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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 1232975, member: 66&quot;]Social Security was never intended to be something for people to retire on and depend on for their retirement.&nbsp; It was intended to be a supplement to whatever retirement investment planning you did to take care of yourself in your old age.&nbsp; It was to be a safety net just in case your retirement plans all fell through so that you wouldn&#039;t starve..&nbsp; In fact even the original name for the program was not Social Security, it was Supplemental Security.&nbsp; The problem was that people did not understand the program and they THOUGHT it was supposed to be their retirement fund and so many never bothered saving for their old age.&nbsp; For awhile it worked fine, the money people received did provide enough to live on because there were 4 or 5 people paying into the program for every person drawing SS.&nbsp; There was plenty of money and in order to &quot;buy votes&quot; politicians often approved increases in SS payouts greater than the rate of inflation.&nbsp; Today there is now less than two people paying in for each person drawing.</p><p><br /></p><p>At this point we should examine the &quot;Ponzi scheme&quot; funding method that SS uses.&nbsp; You would be surprised at how many people out there think that they have been paying into SS for years and all their payment are going into a special account with their name on it and their money has been piling up year after year waiting for them to tap into it.&nbsp; Nothing could be further from the truth.&nbsp; All the money a working person is paying into the program is immediately used to pay out benefits to those people who have already retired.&nbsp; During the fifties and sixties this wasn&#039;t a problem because there were many more people paying in than drawing out and the program was running a surplus.&nbsp; By the 1980&#039;s the surplus was gone and the program was in danger of going broke.&nbsp; So they doubled the SS taxes taken out of workers checks and &quot;fixed&quot; SS.&nbsp; Once again there was more money coming in than going out and the program had a surplus which they promised to invest so it would keep growing and keep the program solvent for many decades.&nbsp; And how did they invest the surplus?&nbsp; They bought US Treasury Bonds.&nbsp; In short the government borrowed it, gave the program IOU&#039;s, and spent the money.</p><p><br /></p><p>Last year we reached the break even point again with more money going out that there is coming in and they are now having to dip into the &quot;surplus&quot; to make up the difference.&nbsp; In order to do that they have to start redeeming those bonds and they can&#039;t do it, so they have to go out and borrow even more money to redeem those bonds.&nbsp; Then add to the problem is that the baby boomer generation is just starting to retire.&nbsp; They represent around 20% of the whole population and will eventually double the number of people drawing SS.&nbsp; This will eventually bring it down to more than one person drawing for every person paying in.&nbsp; That is not sustainable no matter what you do.</p><p><br /></p><p>A lot of people also will say that they deserve their SS because they paid into it for all those years.&nbsp; One thing the don&#039;t realize in that they will be drawing the money out a LOT faster than they paid it in.&nbsp; Typically a person on SS will receive within four years the same amount of money that he paid in over 45 years.&nbsp; When SS was set up the average life expectancy was 66 years retirement was 65.&nbsp; It was expected that a large percentage would never reach retirement and most of those that did would not live long enough to draw more than they put in.&nbsp; Today people retire as young as 62 but the average life expectancy is pushing 80.&nbsp; So people have been paying in for 20 years, drawing everything they paid in in three years, and then continuing to draw for another 17 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>I hope this isn&#039;t considered to be too political.&nbsp; It isn&#039;t intended to be, just a little history about SS and how the program operates.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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