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| Lloyd Blankfein | |  |
Lloyd Craig Blankfein, born September 20, 1954, is an American business executive. He is currently the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He has been in this position since the May 31, 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush. | Photo: Archives |
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When asked about entitlements such as Social Security,
Lloyd Blankfein (CEO of Goldman Sachs) recently stated to CBS News : "…you can go back and look at the history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. ". He also stated; "You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations. The entitlements, and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to – they're not going to get it."
So according to Lloyd, most people start work at 40 years of age, and Americans on average are living until 95 years of age? He's supposedly an expert market maker, who earns bonuses in excess of $20 million a year for his expertise in forming sophisticated and complicated financial deals, yet basic facts and math escape him.
For the record, most people start full-time employment by the age of 23-25, work at least until 65 years of age (the actual retirement age here in America), and the average lifespan is only 78 years of age. I don't have an economics degree from Harvard, but it seems like Lloyd was merely pushing bullshit once more, the only real expertise I have ever seen him proficient in.
And that's the problem with the Social Security program, too many swindlers pushing false information, too many sharks waiting to get their filthy little hands on all the money generated from the program if privatized, too many politicians spending recklessly against funds in the Social Security Trust, and not enough facts to cut through it all.
Social Security is in trouble, less than you may think, but the reasons may be because of private industry and politicians, and not because Social Security has outlived its usefulness or has become a blight on our Treasury. Social Security is only rewarded to those who earned wages on which the Social Security benefits are drawn from. Social Security is not a tax program; your tax revenues do not pay Social Security benefits to unemployed people.
Whenever you hear a politician or financial parasite speak about entitlements and austerity measures, they group them together, Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare; they should never be grouped together. Both issues have completely different reasons for being insolvent, but let's just concentrate on Social Security.
A claim made by the Cato Institute is that the portion of a worker's wages put into the Social Security Trust Fund would be better invested in the private sector. Which is true for higher income earners, or people living well beyond our average lifespan, but for the 93% of our entire workforce that makes less than $100,000 a year, Social Security will deliver an equivalent amount to most traditional retirement vehicles, if not slightly higher, and without the risk of market cras
| Social Security is in trouble... but the reasons may be because of private industry and politicians. | | |
hes and outside market forces.
If we look further at the average numbers, and just make simple extrapolations, we can see Social Security is running at a slight deficit due to people living longer if we do not account for interest earned; which leaves me perplexed because interest is earned on the money in the Social Security Trust Fund, and this alone should cover the shortages.
The average salary in the U.S. is $45,000 a year; the average career is 42 years. At least 10% of all wages goes towards a person's future Social Security benefits, which for the average worker would equal over $189,000 (not including interest earned) in accumulated Social Security benefits by the time of retirement. With an average lifespan of 78 years of age, the average Social Security recipient will probably receive $191,880 in benefits ($1230 a month, the average Social Security payout), which is just under $3,000 over what they put in (not accounting for interest earned over those 42 years which would be substantial).
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Social Security is becoming insolvent partly because people are living longer, and benefits transfer over to spouses, which in a single-income family where the spouse was the homemaker, is a perfectly sound practice. But our Congress has spent recklessly, and have borrowed against the funds in the Social Security Trust Fund, which is creating a deficit problem, but that has absolutely zero to do with the Social Security program.
If we are going to have a Social Security program, it should be made solvent by eliminating 401 K plans, putting a portion of those funds into a worker's Social Security Trust Fund, and returning the rest of that wealth to the worker, to invest privately if they wish. Other solutions such as raising the retirement age, raising the amount extracted from worker's weekly wages, or privatizing the program will only make matters worse, while diluting a very effective program currently serving over 58 million retirees.
