Social Security

"Human Beings naturally save for their retirements. The savings go into bank accounts, stocks, corporate bonds and other assets. These assets are the source of money used by businesses to build factories, office buildings and other places of work

Saving creates jobs.

So, by saving and investing, people automatically create both retirement income for themselves and job opportunities for their children.
It's a beautiful system. The old help lift the young into the middle class by creating good jobs for them, and the young help the old by generating dividends and interest for them to live on.

But what does Social Security do?

It does not invest in factories or office buildings. It just takes money from one person and gives it to another. It doesn't produce income, it only transfers it.
Studies have shown that individuals covered pension plans (and other forms of automatic retirement plans, like SS), reduce other forms of saving and the rate of trade-off was about 68 cents on the dollar of pension wealth. When people in the past saved less because they believed Social Security would be there, the slack was not picked up by anyone. Unlike private investments, instead of creating factories and jobs, Social Security erases a lot of the job opportunities for the young. It's part of the reason the young find it so hard to get ahead.

In other words, when someone today spends Social Security money, he is consuming not only his children's tax money but their jobs, too."
-Richard Maybury

Social Security is a government backed ponzi scheme that's inefficient, harmful to the economy, and it's about to collapse.

Some figures:

Total number of beneficiaries (2005) (People receiving money from SS): 45,417,000

Average monthly benefit: Retired workers: $845

Disabled workers: $787

Widows/ers: $710

Total Annual Employment in the United States: 112,611,000

Number of American households below the poverty level: 7,657,000

Social Security 2006: Total Expenditures: $555,421,000,000

Total Benefits: $546,238,000,000

Administrative Expenses: $5,337,000,000

Amount of money Americans gave to charity in 2006: $295,000,000,000 (usinfo.gov)

We've got over a half of a trillion dollars coming OUT of the economy, and not being invested in job-creating ways, therefore we have more poor than we should. Americans are the most generous people in the world, and if we were to put ONE FOURTH of the charitable donations made to helping the poor, we'd be able to give EVERY HOUSEHOLD $9,631. Of course, we must take into account the fact that with more jobs, there'd be more jobs, and less poor.

(Statistics gathered from "The Statistical Abstract of the United States")

Tags: Social Security, Jobs, tags, Capitalist Bum, ponzi, bum,