SS "benefit/entitlement"?

[ErikJ]

This is a virus email going around that I just got from a suspected RW person. Sounds a bit wrong on many points. For one they figured the lifetime SS contribution as collecting interest for 30 years.



SOCIAL SECURITY NOW CALLED 'FEDERAL BENEFIT PAYMENT' /ENTITLEMENT!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/benefit.asp


Have you noticed, your Social Security check is now referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment"?

I'll be part of the one percent to forward this. You should too, but remove all emails please. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.

Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it and starts writing our Govt.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”
This isn’t a benefit – its earned income!
Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.

It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both
your and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of
working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment .

Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month .

That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the
Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact) and see snopes link above.

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)!
I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had
just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did.
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking.
They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.

And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed.
And recently, they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments?

And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they “borrowed” the money, doesn't mean that our investments were a charity!
Let’s take a stand.

We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.
Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government –

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income.
____________________________________________________________

[JohnnyRingo]

1. SS is not a savings account.

If it was, we'd have to keep track of how much we pay in so we'll know when to stop the checks.

It is indeed a federal benefit program because we individually receive what the collective paid in. It only works because so many die before they receive a single check. In other words, we don't get a refund for dying young because it isn't our money.

This is an old TeaBagger theory. I got into it with an old 'bagger once about how the poor don't deserve Obamacare, but he deserved Medicare because "he paid into it". I told him the money "he paid into it" will be gone after his first heart attack. I advised he accept socialism for what it's worth.

On edit:
These old geezers always forget when they were young making $3 or less an hour. They figure how much they were paid in the last year of employment and multiply it times 30 to compute their donation.