Tag: US government

Our Social Security Checks

The Social Security Check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a: *Federal Benefit Payment*!!! The government is now referring to our Social Security Check as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”

This isn’t 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.

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 SocialSecurity 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.

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?

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Drone

“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out. Your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.” – George Orwell, 1984.

Just when you thought things could not get any worse for Americans, news surfaced Tuesday morning that the U.S. government can now order the killing of American citizens. Weapon of choice – drone.

If these citizens are ‘believed’ to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaeda or “an associated force”, even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the United States, they are fair game.