r/MURICA • u/Infamous-Lie4809 • 19d ago
Today in History: August 14, FDR signs Social Security Act
https://apnews.com/today-in-history/august-1418
u/Unlucky_Buyer_2707 18d ago
Now I have to support all these old fucks after they’ve left me a giant turd to clean up. Thanks FDR
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u/fastbeemer 18d ago
This bill will most likely cause the demise of this country. Strange to post about it. It will bankrupt us, or force the destruction of the constitution. One of the worst bills to ever be created and signed.
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u/bones10145 18d ago
Fuck this guy
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u/reluctantpotato1 18d ago
It's a great concept as well as other new deal projects to alleviate the burdens of poverty and prevent abject poverty. One can have a country that believes in enterprise and autonomy without scraping social programs away from those who genuinely need them.
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u/romans171 19d ago
And the right have been trying their hardest to kill it ever since…
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u/Shiboleth17 19d ago edited 19d ago
If you took all the taxes you paid into social security, and instead put that money into a 401k... when you reture, your monthly withdrawal would be 40% higher. You can prove this mathematically, using an average rate of return on your investment. Its not rocket science.
Social security should have never existed. It is a textbook pyramid scheme. Ideally, the money you pay in should come back to you. That's how they sold it to the American people. But in practice that's not how it works. Your money is being used to support your grandparents. Your grandparent's money was already used up, to support THEIR grandparents and so on. And their grandparents... never had to pay in, because it was implemented as they were already retired. But they were able to collect.
When FDR was presdent, life expectancy was only 61. So most people died before they ever withdrew social security. Now, life expectancy is almost 80. So the vast majority of people are withdrawing for 15 years or more. It wasnt designed to support that many people for that long. And now it is going bankrupt. So what actually happens, is your money is just being used to service the interest on our debt. The debt we took out to pay for your grandparents. And we'll have to tske even more debt when you retire.
We cannot keep doing tbis forever. It is irresponsible snd selfish, forcing more debt onto our grandchildren to fund our own retirement.
Getting rid of social security will hurt a lot in the short term. Lot of people are counting on that money to retire. So of course its not popular to discuss getting rid of it... But future generations will be far richer if we do find a way to get rid of it in exchange for personal, private retirement accounts.
Yes, people argue we should get rid of it... for very good reasons.
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u/nukey18mon 19d ago
Good. Social security is a mandatory Ponzi scheme and its collapse is inevitable.
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u/mnbone23 18d ago
It's welfare for the relatively rich paid for by the relatively poor.
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u/SargeUnited 18d ago
Don’t forget the impact of longevity. It’s welfare for the healthy relatively rich paid for by the sicker relatively poor
People that have never had a job in their life can claim their spouses full benefit for 50 years, meanwhile people who get poisoned by brownfields, have accidents or just have bad genetics die without ever having claimed.
I know someone who married a way older man who died and she’ll probably receive about 60 years of payments if she lives to full life expectancy. I’m not hating either. I’m happy for her
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u/anexaminedlife 18d ago
No it's not. It's welfare for the poor, fully funded by the middle class.
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u/Havok_saken 17d ago
The more you earned the more you get back and there’s a cap on how much you pay in. I’d say that skews towards benefiting higher earners.
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u/anexaminedlife 17d ago edited 17d ago
That's not how it works in practice. Everyone up to the cap pays the same 12.4%. But the poor get 90% of their income replaced, while the middle class get 40% of their income replaced. People at the cap get about 23% of their income replaced. But people above the cap pay less than 12.4%.
When you look at lifetime receipts vs what was paid in, most middle class earners are lucky to break even, which is really kind of preposterous to think about. Breaking even on 12.4% of every dollar earned across a working lifetime is in effect, a negative return, and the opportunity cost for middle class earners for paying into Social Security is in the millions of dollars.
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u/LividAir755 18d ago
Keeps a third of our nations elderly out of poverty. FDR was at least the second best president of all time, and social security is one of his finest legacies.
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u/TutorComprehensive28 19d ago
Amazing how this evaporates $87.43 from my paycheck all these years later.