Letter to Krauthammer on Social Security

From: Anthony Perry <amperrymd@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 5:09 AM
Subject: Ponzi shemes do matter!!!
To: "letters@charleskrauthammer.com" <letters@charleskrauthammer.com>

Charles

I am always interested in your opinions. I watch Special Report especially to hear yours. However, I am a 73 year old MD who is still working and using social security for my green fees and you are a young whippersnapper. Allow me to give you my opinion about why we should get rid of the Ponzi scheme and convert to a system of individual retirement accounts.

Is social security a retirement program or a government program to help elderly poor from being destitute. It's been sold as both which is part of the confusion.

If it's to keep poor elderly from dying in the streets then leave the rest of us out, use the general tax funds (which is what the present system is tantamount to) and it will be much cheaper.

But if it's a retirement program it's a lousy one. A Ponzi scheme eliminates the benefit of compound interest. The money you set aside is not put to work in something productive but is used by government for its various wasted efforts. And the government owns the money you set aside so that when you die it is the beneficiery. Social Security is a defined benefit plan which is great in the good times, but as everyone now knows, is not so great in bad times when the owner of the plan cannot pay the benefits promised. Then the shell is switched and suddenly the benefit is reduced or elimiated. A worse scheme could not be devised and would in this day and age obviously not be a hot product for any commercial retirement plan seller.

If, compared to the next guy, I'm going to spend more of my precious life hours working and more of my brain power thinking about productivity, then I deserve more return, not only in income while working, but also in my lifestyle when it comes time to stop or slow down. Shouldn't the work I've done and the amount I've contributed be the main determining factors in the benefits I receive, rather than the financial status I've achieved as a result of my work?

And when should I stop or slow down? When the government bureaucrats decide I should based on longevity tables? Or when I decide I should based on the demands of my work and the available resources. What kind of retirement program is it that only pays off those forturnate enough to live longer than the average. (For those of us who are group-thinkers -- doesn't this discriminate against minorities?).

Wait until you get there, young man, and then see how you feel about it.