Milk, Beans and Eggs are all <$1.60 per 2000 calories. You have to have a condition so debilitating that you’d qualify for disability to starve to death in the US.
John Deere strike imminent?
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I think it has to do more with not being able to keep it and pass it on or just build something. A worker out of HS making 10/hour (caseys workers make more) and working 50 years (to basic retirement age and rounding up) at 6% (conservative investing) would have 750k there. At 6% they would generate 45k/ year in interest (double their regular wages). Compounding is how a large share of people create wealth, SS doesn’t.
25% have ZERO saved away for retirement, 54% say they have "some" money saved for retirement, and one third of middle class adult cannot come up with $400 in an emergency.
So 25% have nothing, 33% cannot come up with $400 dollars, then does it really matter that 54% have some money saved towards retirement, that could be $10,000 or less.
Depends on age. If 25-30 years old, it’s way different than 55-65.
A person working for $10 bucks an hour does not make enough money to save and invest any money, let alone 6%, and what happens to this worker if he is crippled at work, or has a heart attack at 40 that does not allow him to work?
SS is the perfect example are you for keeping and improving the program for the benefit of yourself and other, or one of those, "screw everyone else," I only care about me and my own tests.
It absolutely is why. Rich people, white people, and men are generally more tolerant of high-risk, high-reward investing strategies than are poor people, nonwhite people, and women, which might lead to more up and down swings for the former group than the latter, but it eventually pays off in the long term. I know you are more risk-adverse than me, which is fine, but that doesn’t mean you should get to force your conservatism on everybody else.
As to your direct question, it is pretty simple. Take roughly 10% of the income from a poor person (which is exactly what Social Security does considering it runs on a flat tax) and invest it in a financial product with a real return of 0% or less. Then invest the same amount from another poor person in financial products that yield 5%+ real returns over the course of a lifetime. The second one is going to be *way* ahead of the first at a retirement age.
I should have went to work for the Deere.. at least I would know I’d be taken care of.
Just a real life comment on SS. A significant part of my SS payment is spent on my Medicare Premium, Medicare Supplement and Medicare RX payments. I have always been self employed and my wife has always worked in finance, consequently we have always been self insured as her employers insurance was always substandard and was not fully funded. She is not old enough to go on Medicare. My premiums are north of $4,500 which is about what I was paying for health insurance prior to reaching 65. Incidentally, my Medicare Blue RX went to $82 per month which is roughly $1,000 annually and I have very little monthly RX usage. When I discussed this with my insurance agent where I purchased the supplement that my health insurance premium wasn't all that different he said that the coverage and deductable made up the difference. Bottom line....if you envision reaching Medicare age and eliminating health insurance premiums, think again.
This is the main flaw in that old bromide that “Social Security is so people don’t starve!” There are way cheaper and more targeted ways to help the truly destitute — that we already have on the books — than forcing everybody into locking roughly 10% to 12% of their income up in an asset that has no real rate of return in the long term.
Baby Boomers are the richest generation in the history of humanity. There aren’t many of them we need to worry about. We need to worry about the (much poorer and much less white) generations making up more and more of the labor force that are going to be forced to pay more and more of what income they do make into ensuring the very comfortable retirements of rich Boomers meanwhile facing uncertainty if they’ll ever get anything themselves.
@BCClone nails the math. Forcing poor people to miss out on compound interest isn’t doing them a favor. It’s suppressing them.
You left out the part if the 2nd guy is disabled and cannot work, that the only money he would have coming in would be the money and interest that he has paid into his 401K, while the person paying into SS would be able to collect a lifetime pension just as if he worked until age 67 to 70 depending on the year he was born, starting the month he was declared disabled.
I also went to HS in Ohio and we had a similar setup - suburban Dayton in Greene county. The program I participated in was Business Administration & Management but was actually housed in our HS, so I didn't actually have to travel to the Greene County Career Center. It was 2 periods JR year and 3 periods SR. Taught us business principles, how to use Microsoft office products, etc. I had such a huge jumpstart with Excel versus a typical student leaving HS. And it was so much more applicable to my eventual career.I know I've been somewhat of a **** in this thread when it comes to vocational teachings. But my school was setup similar and that's why I'm passionate about it.
We had electives available in 9th and 10th grade that were loosely associated with the Technical High School tracks. I did stuff computer programming, home economics, and industrial science which really was just woodshop.
The issue I found was teachers would push for the other electives much harder especially in my "advanced" classes. They pushed for things like foreign language, AP History, Band, choir, or different tiers of biology. Because they "looked better" on a college application. I said **** that and took the fun classes instead.
I was cooking up French Onion Soup and Baguettes while my friends were learning the different French conjugations. Guess who remembers which skills 13 years later?
I then had to fight almost actively against my teachers to go to the Trade High School half the day during my Junior and Senior years. They thought it was a huge mistake because they knew I wanted to eventually go to college. But I am totally glad I did. I treated it almost like a freshman year and just wanted to see if I'd even like the field that I was thinking I would get a degree in (IT). If I didn't like it then I didn't waste thousands of dollars switching majors at university.
I even got an internship for my senior year and after going to regular high school for 3 hours I drove to work instead of the trade school and got paid like $16 an hour as part of the help desk at the local health department. Making $400 a week as a 16/17 year old was ******* primo. That has paid dividends beyond belief.
I even used go to my old high school yearly (pre covid) to help promote this trade school. A common thing I hear about the trade school is that it is a "dropout" school. So I shifted a bit to get people to sign up even for the sake of trying out a field they're interested in just see if they even like it. It's helped some but I wish my school would push the availability more.
Anyway yea these are the programs they offer at the place I went to and it's all funded by 4 local school districts and any student from those 4 can go for free. That building trades one is actually really cool. They build a house each year and auction it off or donate it to a charity auction.
HS Programs | Portage Lakes Career Center
High School Programs High School Programs Automation & Electronics Learn More Automotive Technology Learn More Building Trades Learn More Cosmetology Learn More Culinary Arts Learn More Cyber Academy Learn More Dental Assisting Learn More Design, Communication & Marketing Learn More Electrical...plcc.edu
I have no idea how much they will have. I'm just guessing off what I was told I needed to retire back in school 15 years ago. It was 2-3 mil recommended then. We're supposed to live into our hundreds if life expectancy futures hold true.
You are making a huge assumption that people that rely on SS to pay their bills will invest that 10-12%. I agree that I would prefer to have that money to invest, but many don’t have that discipline.
Yes 6% is the rate of return. The money put aside was 12.4% which is the SS rate.
One other option is to split it half and half. The one half would provide him his annual wages in interest while the other half would go for disability or other situations.
One way to figure is to take the annual income you think you need and multiply it by 25, or divide by .04 (most recommend a 4% withdrawal rate).
