I can best that.
My mother-in-law receives an SSI check 1/2 of my father-in-law's. Their total take is $1,800/month. My father-in-law "paid the maximum" until 1990, total contributions were $50,000. My mother-in-law worked part-time for 2.5 years, her total? < $1,000. My mother-in-law is 70 and my father-in-law just turned 70. To date their withdrawls from the SS "Trust Fund" exceed $124,000. They're both in good health and can reasonably expect to take out another $200,000.
What I find absolutely hysterical is the Repo position that people of my parents generation "would have been better off putting their money in the stock market." Yeah? The stock market would have GUARANTEED a $50,000 investment turning into over $300,000? Or how about my mother-in-law's SSI performance? She put in less than $1,000 and is taking home at least $120,000. Think "the market" could have done that for her? And let us not forget that they both receive health insurance as a part of their pay-back in addition to the checks. How much is that worth?
The sad fact is that my father-in-law put money into the SS fund for 30 years and put less in total than I have as of right now. And I've got at least another $100,000 to put in before I'm old enough to qualify for withdrawls. Worse, my in-laws don't really need the SS money, but they're gonna get it.
[Edit]
I love my in-laws, but they are the poster children for what is wrong with Social Security.
bcnu,
Mikem
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
- Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
Edited by
mmoffitt
June 10, 2003, 07:16:43 AM EDT
