Read up on how the NFL divides profits and how they pick new players... To help you out: http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/daily-show-nfl-socialism/ They are, but there is always immigration, so the country can easily make up the loss by the degrading birth rate. (without immigration, the USA would lose population)
yes, It's the same in Italy I'm on record, I don't like the designated hitter, and I don't like the salary cap. If you think you are so smart (not you in particular, but you in general) let's see you buy a team. 20 million and the guys on the disabled list. I like the free market. I don't need rules to make it fair. Fair is just another word for boring. They aint gonna be happy until everybody is equal, and they don't give a shit if that is equally happy or equally miserable.
I have no choice but to disagree with the contentions of your first paragraph if based on risk adjusted return. In that case your conclusion, "Almost any investment program followed for the 50-odd years someone is in the workforce until they begin to collect SS would result in a higher post-retirement income." is wrong in general, though it might be correct in specific individual cases involving high income individuals. Among the benefits of Social Security that we all enjoy, regardless of our income, is that provided by S.S.'s shared risk and income redistribution features, the latter being a minor socialist component! Those at the low end of the income scale must contribute far less per month to guarantee a subsistence pension than they would in a private plan without the shared risk and income redistribution feature. We all benefit from not having large number of destitute people on the streets in their old age! Politicians are not always wrong! http://www.perfectswindle.com/?p=81 http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html http://www.planningtampabay.org/net/gallery/files/SocialSecurityWhitePaperbyCarlson_Peter.pdf
Socialism is an artificially enforced shared impoverishment of mind, body, and spirit. True Liberty is the equally shared opportunity to rise or fall by your own desires and talents.
yeah, I would agree with that, for crying out loud, it's just a 65 year game. It would be no fun if I was still playing monopoly with my older sister and still paying her (by now I would be borrowing and deep in debt) every time I landed on Park Place. Every 65 years, we give everybody their monopoly money back, and if they turn in the little ship we break out the shuffleboard. But we could be doing a lot better. When I was a broker, I could be subject to some kind of mismanagement investigation if I took a 35 year old mans savings and just put it all in bonds. I don't know where you come off with this "Wall Street is just waiting to get their hands on Social Security" How would that be bad? And how would it not be better than the way we are doing it now? When people are finally complaining that social security benefits are just totally outrageous, and old people are living like kings, then you will know we did it right.
The risk adjusted return trend is down, down, down, and already negative for some earning classes and birth years. Eventually, it will be negative for all of them except the lowest earners and SS will be revealed as yet another welfare program only benefiting the least capable and taking capital away from the productive economy. Looking at history, the benchmark should be "Is this program sustainable for hundreds of years?". If the answer is no, why bother putting it in place? It's just a waste of time and resources.
SS is insurance, with a massive risk pool that makes it quite solvent if it's funded as it's supposed to be. It includes disability benefits as well as retirement benefits. It's meant strictly to keep you out of poverty, not provide a good return. The latter is up to you in your individual retirement program. The gov't is just making sure being old doesn't automatically mean being hungry and homeless.
we all voted on it. We decided that we would help you when you fell on hard times. Nobody enforced that on us. We when we were of sound mind and body we made that decision. Everybody likes democracy until most people vote the other way. If you don't like it, don't bitch about socialism. Bitch about democracy. People like to talk about how capitalism will eventually fail, a better discussion is about how democracy will eventually fail.