Has anyone ever heard a Republican hater of social security say...

[Ohiogal]

“Just think, if the government would give me back all that money they took out of my paycheck all these years, and let collect dust ... if I got it all back I could invest it and have so much more! Instead of them doling it out to me every month.”

My answer to this person was, The stock market is too volatile. SS is a guaranteed benefit. Not everyone knows how to invest in stocks wisely. My own modest investment lost 20% over the last year. Too many people could lose the whole amount, or they would just spend it all without investing it. Does anyone have any better answers?

[LakeArenal]

1. I never heard one openly say: Take my mother and Gramma's SS away from them.

[Zorro]

2. Ask them how well they've done with their own personal investment strategy over the years

That might shut them up.

[RKP5637]

3. Yep, I've heard that many times ... and I don't have the links, but it's pretty well known that many

people left to their own thinking lose lots of money on the stock market ... usually due to panicking and/or trying to be a market timer.

[SCantiGOP]

4. Many, perhaps most, aren't going to save the money

Do we bail them out, or live in a society where we have a daily count of the number of homeless seniors who starved to death the previous day.

[LiberalArkie]

5. That was the big thing being pushed during the dot-com boom. Never heard much about it

after the dot-com bust though.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Near as I can tell, nobody who has ever said that has ever run the numbers to see if it's true...

Besides, SS taxes are NOT a retirement or investment account. SS taxes are intended to pay for the current benefits being paid out to retirees.

And, nothing in SS prevents you from having other accounts.

But, that argument is specious and just thrown out as more gishgallop when attacking SS out of some perverse principle.

[OregonBlue]

7. Ask them how many younger Americans, after mom and dad lose it all in the market,

are going to take their parents in and support them and pay their medical bills the rest of their lives.

[Liberal In Texas]

8. Of course the fallacy of the argument is that SS is not an ivestment plan, it's insurance

and it pays out when disabled or orphaned and when old.

They have an investment plan they so love the idea of called 401K.

[Ritabert]

9. Point them to Chile's disastrous privatization of SS

https://www.ilwu.org/social-security-privatization-is-a-disaster-in-chile-anti-union-politicians-and-wall-st-still-want-it-here/

While I was visiting Chile earlier this year in April, my cab driver, Mauricio Sanhueza, told me, “Things have gotten a lot worse since you were here in 1996.” He added, “José Piñera is hated everywhere in Chile.” Piñera had promised Chilean workers that the AFP system would provide 70 percent of their salary when they retired, but this “replacement rate” is now in the 30-35 percent range, says financial advisor Alvaro Gallegos, who served briefly as Superintendent of Pensions under a recent democratically-elected government.  “In another decade,” he adds, it will be down to 15 percent.”

[lunatica]

10. That person is an idiot.

If they don’t get the difference between sink or swim economic volatility and a safe and reliable income they’re just too dense to understand.

[tavernier]

11. Whether or not they are brilliant at investing isn't the issue.

Millions aren’t and when those millions are left without a dime in their old age, either the government will need to care for them or they will die in the streets. That is why the program was started to begin with. And for those who say let them die in the streets, then we are talking about a plague that will make Covid look like a walk in the park.

[Trailrider1951]

12. Your answer is a good one. A few additions may help:

Your contributions to Social Security is relatively safe. No one can steal it, no one can lose it, and it is also insurance against disability before your retirement. The only real drawback is the effect of inflation; the $1477 per month I get (before Medicare deduction) would have been a decent, if frugal, amount to live on 25 or 30 years ago. Today, not so much. When I moved to Washington state a few years ago, I found the cost of living to be high, and ever increasing, so I took another job to pay off some debt and fix up my new-to-me fixer-upper. My job pretty much ended with the coming of Coronavirus. I don't expect that to change in the near future.

[Ms. Toad]

13. Over time, investments in the stock market outperform all other investments

Available to most of us. So that's a losing argument. But an indexed fund, and over time you will be ahead. It's not that hard.

The reality is that social security is forced saving. Most Americans are paid so little that they can't afford to save for retirement. (Compounding that, instant gratification means that even Americans who make enough to save don't, because wants are perceived as needs. I'm older, and have been saving since I was 10, or younger. We don't have tv because I refuse to pay for free stations that I now can't get because of the conversion to digital. My new phone cost $75, and my monthly bill is $15. I am privileged to have always had the option to be employed - but I'm also wired to live within my means. Most aren't, these days.)

Sorry, but there is no non-paternalistic counter to those with more money than they know what to do with wanting a little bit more to play with.

Social security is essential for those who can't (or won't) save for retirement - so that they don't have to work until the day they die to pay the bills. (My sister falls in that category. She's never been without the latest phone, car, etc., But at 60, for the first time, she has a couple thousand in savings. A new boyfriend and my brother convinced her to give my brother the money she usually spends on fancy coffee drinks to hold for her. She doesn't trust banks, so she has Brother Bank. Despite growing up in the same privileged family, being frugal, and thinking about the future never worked for her. It is so much harder when it isn't even baked into the family culture.)

[lastlib]

14. Even the best professional money managers lost big in 2008...

and took years to recover. Sure, you COULD do better investing your own money yourself--but I would bet that you WOULDN'T! You have an emotional attachment to your own money that skews your view of how to manage it. Few professional money managers can keep up with the market over the long run, and individual self-managers do FAR worse in reality. Individuals don't have the time, the tools, the knowledge, or the perspective to handle their own money in an optimal manner. Pitting their personal expertise against the powerhouse investment houses is a losing proposition from the word go.

In short, those who believe that they could invest their FICA $$ more profitably are incredibly naive. Remember also that their employer funds HALF of their SS contribution. If SS was eliminated, they would have only half the amount to invest that SS actually takes in, so their investment would actually have to make up that difference, and few people could achieve that on their own.

[ooky]

15. I doubt they would even invest it.

Those types often aren't very smart. I expect most of those clowns would have just spent it, and have nothing.