The following was sent out by a US friend.
I add a comment in the comments' section.
So:
A woman dies at age 65 before collecting one benefit check. She and her employer paid into the system for almost 50 years and she collected NOTHING. Keep in mind all the working people that die every year who were paying into the system and got nothing.
And these governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the system, so that it's now going broke.
BEAUTIFUL! And they have the audacity to call today's seniors "vultures" in an attempt to cover their ineptitude. DISGRACEFUL!
The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving entitlements thus putting them in the same category as welfare, and food stamp recipients.
THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES TO READ AND DIGEST!
F.Y.I. By changing the name of SS contributions, it gives them a means to refute this program in the future. It's free money for the government to spend under this guise.
The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a *Federal Benefit Payment* ?
I'll be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.
Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment."
This is NOT a benefit. It is OUR money , paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too ! It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.(This should be enough for you to forward this message, If not read on.)
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved.
This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it's a fact). And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger *Ponzi scheme* than Bernie Madoff ever did (or Lyndon Johnson).
They took our money and used it elsewhere. They "forgot"(oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them ... and they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they've told us that the money won't support us for very much longer. (Isn't it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?)
But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a *benefit*, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. This is stealing!
Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't mean that our investments were for charity!
Let's take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is:
Our Earned Retirement Income .
90% of people won't forward this.
PLEASE! Will you?
So:
This is an exceptionally important item that the framers of the next manifestos from The Labour Party and Co-operative Party need to internalise.
At a meeting of our London group associated with The Equality Trust and, therefore promoting the Spirit Level book's findings that greater income equality is good for everyone, we were shown a graph showing the ages at death of people in the UK, according to income class.
At that time, the State Pensionable age, for men, was 65 and, for women, 60.
Astonishingly, though perhaps not so, a man needed to be in the 'most wealthy' last four or so tenths to have a real chance of drawing any State Pension. Death came first.
Now, for whatever celebrations we may have for the trio of structural policies that the 1945 Labour government enacted (Ie Nationalisation, Keynesianism economics and the Welfare State: all copied to greater and lesser degrees in the US, Canada, Australia, etc), they were not socialist policies nor did they, in their proportional effect benefit the Worked Class people, families and communities.
They mostly, as was their intent as Liberal Party policies, benefitted the 10%: the Praetorian Guard of the 2% of families, the capitalists.
The euphemistically termed 'Middle Class' (only middle in the sense of being in between the capitalists and their worked slaves).
And note the US Capitalist co-option of the term 'Middle Class' to mean the (white, mostly) Worked Class richer than the underclass of 'gypsies', 'hillbillies', 'negroes' and (especially in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, 'blacks', 'Indians', 'Abos' and Maoris).
So, to now.
Now we need to make the transition from capitalism to a truly socialised global Co-operative Commonweal composed of national Co-operative Commonwealths.
Hence our living plan for Co-operative Socialism.
Please give and share this good news.
Thank-you!
John Courtneidge
