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Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

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21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#21
post #6

The juxtapositions in here are interesting: - Most Americans don't know how social security is funded but - An overwhelming majority of nonretired adults (79%) do not believe they will receive their full scheduled Social Security benefits when they retire. - About three in four adults (77%) have heard that Social Security is projected to run short of money by 2033. If you thought you had an individual account, and yo…

How much should I put in isn't knowable - if I have known many who died before 62, and others who lived to 104. then there is various health that affects what you can spend - both ways, low health may mean spend nothing since you can't do anything or it may mean expensive nursing homes

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#22
post #10

This is an interesting topic that is also a very current one in the Netherlands: https://business.gov.nl/finance-and-taxes/pensions/the-new-p... Where they've essentially implemented the system as the 1 in 4 American think it works in the USA. Specifically: > It will become clearer how your pension or your employee’s pension grows. Employees will have their own pension account, showing all the contributions they have…

I'm not from the US, so please correct me if i'm wrong. My understanding is that the Social Security in the US is more comparable to our "AOW". And our AOW is not changing. Our pensions are more comparable to the 401K in the us.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#23
post #6

The juxtapositions in here are interesting: - Most Americans don't know how social security is funded but - An overwhelming majority of nonretired adults (79%) do not believe they will receive their full scheduled Social Security benefits when they retire. - About three in four adults (77%) have heard that Social Security is projected to run short of money by 2033. If you thought you had an individual account, and yo…

I was just having a conversation (argument) with my MIL about this. She claims that people have felt that SS would run out of money before they retire her entire life. Has this sentiment been tracked at all? I certainly feel like I (aged mid-30s) will not be benefitting, but the common argument is that the Ponzi scheme will find a way to perpetuate for longer

This is anecdotal, but I remember this sentiment becoming widespread in the 1980s, along with the imminent hyperinflation and currency collapse.

Political candidates (Carter and Reagan) promised reductions in federal spending, but couldn't get past the obvious lack of any real discretionary control due to the size of the biggest ticket items such as the entitlements and military. The conservative message of "entitlements will make you immoral" was replaced by "entitlements are unsustainable," making it sound like serious economics but without any real basis.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just having a conversation (argument) with my MIL about this. She claims that people have felt that SS would run out of money before they retire her entire life. Has this sentiment been tracked at all? I certainly feel like I (aged mid-30s) will not be benefitting, but the common argument is that the Ponzi scheme will find a way to perpetuate for longer

Social Security counts on there being a larger workforce every year. If there's ever a significant population crunch of working age people, it would be in trouble. In 2018, the cost of the Social Security program exceeded total revenues for the first time. At current rates, Social Security is projected to be insolvent by 2034. The only ways to mitigate this is to spend less or make more. But no one wants to pay more…

That early-mid 2030s prediction has been consistent all my life. It has gone up a little as rules changed but nobody was ever willing for the big reforms that could make it work long term.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#25
post #9

I sure do. It's the youth of America. They'd had better pay me, because I paid someone else, so they owe me. Especially after I paid a few pittances in property taxes for their wonderful schools.

You paying someone is not the fault of the previous generation, it's the fault of policymakers implementing a pyramid scheme

Those previous generations voted in those policymakers. Ergo the crimes of policymakers are their crimes and they should absolutely suffer for them.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#26
100% of the people polled are the type of people who interact with polls. The questions, framing, and context of the interaction is going to influence the results in ways that aren't corrected for. The day of the week, what's in the current news cycle, the context of the individual media bubbles of the poll takers, whether or not they've had breakfast, and a myriad other factors will influence the results in ways that aren't accounted for.

The confounders and the structure of these polls are not statistically significant or valid ways of understanding anything except perhaps the poll taking institutions, and the polls they choose to perform and publish can provide insight into underlying agendas. The bubbles which they influence most are part of that context, so the social narrative of those bubbles represents a significant bias, regardless of the rules which may or may not be followed for any given poll.

The sampling of 2200 people, the use of the "it's math! ta-da! Statistics." is handwavy and manipulative at best. The error bars are so large as to make the results effectively meaningless. People should stop believing polls and pollsters unless or until they engage in scientifically legitimate methodology. Blinds, multiple question distributions, psychological profiling, corrections for environmental, cultural, and personal bias, multiple significant population sizes, effective sampling in choice of participants, and so on, and those sorts of polls require money and time that make doing legitimate polls prohibitively expensive and lengthy.

Most institutions engaging in polling don't want to bother with because they know they can handwave away concerns by claiming "Statistically valid random sample size!" and not have to address any of the other methodological or structural flaws.

This is no better (or worse) than a poll on bsky or twitter or hackernews, effectively. They just hide the fact that they're sampling from a segregated population and pretend it's representative.

And as far as the economic doom of social security hanging over our heads, it requires a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility, and the chuckleheads who've been running congress the last 60 years got what they wanted. Austerity or collapse or a whole menu of unpleasant shit sandwiches await for those of us who have to deal with the boomers' irresponsible and reckless orgy of self enrichment.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#27
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just having a conversation (argument) with my MIL about this. She claims that people have felt that SS would run out of money before they retire her entire life. Has this sentiment been tracked at all? I certainly feel like I (aged mid-30s) will not be benefitting, but the common argument is that the Ponzi scheme will find a way to perpetuate for longer

Impossible to tell, but there's factors making it more likely to happen this time than in previous generations. Probably the biggest factor is the declining population, which no government around the world has been able to materialise an answer to. My personal retirement plans assume no social security. Anything I may get in old age is a nice bonus, but in my planning, it's not the beef.

Couple that with the out of control deficit spending. The US is bankrupting itself and the music will eventually stop.

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. There is a generational conflict coming, and in many ways it’s already here. At some point young people are going to be asked to pay more in taxes in order to bail out social security and it’ll radicalize them more than they are already. Given the option of bail out grandma or burn down the whole system don’t be surprised when they chose to burn it down. I think it’ll look a bit like the collapse…

Sorry sonny, I'm afraid I've rezoned the entire USA to basically ban building the amount of housing needed, and by the way we locked all our houses into long term mortgages at negative real interest rates you'll never see again so we will inflate away your money via the fed to pay for our house. I'll let you lower social security, but if you want someplace to stay you'll have to pay me a gazillion dollars or perform…

That doesn't work when the young generation rebels - gen x might side with old people, but they may also see how the system is failing in burn it. Youngers seeing the problem in 2034 will not have reason to continue it.

for that matter zoning reforn is already a thing - so their property map not be worth that much.

of course when predicting the future always use plenty of salt

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#29
post #15

I sure do. It's the youth of America. They'd had better pay me, because I paid someone else, so they owe me. Especially after I paid a few pittances in property taxes for their wonderful schools.

Talking to everyday people you need to realize that many many folks count on this govt pension and Medicare to live at all when they can't work. It's not an option. Company pensions are long gone, and 401Ks are only somewhat recently starting to take hold on younger people as a must have.

401k already covers more people than pensons ever did. and that is before we account for the pre-reform cases where the pension lost it all. (Though some 401k is lost to scams)

Re: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans think they have a personal social security account

#30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible to tell, but there's factors making it more likely to happen this time than in previous generations. Probably the biggest factor is the declining population, which no government around the world has been able to materialise an answer to. My personal retirement plans assume no social security. Anything I may get in old age is a nice bonus, but in my planning, it's not the beef.

Couple that with the out of control deficit spending. The US is bankrupting itself and the music will eventually stop.

There's a damn good reason i hold very few bonds.
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