Social Security--still the best retirement deal around

[customerserviceguy]

7. Yes, and things were going really well for Bernie Madoff's investors

Right until December, 2008. They could have made similar claims. Of course, it's not a fair comparison, Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, where investors don't know that their "returns" are coming from new investors' money. SS is more of a pyramid scheme, where everybody knows that new contributions fund the benefits that those who have been in the system awhile get.

No one has convinced me that the twin pincers of a permanently damaged economy without good paying jobs combined with the waves of baby boomers finally hitting the rolls won't crush the system as we know it, and way ahead of the Social Security Trustees' rosy predictions, that have lately been revised downwards for the last couple of years.

That's why younger Americans feel mighty pessimistic about it, and that's why Romney-Ryan will go after them with partial privatization. For the last two years, we've seen a payroll tax "holiday" that in effect tells people, "Hey, here's some of your money back, save it for a rainy day." That's what I did with my FICA tax cut, I added it to the money going into my 401K, which is invested solely in money market funds.