{"id":100,"date":"2005-01-27T12:48:25","date_gmt":"2005-01-27T19:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stardel.com\/eg\/?p=100"},"modified":"2005-01-27T12:48:25","modified_gmt":"2005-01-27T19:48:25","slug":"lets-do-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2005\/01\/lets-do-the-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s do the Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Security Reform – For 2003 there was about 533.5 billion dollars<\/a> collected from 156 million workers<\/a> (plus employers).<\/p>\n

That comes down to $3420 per worker\/employer or $1710 per worker per year. (Employer matches an equal amount per worker to SSA)<\/p>\n

The SSA Reformers are suggesting that the worker gets to put some of the SSA money into private accounts that the workers would control on their own, a la an IRA. How much should they gamble with? Let the Employers match stay with the SSA. That leaves up to $1710 to invest. No one is really suggesting that the entire $1710 go to Wall Street; what about a half, a third, a quarter?<\/p>\n

Numbers:
\n57% = $979
\n50% = $855
\n33% = $564
\n30% = $513
\n25% = $427
\n20% = $342
\n10% = $171<\/p>\n

So, in 2003, SSA took in $533,500M and spent $470,728M, leaving a surplus of $62,772M. Let’s use this number as an investment target.<\/p>\n

That would mean that the average worker could move $402 to an investment account and leave the SSA with enough to balance the income and disbursements. That\u2019s about 25% of the SSA contribution.<\/p>\n

< Alternate Reality >
\nSo, in 2003, including interest on investments, SSA took in $631,866M and spent $479,086M, leaving a surplus of $152,780M. Let’s use this number as an investment target.<\/p>\n

That would mean that the average worker could move $979 to an investment account and leave the SSA with enough to balance the income and disbursements. That\u2019s about 57% of the SSA contribution.<\/p>\n

< \/ Alternate Reality > (they really don’t like you putting in faux tags)<\/p>\n

The percentage to invest will be a topic of much discussion.<\/p>\n

Unless there is some sort of guarantee that the SSA accounts will have a strict limit on the fees charged, a worker can come out of this experiment with nothing, not even the original $20K-30K contributed over the course of a lifetime. Of course, those that have maxed out on the SSA contributions at $5450 per worker per year will have a better chance to get something out of it all. (Have you noticed that the max contribution is 3 times the average contribution? I wonder if that means anything.)<\/p>\n

Most workers will start out small and gradually work their way up to the contribution cap. Over 45 years, a worker will average about 45*1710= $76,950, or $153,894 with employer match, in contributions to the SSA Trust Funds. (Using the 2003 dollars noted above.)<\/p>\n

So, if they direct 50% of their SSA contribution to a private account, do they then receive 50% benefits when they retire? Actually, it should be 75% since the employer is contributing the full amount to the SSA account. (50% of 50% is 25%)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social Security Reform – For 2003 there was about 533.5 billion dollars collected from 156 million workers (plus employers). That comes down to $3420 per worker\/employer or $1710 per worker per year. (Employer matches an equal amount per worker to SSA) The SSA Reformers are suggesting that the worker gets to put some of the … Continue reading Let’s do the Numbers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4NpF-1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}