Re: Social Security: Return on Investment

["Laura J. Walker" <LJW6626@worldnet.att.net>]

Greg --

All very well and good for those wealthy souls out there with $$ to invest in
the private sector.  And of course, nobody is stopping people from investing
privately.  But to advocate for the elimination of the SSA and replace it with
a form of private investment is, I think, outrageously unrealistic.  What
happens to those poor sots on SS Disability Insurance?  Where exactly do they
go to invest?  And what, exactly, are they to invest with?  People who think
they know all about the SSA always manage to ignore the "disability insurance"
piece of the puzzle -- like these folks just don't exist in the SS system.
Most of the knotheads I talk with -- those who believe everything would be so
hunky, dorry if we could just plop our money into private
investment-retirement accounts -- haven't even the foggiest notion about the
amount of money (and the number of beneficiaries) within SS who are
D_I_S_A_B_L_E_D -- and this includes MANY elderly (e.g., retirement age)
people.

So, before you design your grand new libertarian, free-market, private capital
country, keep in mind that lots of folks don't have the same options you (or
I) do.  And believe me well, I know from experience:  I wouldn't be writing
you this email today were it not for SSDI, the help of many federal and local
agencies -- which saved my life, not to mention my sanity...at a time I most
needed it.

There are real faces and names to such folks, Greg.  Keep them in mind as you
develop your plans to wipe out the system we have, because THESE are the
people who are most hurt by such schemes".

Laura

Greg Peisert wrote:

> Want to know how much your Social Security is worth?
>
> Want to know what you could receive if that money was invested in the
> private sector in different mixes of investments, from conservative to
> risky?
>
> Want to look at, and change, various assumptions in the model and see what
> the impact would be?
>
> Check it all out on the Social Security calculator at:
>
>          http://www.socialsecurity.org/calc/calculator.html
>
> The results are almost astonishing.
>
> --Greg P.