Name:   architect - Subject:   Social Security...One more time Date:   3/5/2016 6:14:51 PM (updated 3/5/2016 6:27:29 PM)

"If a retirement fund was run the way Social Security is blah, blah, blah".  Social Security is not, never has been and, hopefully, never will be a "retirement" fund in the sense of an investment account with an individual name on it.  I am amazed at how many supposedly smart people think it is.  It is an "Insurance" fund set up to help "insure" old people have at least some income.  FICA stands for "Federal Insurance Contribution Act".  Keep in mind, the first elderly people to receive SS benefits in the 1930's had not put one nickle in the system.  The system was financed by contributions from currently working people to pay the benefits to the retired.  I pay into SS every year to help pay for the survivors even older than me and I also get SS every month from monthly deductions from my daughter and son-in-law and their generation.  My grand daughter will be paying in at some point to pay benefits to her parents.  The system is still taking in more than it pays out but that will change with more and more baby boomers retiring and existing retirees living longer.  Eventually the FICA tax will have to go up whether the Republicans like it or not and the retirement age will have to be raised whether the Democrats like it or not.  Invest and/or gamble all personal funds you can afford into a personal retirement account, but do not gamble away somebody elses retirement income betting on Wall Street!

BTW:  The Social Security taxes have been used as part of the general fund for many years...I think since WWII.  But that income was not counted in the general revenue until much more recently.  Can you guess who was the first president to include the SS "Trust Fund" income as part of the general revenue so the deficit appeared less than it actually was?  That great fiscal conservative, the sainted Ronald Reagan.  I guess that is where "W" learned a similar the trick of putting his war funding as an emergency appropriation so it didn't appear as part of the general budget...yet another way of making the deficit, if not the debt, appear smaller.  Can you guess who stopped this practice?  The reviled profligate Barack Obama!