Social security

[bullfrog !]

Answer seems pretty simple to me since upper income levels have reached all time highs due to the capitalistic system being manipulated into illegal monopolies, raise the tax on those that received what are ill gotten gains and make it unprofitable to do so by fines and breaking them up. Should provide plenty of money for needed programs like Social Security and the like.

 

[bullfrog !]

^^^I guess there are a lot of wealthy, well educated, healthy people that are really envious of all those living under blue tarps so cheaply? Lol!!! There are solutions to all almost all those problems you mentioned but almost all of them require money to fix. I don’t suggest wasting money by throwing it as I have a bad shoulder. I do suggest that improving people’s lives is cheaper than dealing with the problems not doing so causes. Changing reality requires action and working, bitching just irritates the situation in reality.

 

[tx2sturgis]

I removed a couple of posts that 'crossed the line'.

I was slow to catch on to something that I later had to delete. Apologies to those who saw it and understood before I did.

 

[Morgana]

Yeah there are @ssh0les everywhere.
There are also good people going unrecognized everywhere.

There is waste of tax money.
There is also waste of private-sector money.
And waste of charitable money.

And before we scorn tax money too much, we should look around us and imagine our lives without tax-supported infrastructure or services. Some of that $$ gets spent well. (Sure, a /few/ people can live in backwoods self-reliance, but that's not an option for most individuals or for society as a whole.) The trouble with money is you can't /throw/ it, you have to /spend it carefully/, and somehow people in charge of the big bucks rarely seem to manage that.

There are people who just want to feed at the public trough.
There are people who are so damn tired they can't even imagine what they might do if they got a chance.
There are people who have made so many bad choices in a row that bad choices are almost baked in.
There are people who with just one or two good choices could get their feet on a solid good path.
And there are people who have worked so god damned hard for so heartbreakingly long, to better themselves or give their kids a chance, and get slapped down for no reason by oblivious idiots (or worse), and get up and try again, until they can't anymore.

And if you or I think we know which is which just by looking at 'em for a couple of minutes, we are fools.

There is no such thing as a system that works perfectly. There will always be some waste, and some people who fall through the cracks. The goal should be to minimize that, as fairly as possible. In my opinion, you get the farthest the fastest if you focus on actions and consequences rather than speculating about people's inner lives. Yes that will mean some deserving people lose out, but you cannot save everyone and we are not saving everyone now.

As far as what "people" want, I have no clue. We seem to be a mass of contradictions. I'm gonna make one generalization about "people" here, though. I spent the first two years of my retirement trying like hell to find a good volunteer gig working for refugees and migrants. It was a fiasco, and I am now trying to pull my health and finances back out of that vast sucking sound you hear when your plans go south (no biggie, still better off than most). BUT. What I DID see -- aside from waste and dysfunction and cavalier treatment of volunteers -- during the few precious days/weeks that I actually got to do any work -- was people ready to work their tails off at the drop of a hat. Seriously, any time there was work that a client could do, they jumped at it. Whether it was a question of helping the shelter staff or supporting each other, they were ON it, with energy and flair and focus. I haven't talked about this much b/c I know it can easily get too political -- so please don't take it there -- but I will say this once: these people can be a huge resource.

There are more than enough of the other kind. But there are also people, both home grown and fresh off the bus, who are ready to pay back any handout/hand-up 100-fold.

 

[bullfrog !]

At 72 years old still working but not at the high paying jobs I used to be physically able to do, with the aid of Social Security I am able to get by unless my health costs bankrupt me once again. I agree the current system of dealing with people living in poverty is not working well and if the success rate of education and training using the system we have now is only producing limited success it needs to change. What motivated me was the realization/belief is that I could do better if I could escape the poverty of Eastern Kentucky, actually there is poverty everywhere I’ve come to learn. I chose the military and then education and through those I have managed to just barely have a healthy and productive life. I personally feel every citizen of America should be required to serve at least 4 years after public high school and be entitled to additional training or education as well as lifetime medical benefits. Social Security should have a guaranteed minimum living benefit to include minimum housing, anything more should be based on lifetime working wages if offered at all. Living in this country should be a privilege that is earned as it is now by incoming immigrants who have to overcome many difficulties to gain that privilege. Our systems need to accommodate those in poverty who want to escape, and yes those that don’t do need to be treated or motivated to do so but not left to flounder about on their own and suffer.

 

[bullfrog !]

Coming from mining towns and close knit communities and families I can see where people would seek safe havens and be afraid or uncomfortable trying out new opportunities. Again I would hope forums and groups like this one would help overcome those type issues. It helped me and I hope my comments here help others.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Several items have been removed, for a variety of reasons. We appreciate the thought provoking nature of this topic and understand it can cause a certain amount of internal conflict here.

However, please be advised going forward: If a post is insulting or disrespectful or disparaging in any manner about anyone or any group, it will be removed without notice.

 

[RonDean]

At 72 years old still working but not at the high paying jobs I used to be physically able to do, with the aid of Social Security I am able to get by unless my health costs bankrupt me once again. I agree the current system of dealing with people living in poverty is not working well and if the success rate of education and training using the system we have now is only producing limited success it needs to change. What motivated me was the realization/belief is that I could do better if I could escape the poverty of Eastern Kentucky, actually there is poverty everywhere I’ve come to learn. I chose the military and then education and through those I have managed to just barely have a healthy and productive life. I personally feel every citizen of America should be required to serve at least 4 years after public high school and be entitled to additional training or education as well as lifetime medical benefits. Social Security should have a guaranteed minimum living benefit to include minimum housing, anything more should be based on lifetime working wages if offered at all. Living in this country should be a privilege that is earned as it is now by incoming immigrants who have to overcome many difficulties to gain that privilege. Our systems need to accommodate those in poverty who want to escape, and yes those that don’t do need to be treated or motivated to do so but not left to flounder about on their own and suffer.

Some great ideas. I would also offer an option on "serving" that included non-military possibilities. Not everyone is a good choice for military service. Both for them and for us, we need to offer other alternatives like Peace Core, Community Service, etc. And then include paid education AND retraining when meaningful changes occur in specific careers. We seem to be OK with a tax supported military service but not with education or career training. That makes no sense to me.

 

[bullfrog !]

There are presently federal programs to meet some of these needs but not often are they advertised by schools or organizations or meet all the costs involved to be able to take advantage of them.

 

[RonDean]

There are presently federal programs to meet some of these needs but not often are they advertised by schools or organizations or meet all the costs involved to be able to take advantage of them.

Yes, there is a patchwork of private, federal, and state programs that help. Some help much more than others and all of them seem to have more requirements than positive results. Repayment plans also do not always work so well. This is (IMO) the result of these plans being crafted more to provide a profitable financial return on investment regardless of the impact on the borrowers. The American Way!

If we could take a more holistic view and understand our entire economy benefits from a better educated and trained workforce we might also be willing to pay for this with taxes instead of loans. The graduating workers that did not have to start their post education careers burdened with these loans could instead be repaying our country by paying a higher tax rate based on their higher income levels. They would also be able to buy homes, or new cars, or start families, or otherwise participate sooner in the pursuit of the American Dream.

"Researchers at Stanford University, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Russell Sage Foundation, finds that approximately half of parental income advantages in the United States are passed on to children... The results indicate that opportunities for economic success are far from equally distributed. " https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/...tsized-influence-on-childrens-economic-future

In short, your chances of education and economic success more influenced by your parent's income level than your own merit and work ethic. Even in the earliest days of the US, higher education was mostly confined to children of the wealthy. Even today, those children still have an outsized advantage over children born into poverty or middle class. Maybe, if we leveled the playing field, we might approach the merit based system so many of us think we have.

 

[bullfrog !]

For people 18 through 26 years old AmeriCorps offers work programs to learn skills and pay for college. I have seen several young workers attempting to do this but it is difficult with limited funds. If programs like these were improved by expanding age limits and funded it seems they would work well.

 

[SLB_SA]

This COLA Estimate for 2024 is 3.2% Senior Citizens League article estimates a 3.2% SS COLA increase for 2024. It is easy to create a (very short) spreadsheet into which one can input the cpi-w values for July, August & September and determine the upcoming SS COLA. When I guessed September's CPI-W value at 303.36 (which is certainly wrong but gas prices are going up), my estimate of the 2024 SS COLA was 3.3%. In any case, we will get the new CPI-W value for September around October 13 and learn the new COLA soon after.

 

[SLB_SA]

I removed a couple of posts that 'crossed the line'.

I was slow to catch on to something that I later had to delete. Apologies to those who saw it and understood before I did.

My training does not allow me to ignore the misuse of statistics, even though I often find the humor in this.

 

[towboater]

My training does not allow me to ignore the misuse of statistics, even though I often find the humor in this.

Mark Twain once said: “There are 3 kinds of lies. Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics.”

 

[RonDean]

Mark Twain once said: “There are 3 kinds of lies. Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics.”

What are worth less than statistics? Opinions based on feelings. At least with statistics we can do some research and figure out how likely it is to be true.

But, it is an amusing quote.

 

[Frood]

What are worth less than statistics? Opinions based on feelings. At least with statistics we can do some research and figure out how likely it is to be true.

But, it is an amusing quote.

Twain was a marvelous author. In this case though, I don't think he was referring to statistics themselves but rather the propensity to willfully misattribute causality based on simple correlation. Of course I don't know the original context of the quote either so I may be guilty of a bit if misattribution myself in this case.

 

[SLB_SA]

The Consumer Price Index for September 2023 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, October 12, 2023,
at 8:30 a.m. (ET). link
I will post the calculation for 2024 SS COLA next Thursday morning. I don't know if they (SSA) "fudge" the COLA calculation.

 

[SLB_SA]

The CPI-W data from 07/2022, 08/2022 and 09/2022 were 292.219, 291.629 and 291.854 respectively. The sum of these three numbers is 875.702.
The CPI-W data from 07/2023, 08/2023 and 09/2023 were 299.899, 301.551 and 302.257 respectively. The sum of these three numbers is 903.707.
The SS COLA increase is (SUM2023-SUM2022)/SUM2022, written as a percentage (by rounding) to the first decimal place or SS-COLA=ROUND(1000*(903.707-875.702)/875.702)/10 = 3.2%.

 

[Tony's Dream]

My wife applied for SS when she reached 62 and I plan to do the same thing next year. I paid into SS for over 40 years and I feel that is is rightfully mine. I do consider it a pension plan even though I know it really isn't. It makes up a good share of our retirement funds, allowing us to leave our 401K funds invested. If they decide I should not be entitled to receive it, then they should refund all the money I paid in. It should not be my responsiblity to fund the retirement of others. The decsions we make dictate the life we lead. I heard that congress is considering making SS subject to a means test......meaning that if you did well in life and built a generous retirement account that you would not be entitled to SS despite the fact that you pay into it. I know that many receive it due to valid medical reasons.....just my opinion.

 

[mpruet]

There are several strategies when it comes to SS. I chose to delay because a guaranteed 8% appreciation was more attractive to me than investment growth. Also since I delayed, my COLA is based on a larger base than otherwise would have been the case. For instance the average COLA this year will be about $654 per year. But mine will be over $1400.