Harry Reid Shopped in Green Valley
in [Las Vegas]
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From: Kurt Ullman on 13 Aug 2010 21:15 In article <i44p8l0l29(a)news4.newsguy.com>, "octoad" <davko58(a)sonic.net> wrote: > >> And what happens when you pour money into a DOW index fund for decades, > >> watching it rise to 14,000, then in the year you retire it slides to 6500 > >> in > >> a matter of a couple of weeks? The S&P 500 has made zero returns for the > >> last ten years. Of course that happened over more than a year and not in two weeks. > > > You really have to work hard to come up with these never happened > > before doomsday scenarios for you to argue with me? > > Say what? That "never happened before doomsday scenario" above happened at > the end of 2008. The S&P scenario above is happening at this very moment. Actually I was talking about your earlier scenario about the Dow losing 50% over the next 35 years. I ignored this one because it is irrelevant since no on takes their SS out all at once when the turn 65 so why should the investment side be held to this fake standard. If it is, then a person has 20 years (according to the life expectancy to get it back. Also I would like to point that you are using only a portion of the return in your explanations. Sure, the S&P scenario shows that return on the price of the S&P has stayed even over the last ten years. But when you add in the other part (dividends), you still get a total return in the high 3% range. Not as good, but not "zero" return by any means. > > No more so than the amount you put in Congress, especially after > > all the talk about how they have gutted the "Trust fund"/ > > Again, say what? I put almost no trust in any Congress of any party to do > the right thing, ever. But Social Security has been providing steady > consistent income for everyone who has contributed to it for 80 years > DESPITE all the money Congress has borrowed from the fund, and with some > modifications it can continue to do so. > SS has only been able to do the right thing because Congress, so far, hasn't had to mess with it. Largely because, so far, there has more coming in then going out. That is soon to be a thing of the past (maybe next year or two) and then they will have to find all that money to repay the Treasury securities that have been building up. Along with the regular money they have to find. Something is gonna have to give. I know some of it will be SS. Has to be since that is such a big part of the debt overall. > > But if any of the economic scenarios you so breathlessly posit > > come together as a reason to not go viral, it won't. > > The factual 2008 sceanario and the factual current S&P scenario that's > happening at this moment haven't shut Social Security down. In fact, if the > fund wasn't constantly being borrowed from by Congresses of both parties > over the course of decades it would be about the strongest thing in the > history of government. Nope it wouldn't. Because nothing has been borrowed. The ONLY place by law that the money for the surplus can go to is the treasury and it must, again by law, placed in non-marketable securities. There it is and there it has stayed. If we would have had surpluses in every year the whole time, the treasury would still owe the SS exactly the same amount of money. No more no less. I am not trying to argue that if our house was in better order we wouldn't have an easier time trying to figure out where the money was coming from to repay the SS. But the amount of money we would have to come up with is exactly the same. -- I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS. Robert Bakker, paleontologist |