Good times!
Another week has flashed before our eyes. So much is changing in our lives everyday. Such is life, right? Constant change? I suppose there is one lesson I have been taught by California... and that is this: You can make plans all you want for everything in your life that you can think of, however plans are nothing more than good intentions. Life doesn't run by ones well laid plans. Somehow, it always seems [to me at least] that life makes up the rules as it rolls along.
All in all I cannot complain. I doubt I would even if I were to sit and ponder a reason why.
Life is good for us. It's getting warmer outside and the rain seems to have slacked off for now. We're getting our life streamlined now for the baby and this pretty much consumes the majority of our efforts or thoughts on a daily basis. It's all very exciting.
However, the show must go on... and so I keep plugging away at school... a semester behind me now...
This past week shot off a new [and final] math class for me. Statistics. Yay! I'm actually quite entertained by the class itself. In fact, my selected personal research project [more for my own amusement and enlightenment then for a grade] will be to find the data and compute statistically the fall out of our social security plan.
Now, some who read this may say that this information has already been scrutinized by some of the more brilliant political and mathematical minds of our time, so why would -you- take it upon yourself to attempt this task?
My answer is this: I have not found an answer to all my questions which I am satisfied with when I have taken into consideration the opinions of those who have given that answer. I suppose it's a simple matter of finding out something for yourself and not taking someone else's word for face value. You know, don't believe everything you see in CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC or even FOX.
Here are just a few of my questions which will need data values established before I can take my equation to my professor.
#1. What is the average amount of income an average senior citizen receives from the Federal Government each year as a social security benefit?
#2. What is the average amount deducted each year from the average American workers paycheck?
[With these two values we will already be able to see how many workers it will take to equal one pay out yearly to a single recipient of social security. For example: Lets say the average little blue haired grandma living off of social security receives $20,000 from Uncle Sam every year. And now lets say that the average Joe working down at the factory sees two thousand dollars of his wages deducted by Uncle Sam every year from his paycheck. This would mean that it will take 10 Average Joes to equal one payment to Grandma.]
#3. What is the ratio of workers to retirees in America in 2005?
#4. What is the projected ratio of workers to retirees in America for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.... ect?
#5. What year will I retire?
#6. How many workers will it take to pay my social security entitlements in the year that I retire?
#7. How many 'Baby Boomer' [my parents generation] workers are projected to begin to retire and when?
#8. How many average workers to Baby Boomers will there be when this begins?
#9. What is the projected effects that inflation will have on the cost of retirement for the years that my parents will retire? The year I will retire?
#10. At what point [at this rate] will the social security fund hit $0? Or at what point will social security double in assets? [Meaning it has twice as much cash in the bank as it pays out each year?]
That's all my questions so far... of course, as I begin to dig deeper into this, I will surely come up with many more.
Food for thought. I leave you with a quote.
“It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans—Voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age.”
Who said this? In his address to congress on January 17, 1935... Only the father of the Soscial Security plan and one of the Greatest Presidents in the history of America,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
