cite where a guy walks through calculating a return on his social security contributions, and he actually gets a negative number (so I was being generious with the 1%).
You say that like it was a bad thing…
Sorry buddy… with the amount of oil, uranium and hydro power we have up here, and the fact that you want it so bad… I think you’re paying us these days 
Umm, it’s not like Social Security is a savings account where they stored your money from before 1950 for you to pull out when you retire. It’s paid out off of the incoming wages of people who are currently working. The money you put in ten years ago was taken out 9 years ago by someone who was a senior then.
So if the money that we the working population are putting into SS goes into investment funds then the same thing is occurring for those who are already retired.
Yeah? We got Chuck Norris.
OK, you win. Chuck Norris could kick both Dion and Harper’s butts.
I wouldn’t announce that too loudly right now. If Dubya can find Canada on a map, you may be hiding some WMD’s in the next month or so…
If you’d wanted to debated, you could have looked at your facts first, or even second, or even now. But why bother, with a pre-formed opinion and shifting ground of debate. Earlier you flamed Obama because you didn’t think that his comments about social security matched the single McCain social security position you picked out from the many he has had over the years. Instead, you obtained all your facts from an attack ad from McCain. Bravo. You do seem to know the Pit etiquette.
Really, you’re as concerned as anyone? In the Pit, that makes you a “concern troll.” As for you working your butt off, I’m going to be on social security in 20 years, get back to work, and get your lazy assed relatives to work too!!
Straw man for each sentence in the quoted paragraph. Go to college, be a freshman. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. But do take intro to Philosophy, Argumentation.
A genuine “concern troll”. We get it. Now get those children and grandchildren of yours working! Trillions 30 years from now is a trillion now, with compound interest. The Bush administration spent a trillion dollars just last week. That doesn’t “concern” you, borrowing a trillion dollars plus in 10 days, but several trillion 30 to 40 years from now does? Republicans (and I’m just guessing that you are one of those ewwww!!) have been whining about social security running out of money in 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ever since the program was first proposed. They have never stopped. They fail to understand that the payout is so paltry that even if half the population received social security, it would still be a small part of the percentage of the budget. Social security surpluses have generally been the rule, and the general budget has consistently borrowed from the social security fund without paying it back to run the government as a whole. The government would have to borrow the money from other sources at higher interest rates if it did not have the social security fund.
Your approach is not moderate, it is radical. A moderate approach does not include letting people out of it. If you don’t want social security, you don’t have to take it when you get to that age. I’m betting that you will, and you will effectively be letting politicians be taking care of you by your own words. I’ll be getting back what I put in. That’s how I look at it.
Your memories from a year ago. Ahh, what memories. Memories of vast majorities of economists. None with names. Memory is a funny thing.
You deserve flaming for your dishonesty. Your dishonesty about being “concerned” when all you care about is making sure that social security is privatized to cure a theoretical problem 30 or 40 years from now that can be cured with borrowing then over a period of several years like we are borrowing now in a few days.
During the complete collapse of the markets, caused by Bush’s borrow and spend policies, you choose to focus on a theoretical problem decades away. Your sincerity overwhelms me.