Why the disdain for “rich” people ?

[silicosys4]

Exactly the wrong question to ask this Boomer, son.

Outside of the military where a 40-50 hour week can be the norm, I was regularly working 80+ hours a week as a regular work week, not just when overtime was available. Doing so alongside others doing the same, both before and after retirement. 40-50 hours a week would be disappointing when you picked the work for both the pay rate and the maximum amount of work available.

You aren't nearly as much in touch with the everyday working man, Boomers or not, as you like to believe you are. The people I worked those jobs with would consider somebody working 40-50 hours a week a lightweight.

How many hours did you put on the clock this last pay period? Hours have been dry for me but I managed to squeeze an extra 11 hrs OT for 51 total.
Here's the bottom line. It sounds you haven't punched a timesheet for income in a while, and I am currently gainfully employed full time. It really sounds like you are out of touch with the current job market.
I'll happily take all the OT I can get. Its not there. There is no budget. The economy is in the tank right now. Bless your heart, I'd love to be working 80 hours a week right now. But I can't.

Are you happy with the current economy? Do you participate in the current job market?
Are you happy with the rampant inflation over the last five years?
I'm not, most people who are actually working to pay the bills aren't.

You refuse to acknowledge that people have been living long enough to exceed their contributions for a long, long time - the first recipients of Social Security got a thousand times more in benefits than they paid in. That went on for a long time before the crossover to where we are today. Perhaps you too will live long enough to also wrongfully receive more than you contributed.

Thats actually very wrong.

life expectancy at birth in 1933–1934 was ≈61 y for white males, 65 y for white females, 52 y for black males, and 55 y for black females, as shown in Table 2 (3, 4).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523276856#:~:text=For%20those%20individuals%20celebrating%20their,15%20y%20for%20black%20females.&text=Adapted%20from%20reference%203.&text=Data%20are%20extrapolated%20from%20reference,increased%20greatly%20for%20all%20groups.

So optimistically 61 years old in 1934 when social security was implemented, vs 79 years old now.

U.S. life expectancy for 2025 is 79.40, a 0.18% increase from 2024​

U.S. Life Expectancy (1950-2025)

Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.

www.macrotrends.net

Thats a darned big jump. Now consider the following:

The system worked smoothly when there were many workers and relatively few people drawing benefits. In 1965, for example, there were about four times as many workers paying into the system (80.5 million) as beneficiaries (20.2 million).

But as the Baby Boom generation has aged out of the workforce and into retirement, that ratio has steadily fallen. In 2023, the year covered by the most recent trustees’ report, there were just 2.7 workers per beneficiary. By the end of this century, the ratio is projected to decline to 2.1, with 230.7 million workers and 110.4 million people collecting benefits.

What the data says about Social Security

Most U.S. adults said Social Security benefits shouldn’t be reduced in any way – a view broadly shared across ages, racial and ethnic groups, partisan affiliations and income brackets.

www.pewresearch.org

But where did you earn the right to claim those receiving Social Security payouts now based on what they paid in over their entire lives are "forcibly extracting" money from you? Are the Boomers showing up at your workplace armed, by force of arms demanding you pull out your wallet and give them a percentage of the pay stub you just received from your employer?

What happens if someone refuses to pay their social security taxes? Men with guns show up to throw them in jail. Who is the primary beneficiary from this? Retirees. What generation overwhelmingly comprises retirees? Boomers.

Where did you earn the right to claim you speak either for working people today, or to decide how much people are entitled to in order to "sustain their retirement"? You not only don't know them, you also don't know their circumstances or whatever else is going on in their lives.

I don't claim to speak for working people today. I'm asking the same questions that many other people are asking and making predictions based on information.
I'll ask you again. Are you entitled to extract benefits exceeding that which you paid in if you have the equity to sustain yourself?

Where did you earn the right to demand retired people liquidate their wealth accumulated over their life's work in order to "redistribute the wealth" to other people who did absolutely nothing but share the air with those retirees to have any claim on the wealth they accumulated over their lifetimes?

Like I said, I'm not demanding retirees liquidate their wealth. I'm proposing cutting off the checks to some people. If/how they choose to spend their own money after that is entirely up to them.
My position is that once you've depleted your retirement contributions, if you have the inability or desire to not work and you have the equity to sustain yourself then you should pay your own way instead of extracting from other people. Would Sowell agree?
I notice nobody has brought up Marx in a while, and I suspect its because I've demonstrated that the current system is based far more on Marxism than you care to admit while my proposal is far more capitalistic in nature than you care to admit

You now have a perfect record of not responding to my points, but instead responding with additions to your list of complaints of what makes you a victim.

I have given you answers to most of your questions, you just aren't acknowledging them at all. I suspect you aren't because in doing so you'd have to address the points i'm making.
How am I a victim by stating that I deserve to keep more of my hard earned money and have less of it forcibly taken from me for redistribution to people who have far more equity than I do?

While at the same time your alternative response to myself and others is that we didn't respond to your points...

You still haven't answered my most basic question.
Are millionaire retirees entitled to receive more in benefits than they contributed?

That's cute. Try working on call 24/7 for a few decades like I did.

Do you have any idea what people would give to have the cost of living, pay rates, housing prices, and federal debt that you had most if not all of that time? Heck, I'd take a 24/7 on-call job in a heartbeat just for the housing market of 15 years ago.

 

[Autonomous]

How many hours did you put on the clock this last pay period? Hours have been dry for me but I managed to squeeze an extra 11 hrs OT for 51 total.
Here's the bottom line. It sounds you haven't punched a timesheet for income in a while, and I am currently gainfully employed full time. It really sounds like you are out of touch with the current job market.
I'll happily take all the OT I can get. Its not there. There is no budget. The economy is in the tank right now. Bless your heart, I'd love to be working 80 hours a week right now. But I can't.

Are you happy with the current economy? Do you participate in the current job market?
Are you happy with the rampant inflation over the last five years?
I'm not, most people who are actually working to pay the bills aren't.


Thats actually very wrong.


So optimistically 61 years old in 1934 when social security was implemented, vs 79 years old now.


Thats a darned big jump. Now consider the following:



What happens if someone refuses to pay their social security taxes? Men with guns show up to throw them in jail. Who is the primary beneficiary from this? Retirees. What generation overwhelmingly comprises retirees? Boomers.

I don't claim to speak for working people today. I'm asking the same questions that many other people are asking and making predictions based on information.
I'll ask you again. Are you entitled to extract benefits exceeding that which you paid in if you have the equity to sustain yourself?

Like I said, I'm not demanding retirees liquidate their wealth. I'm proposing cutting off the checks to some people. If/how they choose to spend their own money after that is entirely up to them.
My position is that once you've depleted your retirement contributions, if you have the inability or desire to not work and you have the equity to sustain yourself then you should pay your own way instead of extracting from other people. Would Sowell agree?
I notice nobody has brought up Marx in a while, and I suspect its because I've demonstrated that the current system is based far more on Marxism than you care to admit while my proposal is far more capitalistic in nature than you care to admit

I have given you answers to most of your questions, you just aren't acknowledging them at all. I suspect you aren't because in doing so you'd have to address the points i'm making.
How am I a victim by stating that I deserve to keep more of my hard earned money and have less of it forcibly taken from me for redistribution to people who have far more equity than I do?

You still haven't answered my most basic question.
Are millionaire retirees entitled to receive more in benefits than they contributed?

Do you have any idea what people would give to have the cost of living, pay rates, housing prices, and federal debt that you had most if not all of that time? Heck, I'd take a 24/7 on-call job in a heartbeat just for the housing market of 15 years ago.

You say you'll take a 24/7 on call job. Not sure you could. You take that call at some random time of day or night to be gone for two days or in rare cases, two weeks on a holddown.
Making plans? No, you can't. You just can't. You can book a day off if they let you, big if. That move is likely to cost you two days' pay.
Whiners washed out pretty quickly. I saw a lot of 'em; you remind me of them.
Have you ever tried to hire on with a railroad? Didn't think so. You can't do something you haven't tried.

 

[ladder13]

If anyone shouldn’t receive more than they put in what’s the point of taking their money AND their employers money? I don’t see mention of employer contributions made by the money grabbers here. Should we be giving the govt a no interest loan? Don’t they already have one with income taxes?

Is the govt holding it in the “lock box” because they think we’re all too stupid and can’t save OUR money in OUR own accounts?
Maybe we ARE stupid thinking they put OUR money and OUR employers aside,not to be touched by anyone until we reach 62+. What happens to the interest they earn, that in the lockbox too?

If you’re going to take OUR money and OUR employers money you damn well better pay more than that after 30 to 40 years or more.

 

[45Smashemflat]

12.4% of every paycheck since I started working, invested MY way would pay out way more than I will receive from .gov.

 

[ladder13]

And another 2.9% for Medicare

Where does the money go taken from people who die before receiving a penny?

 

[silicosys4]

You say you'll take a 24/7 on call job. Not sure you could. You take that call at some random time of day or night to be gone for two days or in rare cases, two weeks on a holddown. Whiners washed out pretty quickly.
Have you ever tried to hire on with a railroad? Didn't think so. You can't do something you haven't tried.

LOL oh no. On call.
Ever work on a commercial fishing boat out of sight of land for weeks at a time working 18 hour days?
Actually working, mind you, not just living under the dire threat of imminent work, such as when you are on call.
Yea I didn't think so. I have. Not sure you could.

 

[Bekeart]

I have no respect for any executive with salary that is more than a THOUSAND times that of his lowest paid worker.

Bekeart

 

[GypsmJim]

Yes, you earned what you put in and the interest derived. You refuse to acknowledge that many retirees live long enough to far exceed their contributions. Did you earn the right to forcibly extract more than you earned from working people so you can sustain a retirement?

My Grandpa paid in for 24 years. Then he collected for the next 37 years. That was 30 years ago. I have 2 friends that worked for 50 years, but only collected for 1 year. And others that died before collecting a dime. It seems to me that it sall balances out.

I know what I have contributed and how much I am getting back. I don't know how long I will live. The actuary tables show that I may get back a little more than I paid in. But if I had invested the money on my own, even at a modest interest rate, I would be much further ahead.

---------------------------

I know what its like to be on call 24/7/365. The calls usually came at 3 AM. When I went on a fishing vacation I always had to have the cell on my hip, even when out in the boat. I'm not complaining - I got paid accordingly and I took the job with open eyes.

 

[silicosys4]

My Grandpa paid in for 24 years. Then he collected for the next 37 years. That was 30 years ago. I have 2 friends that worked for 50 years, but only collected for 1 year. And others that died before collecting a dime. It seems to me that it sall balances out.

I posted quite a bit of info demonstrating that it is not "balancing out". If it were, we wouldn't be stacking an extra trillion dollars in debt every few months keeping up with it.

I know what I have contributed and how much I am getting back. I don't know how long I will live. The actuary tables show that I may get back a little more than I paid in. But if I had invested the money on my own, even at a modest interest rate, I would be much further ahead.

SS has become a scam, a pyramid scheme. If someone tried to sell me on an investment that is guaranteed to go bankrupt within the next 10 years I'd laugh in their face. But that's what I'm being told I'd better pay into OR ELSE.

---------------------------

I know what its like to be on call 24/7/365. The calls usually came at 3 AM. When I went on a fishing vacation I always had to have the cell on my hip, even when out in the boat. I'm not complaining - I got paid accordingly and I took the job with open eyes.

Good on you.

 

[luvsmiths]

My Grandpa paid in for 24 years. Then he collected for the next 37 years. That was 30 years ago. I have 2 friends that worked for 50 years, but only collected for 1 year. And others that died before collecting a dime. It seems to me that it sall balances out.

I know what I have contributed and how much I am getting back. I don't know how long I will live. The actuary tables show that I may get back a little more than I paid in. But if I had invested the money on my own, even at a modest interest rate, I would be much further ahead.

---------------------------

I know what its like to be on call 24/7/365. The calls usually came at 3 AM. When I went on a fishing vacation I always had to have the cell on my hip, even when out in the boat. I'm not complaining - I got paid accordingly and I took the job with open eyes.

Boy, who would have EVER thought this thread would go so far off the rails?

I never would have seen it coming. I'm actually shocked.

 

[dockmurgw]

Boy, who would have EVER thought this thread would go so far off the rails?

I never would have seen it coming. I'm actually shocked.

Another dumpster fire. Might be my imagination, but this seems to be growing.... youngsters with low post counts.

 

[GypsmJim]

Another dumpster fire. Might be my imagination, but this seems to be growing.... youngsters with low post counts.

Maybe we need to let the youngsters have the last word.

 

[dockmurgw]

Maybe we need to let the youngsters have the last word.

I think your right. Note to self: Take a deep breath and ignore.

 

[biku324]

12.4% of every paycheck since I started working, invested MY way would pay out way more than I will receive from .gov.

I know a guy who believed that with his pension. He was a Continental 747 pilot with 23 years in the left seat. When Continental merged with United, he could pull out his contributions plus interest, or get 70% of what his pension would have been without the merger. I'll mildly mention that reduced pension was 2.5x my highest contracting salary. He retired, pulled out his contributions, made investments, and while never poor, his investment income, a diverse mix, has never been close to what his pension would have been. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Denverd0n]

Maybe we need to let the youngsters have the last word.

Probably should. Lots of folks (stupidly) imagine that if they get in the last word then they "win." I'm always happy to give them the last word. (And I know for sure that THIS post will definitely NOT be the last word!)

 

[ladder13]

I knew a guy who walked out between two cars and was killed.
I know a woman who was good looking and became disfigured by plastic surgery.
I know
I know
I know

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

Some people have this notion that the rich are rich because they steal from the poor. Though how can the poor have anything worth stealing ? There's the image of the "robber barons" from the 19th Century, though the robber barons, like criminal gangs everywhere, were often at each others throats and saw each other as the real enemy.
Some people can only define themselves not by what they do but what they are against, what they envy.

 

[dsf]

I'd agree regarding SS being a pyramid or Ponzi Scheme but for the reason there is no legal requirement to pay out money. And certainly not with any relationship to contribution. I realize the government does everything possible to nurture that perception and we gobble it up, but it doesn't exist.

Being a tax sidesteps the pyramid scheme liability.

Interesting how adept our legislators can be when it comes to extracting $$$ from us.

 

[silicosys4]

Interesting how adept our legislators can be when it comes to extracting $$$ from us.

It was easy.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship..."
- Alexander Fraser Tytler

Thats where we are at now.
Retirees on the right and left have been brainwashed into thinking that one has the "right" to live for decades without producing anything while maintaining 100% of their equity, by extracting wealth from others. Its nonsense that is not grounded in any reality or economic theory, its a rotten, corrupt system, and it CLEARLY needs major reform at the least.
Insolvent within 10 years.

 

[Denverd0n]

Some people have this notion that the rich are rich because they steal from the poor.

The idiotic fallacy, held by way too many, that the economy is a zero-sum game. It is not. As about 30 seconds of rational, objective thought will reveal.

Sad that so many people are more interested in nurturing their preconceptions and their envy, rather than spending 30 seconds in rational, objective thought.