Monday, August 06, 2007

Gummint Mismanagement

Post-retirement health care benefits

Why your kids will have to kill you
“ The state of New Jersey just reported a $58 billion liability to its current and past employees on account of post-retirement health care benefits. States like California, Maryland, New York, and North Carolina have estimated such liabilities running into tens of billions of dollars. ... thousands of state and local jurisdictions across the U.S. have outstanding retirement health benefits promises to current and past employees, totaling in the low trillions in today's dollars.

That's on top of federal shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, estimated by those programs' trustees at about $40 trillion through the next 75 years. Closing this fiscal imbalance will require nearly doubling today's payroll tax rate of 15.3 percent, or imposing a similarly draconian benefit cut. Given how large government imbalances are overall, policy changes to close them will likely become imperative when the Baby Boomers begin retiring in droves in another decade. [Disconnected From Fiscal Reality] 		”
Of course we provided the solution in 1965 when we gave the gummint dominion over our health care.  You know what I mean.
8/06/2007 09:36:00 AM 5 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The pitiful return I'm going to get from the SS taxes I have been paying for over 40 years is criminal. It's a good idea to make young people save but the GDCS democrats and their sick need for control keeps that money in government hands.

The President's attempt to allow for a small percentage of FICA taxes to be put into a select group of equities, bonds or funds was savaged by the dems and supported by their rat bastard friends in the left dominated MSM.

And it was voluntary! If you wanted to stay in a totally controlled SS system, you could. In Chile, initial participation in a partially privatized system was less than 50%. After a few years and people started figuring things out and seeing potential benefits that were going to be over 1,000% of government benefits, participation is now almost 100%.

So you know what? In a few years when I'm first eligible for these SS checks, bring 'em on baby. I sat down about 10 years ago when the SSA sent me one of these schedules showing how much I've paid and what I'd get if I started collecting benefits at 62(it was the max) and compared it to taking 33% of what I've paid in FICA taxes and compounding that money at a APR of 8%. It made me sick.

Like I said, it's a good idea to force young people, hell everyone, to save, but letting the government save for you is like letting government do just about anything else. They're gonna fuck it up. SS is the all time grand Ponzi scheme and we all know what happens to the ones who come in at the end.
MM

8/6/07, 10:07 AM
OregonGuy said...

Let them fix Social Security and then we'll talk about Global Warming.

Social Security is man-made. Clearly. No incantations to Mother Gaia that I can find recorded during the FDR years. Unless godless socialism/communism was the birth womb of today's earth worship. And there was that "dust bowl" thing. Maybe Social Security was civilized man's first attempt to compensate for his destruction of our environment.

But, clearly, Social Security won't kill innocent children in Palestine or cause the rape of rain forests in Brazil.

And Social Security, unlike Global Warming, is a fairly simple thing. You pay money in, you gets money out. We don't have to worry about carbon dioxide emissions. Whether or not we plant more trees or fewer trees. We take "x" number of dollars in in order to pay "y" number of dollars out.

I'm thinking that a first-year actuary at any insurance company could figure this one out in about a half-hour. With double-checking and review, lets give him a week, just to be safe.

But why, in God's Name, would anyone turn control over the world environment to a pack of politicians in Washington that can't even come up with a solution to make Social Security viable for the next 50 years?

So, go ahead and fix Social Security. Then come back and see me about your "Global Warming".

8/6/07, 2:03 PM
Anonymous said...

Hey Rodg, what OregonGuy says here is good enough to quote:

"Let them fix Social Security and then we'll talk about Global Warming."

MM, I'll respectfully disagree with this:

"to force young people, hell everyone, to save"

Naah, encourage them, teach them, but force? Naah, that's what social security is, and it's gummint and it's gonna be going south.

Personally, and I can attest to this because of what I didn't know back then, there should be a semester course, senior year high school, on personal finance. Including all the things we all mistook: credit cards, rent to own, 401k, April 15, pay to play, bunches of stuff. I could teach that course off the top of my head, all the stuff I did wrong.

8/6/07, 9:06 PM
Anonymous said...

Aww rats, forgot my name. That comment just above is from me. For better or worse, don't comment anony me.

8/6/07, 9:10 PM
Anonymous said...

Well Alear, forced saving is what SS is and as long as you're going to force people to save, than allow them to place some of those funds in a vehicle(s) of their choosing.

Eliminate SS all together? Beyond the benefit of an additional revenue stream after you retire, participation in a partially privatized SS will make you an active member of a capitalist system. You'll be watching and weighing options and I believe you will be less prone to the BS dem economic dogma that will reduce the value of your retirement nest egg. So I know the founders would have probably nixed this one, but I think SS is a good concept, it just needs tweaking.

And brother, you are dead on about that class. Economics in high school has nothing to do with the real world. It was far too macro.

8/7/07, 4:55 AM

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