Save your own money. If Social Security exists by the time I retire, great. I'm planning as if it won't.
Nothing stopped about this. Our demographics have changed for the worse in this regard, is all. From the latest report from the SSA's Board of Trustees:
"Social Security and Medicare both face long-term financing shortfalls under currently scheduled benefits and financing. Costs of both programs will grow faster than gross domestic product (GDP) through the mid-2030s primarily due to the rapid aging of the U.S. population. Medicare costs will continue to grow faster than GDP through the late 2070s due to projected increases in the volume and intensity of services provided."
Furthermore:
"For the sixth consecutive year, the Trustees are issuing a determination of projected excess general revenue Medicare funding, as is required by law whenever annual tax and premium revenues of the combined Medicare funds will be below 55 percent of projected combined annual outlays within the next 7 fiscal years. Under the law, two such consecutive determinations of projected excess general revenue constitute a “Medicare funding warning.” Under current law and the Trustees’ projections, such determinations and warnings will recur every year through the 75-year projection period."
It's a good read beyond the summary, too:
I'm all for a safety net. Scaling the system way down so that it only serves the people who need it would reduce the tax burden and solvency issues.
Although not perfect, taxes work quite well in France to reduce inequality. And the low taxes in the USA have the effect of helping a handful of super wealthy whilst leaving a lot of poor people behind, without access to good higher education, medical benefits, etc.
High earners and capital owners should most likely be taxed more in the USA, so the gov can redistribute have a better education & healthcare system, if the USA is to reduce inequality and become again the land of opportunity it once was.
Banks go bankrupt, gold changes value, cash gets stolen. Seems like the U.S. government is the best option.
I would trust my retirement to the US Treasury. No sane human would trust their retirement to the US Congress.
I'd love to have to repay my debts with those conditions.
The part where it takes people's money and prevents them from bettering the life of themselves and their families in favor of feeding that money into older people, most of whom are wealthier than the working person you're taking money from in real terms (e.g. most are homeowners)?
I wouldn't classify that part as "pretty nice", but you do you.
If you had invested that into a Roth 401k and invested it in the market at an annualized average return of 7.3% instead, it'd be $2.25M in retirement savings.
Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme because it's taking money as an "investment" from people working today, to pay out returns to previous "investors" who are now retired, while the government has raided it and filled it with IOUs to support spending unrelated to the pension.
Hear, hear, especially given the historical priors : (hint: across a generation-sized time spans, governments never keep their promises. Why should they, they usually are in power for decades at most).
And yes, relying on governments to handle your retirement money is completely insane, but the vast majority of folks in e.g. the EU have drunk that kool-aid even though it was guaranteed to fail since day one.
Retirement plans the way they work in Western Europe were always an absolute con, very much like a ponzi scheme (new players pay for the earlier players).
When the young, working population was vastly larger than the old retiree population (because the retirement age was designed so that most people died before reaching it), the government milked their working young for all they were worth.
Now that the age pyramid has inverted (large retiree population, few working youngs), there simply isn't enough income generated by the young to pay for the old and retirement income is paid using debt.
What a freak show.
That's pretty much how families worked before retirement plans, the kids payed for the parents.
This just got transferred to the whole society. And it worked as long the rise of productivity led to a rise of wages.
It worked as long as people had more than 2 kids. There was always a larger young population supporting the smaller old population.
And the GDPs are growing faster than the population, at least in the first world. So it's bo a matter of quantity but of distribution.
I would guess that most people my age (between 35-45) got told some variant of this in their business and economics classes in university. At least, I hope they did.
Looking at Social Security budgets for about 20-30 minutes and what politicians have proposed to do to fix it is enough to make most reasonably-minded people understand that expecting anything more than token amounts of money from the program is idiotic.
If you trust the financial markets more than the government that you elect, I have a bridge to sell you.
Sure some smart people will be able to extract profit from the market but most won't. I'd rather live in a country where the people I chose can organize to ensure that nobody needs for anything rather than in a country where I gamed the system and now have to protect my loot against hordes of have-nots.
And if I can't do that, the joke is on me.
Source? Put your money in an index fund. The S&P 500 from 1958 to 2008 went up 90x. The worst case scenario - All your savings are in stocks and you retire during the second worst financial crisis ever. And your returns are 90x. Not 90%, 9000%.
The idea that "most won't extract profit" is nonsense. In the long term, its free money for everyone.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1958?amount=1...
If you save for yourself it's likely that you lose.