Friday, December 31, 2010

Economists Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane of the Urban Institute have crunched numbers from the Social Security Administration and found some interesting facts.

Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they will have paid $614,000 in Social Security taxes, and can expect to collect $555,000 in benefits. They will have paid about 10 percent more into the system than they're likely to get back.

What a great deal! Makes the 0.02% interest I’m earning on my savings account look pretty darn good!

In addition, according to the administrators who run Social Security, the system will go into the red in 2014, and we will have to start paying the difference between what is coming in and what is going out in benefits from a federal treasury that is already running annual trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.


Another interesting fact to consider, according to Yahoo Finance, from 1950 - 2009, the S & P 500 grew at an average annual rate of 7%. This is with dividends reinvested, and is adjusted for inflation.

The Social security tax rate that is removed from your paycheck each pay period is 6.2% of your gross income. For the average wage couple mentioned above, that is $5,518 removed each year.

Using a compounding calculator, if the couple works for 40 years, starting at age 25 and retiring at age 65, put $5,518 in the first year and every year after that, and simply invested that in the S&P 500 index, (plain vanilla, nothing fancy), you would have a retirement account worth $1,262,326. That seems a lot better than $555,000.

I remember when Bush suggested we start with just an option of moving 5% of our Social Security payments over to private accounts, he was beaten until he was bloody by the AARP and the media to the point that he had to withdraw his suggestion.

Of course we have to phase the privatization of Social Security in over a very long time to take care of the seniors who are already on it, but can anyone explain to me why we just don’t get this done?

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Sharon Statement

http://www2.fiu.edu/~yaf/sharon.html
The above is a link to a statement written by Stanton Evans and signed at the conference at Sharon on September 11, 1960 that establishes 12 of the eternal truths that I believe.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Good government by Thomas Jefferson

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." ----Thomas Jefferson.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Why socialism doesn't work

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before,
but had once failed an entire class.
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked & that no one would be poor & no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".
All grades would be averaged & everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail & no one would receive an A...
After the first test, the grades were averaged & everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset & the students who studied little were happy.
As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less & the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D!
No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame & name-calling all resulted in hard feelings & no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, & the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
Could not be any simpler than that. Remember, there is a mid-term election in 2010!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The financial results of government programs

To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature,
It is now official, you are ALL corrupt morons:
The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.
AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??