Social Security is not broke, nor will it need to be broke. It is just mismanaged. Social Security is simply a pay-as-you-go program. This means that people receiving money today are getting it from those who are working today. Analysts predict that in maybe 10 years or less the money paid in will fall short of the money going out. How can that be? Are they saying our population will shrink? For the last 50 years the United States has grown by approximately 2 million people per year. In the last several years that has increased to 3 million per year. So if you have as many or more people paying into Social Security then how could you come up short of money?
Here is the problem: 1. Not all the people receiving Social Security have ever contributed. Many people from other countries come to the U.S. already at retirement age and go through a short waiting period and then begin to collect Social Security. 2. As family wage jobs are shipped overseas people are forced to work at lower paying jobs which pay far less into Social Security. 3. Many people receive Social Security disability but have never paid into it.
And now they propose we let individuals manage their own money by investing (gambling) it on their own! Insane idea as most will mismanage (gamble) the money and taxpayers will have to step up and support them anyway. So what is the answer? Tell your elected officials to grow a set of guts, quit playing politics with our future and correct items one through three that I mentioned above. How long past 65 do you plan to live? If they were to do this, we could all retire at 50 with full benefits.
Rudy McDaniel
Lake Stevens
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