Bernie Madoff Did To Americans What Social Security Has Been Doing To Them For Over 60 Years

  •  February 9, 2010

Consider this comparison (via Neal Boortz):

image

Is it really to much to ask that Americans be allowed to handle their own retirements?

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  • http://Array sayanything-203

    Sig,

    Good Point! What Bernie Madoff did to a buch of very rich people, the Dems’ Social Security pyramid scam has been doing to all of us, rich and poor.

  • Brent

    “Is it really to much to ask that Americans be allowed to handle their own retirements?”

    Well, the popular retort (mostly from democrats) is that people are too stupid to invest their own money and, besides, they won’t anyway. Now, besides the fact that the government’s federal reserve inflates and thereby makes it necessary to invest in riskier and more sophisticated ways than otherwise need be the case, we still have the problem of people who won’t invest for their retirement…

    Fortunately, this is a non-sequitur, because the government doesn’t invest any of the social security revenue in the first place. So even if no one saved anything on their own (absurd, because they do today, in spite of social security), we still wouldn’t be any worse off than we are under social security.

  • sayanything-203

    There is one other, glaring difference between Bernie Madoof’s Ponzi scheme and Social Security. Madoof, quite rightly, is in jail for the rest of his life.

  • AKA WOOF

    investments wiped out in the market crash,
    “most of the middle class and up had investments and pensions,”
    Pensions from whom?

    Leaving aside Social Security income, nearly one of every two elderly people — 46.8 percent — has income below the poverty line.[1]
    * Once Social Security benefits are taken into account, just one in twelve — 8.7 percent — is poor.

  • robert108

    The only solution to the Social Security mess ia a phase out, done over a 20 year period, give or take. The longer we wait to do what will inevitably be done anyway, because SS is unsustainable, the more painful it will be to return to fiscal sanity.
    Imagine if all the money SS has confiscated from the private sector had been invested in businesses and the stock market. No more economc crises for the Dems to exploit.

  • sayanything-46707

    Oh Please! SS and BM both screwing Americans. The government is a joke, we need to stand up and make some major changes. SS and BM both out spending others money on what every they please.

  • robert108

    Good analysis, Rob! Among economists, SS has been known as a pyramid scheme for at least 40 years.
    woof’s bleating about the failure of private sector retirement plans during FDR’s Depression is yet another example of Dems not letting a crisis go to waste. As the Obama recession illustrates, govt-caused economic downturns are dandy tools for increasing the power of the federal govt over our lives, and SS was no exception to that. By the time it was proposed, FDR’s Depression and insane attacks on the private sector had made private investment plans pretty much non-functional, so this pyramid scheme just took advantage of the helplessness of the average American.

  • AKA WOOF

    Between the dotcom bust,
    the Bush stock market, and the
    bank/investment house failures,
    if working people didn’t have
    SS the streets would be filled
    with torches and pitchforks.

  • AKA WOOF

    Americans did handle their own retirements before SS.
    They lived in Hoovervilles and sold apples on street corners.

    Talk it up, it’s a consistent Republican loser topic.

  • sayanything-13784

    Get a 401K or an IRA , but I doubt they have them for convenience store workers.

  • sayanything-203

    WOOF,

    Here’s an exercise for you: How many 35 year periods can you identify in which the total return on the S&P was NOT more, substantially more, than the return on money “invested” in Social Security?

    Of course, money withheld from your paycheck today isn’t “invested” at all. It goes to pay the benefits for today’s retirees.

    Social Security is a Democrat-inspired Ponzi scheme… and the country is rapidly running out of rubes to pay for promises made to past generations.

  • sayanything-203

    Union card, perhaps?

  • sayanything-3417

    When there are votes to buy and political careers to prop up, yes Rob, it is.

    > Is it really to much to ask that Americans be allowed to handle their own retirements?

  • bikebubba

    Woof, while the markets did go down, the fact of the matter is that the stock markets have never gone to zero, and furthermore the fact of the matter is that Social Security only passed when FDR devalued the dollar to “fight deflation.”

    And, for that matter, the Depression really only got bad when Hoover tried to micromanage business, especially the investment sector, and it never got better until the start of WWII made FDR’s policies meaningless.

  • sayanything-4416

    Over 40% of retirees depend on SS as their only source of income. That number will rise as the Republican Depression of 2008 effects on 401ks are felt.

    You can end SS and Medicare and this country will STILL collapse.

    I can’t wait.

  • sayanything-3444

    Just curious WOOF – how do you define who is and isn’t “working people”?

  • MarkSD

    Only the goverment can screw you legally. At least they tell us its legal.

  • sayanything-3444

    Absolutely right r108. I have said many times that if I could get the govt to give me back even half of what they’ve plundered from me in the past 40+ years and let me put it into a Roth or 401k that I cannot access until I am 65 (maybe even 70) I would happily relinquish the right to the other half. As it stands today I expect that in fact I will end up with neither half.

  • sayanything-3444

    Compared to the Feds, Madoff was an amateur.

  • sayanything-3444

    According to this:

    http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba662

    The SS and Medicare trustees say they have a $107 trillion unfunded liability. Madoff stands convicted of defrauding his victims of $65 billion – very small potatoes indeed. Not inconsequential and Madoff got what he deserved – when will the Feds get theirs?

  • bikebubba

    Actually, Woof’s history is a bit weak. Prior to Social Security, most of the middle class and up had investments and pensions, just like today, and their representatives only agreed to Socialist Insecurity after FDR devalued the dollar vs. gold from $20 to $35, reducing the value of their pensions by almost half. Others simply lived with their families, which is where we get elegant phrases like the “mother in law room” or “mother in law house”.

    Either way, most people really didn’t live long enough at the time to worry about a long retirement. So nice government/revisionist history, Woof, but some of us actually know what really went on.

  • sayanything-1317

    Of course the talk about SS benefits ignores that that was money the retirees would’ve had to invest and probably gotten a better return on.

    Talking about seniors below the poverty line ignores the fact that most seniors own their home free and clear, with no mortgage and probably have little to no debt. They almost never have dependants, and therefore need less money than younger folks.

  • sayanything-1317

    SS really helps the “working people” by taking something like 15% of their income.

    /Eye roll

  • sayanything-3444

    What is also puzzling about that statement that is unless you’re getting near dog food wages (no pun intended) and are over 65 or cash under the table, “working” people can’t get SS if I’m not mistaken.

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