Government benefits are some of the best available in the workforce today. That gets made up somewhat by low salaries, particularly for those with college degrees, as compared to the private sector. It will be interesting to see what happens to some of these plans 5 or 10 years down the road.

Interesting comment, Tim.

That quote from Ms. Munnell’s cited above is also interesting. According to experts, the Social Security situation can be fixed with fairly minor tweaking of the system, despite the heated and unfounded rhetoric by far right wing think tanks, such as Heritage Foundation or its local junior partner(Show-Me Institute). It is a long and well-known agenda item of the far right wing to privatize Social Security. Until the recent downturn in the stock market(which lost 25% of its value during the term of our former US president), these Milton Friedman sycophants had advocated loudly for putting our Social Security funds into the stock market. Don’t hear that much about it these days. Just wait–when the market eventually recovers, we will be hearing that again! I, for one, don’t want to depend on the invisible hand of Adam Smith in my golden years!

Public pensions DO look quite good these days, but only in comparison to the nearly total devastation of the private retirement programs. Those who called for years for untying the hands of big business and less government regulation need to own up to the complete mess their economic philosophy has made of things–and not only here, in America, but in the world. Friedman, Reagan, and Thatcher–the unholy Trinity!

I believe if Social Security could be fixed with minor tweaks it would have been done. Fact is none of those so called experts you quote have an answer. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that looks Bernie Madoff look like a rookie.

tyty whiterosesociety…for telling it like it is. It’s true we won’t hear the ‘privatize advocates’ now ..cuz …hahha..rofl that wouldn’t make sense, not that it ever did. So lets roll tape?.. Wouldn’t ya like to replay ‘the terminator’ at the ‘04 convention..Arnold sums up a nice bash on reality with the typical cheerful Republican oneliner ‘don’t be an economic girlyman’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUzUbtIptqQ&eurl=http://lolfed.com/page/2/&feature=player_embedded
Hey Chucck…of course SS is ponzi scheme…is that bad? All ponzi schemes work! But ya gotta know how to play, basically all your doing in a ponzi is taking profit, while betting the ponzi coordinator doesn’t ‘cashout’. It is solely based on that bet, as long as coordinator handles the bizzzzness, everyone makes money. The trick is..to take profits and get yourself out..b4 the coordinator takes flight. It’s a tough bizzness. I like ponzi schemes! Especially the SS ponzi, is the perfect ponzi cuz…we got government coordinator (assumed to be sound)…the ONLY problem SS has is the Treasury & Congress literally stealing the money…it NEVER had any problems with too many citizen drawing appropriate payouts.

wild;)

Everyone keeps blaming deregulation, but no one can actually point to the deregulation that supposedly caused all this.

You’d probably be intested to know whiterose that one of the main culprits of the mortgage mess was the urging of Congress to make Fannie and Freddie dole out more mortgages to folks below standard minimums of income and/or credit in an effort to increase home ownership among those groups, even though ARM loans is usually all they qualified for. Suddenly we had a group of people defaulting on loans. Banks, for what its worth, should have found a way to say no to this idea, but they didn’t. Part of it was fear of being called out for “redlining” and part of it was mob mentality - everyone else went along with Fannie and Freddie and so should they. In the end the financial industry brought on a recession for the second time in 25 years (S&L Crisis), and for the second time in 25 years a key change in government policy created it (S&L started after FDIC insurance coverage went from $25,000 to $100,000).

I don’t exonerate financials in this mess, but I don’t ignore the instigator in this whole mess either.

As for SS, it should be disbanded. The Constitution did not give the federal government the authority to create and run such a gigantic mess, and in fact the Supreme Court ruled just that several times before FDR rammed it into existence with threats to the SCOTUS. I honestly don’t believe it will be a solvent entity when I retire in 30 years anyway. The CBO agrees.

5-10 years down the road? Heck… Why wait so long? Watch and see the total collapse of all of them VERY soon.

I am amazed at how uneducated, no-common sense Americans have become. They are children and being controlled by “Teachers” or rather by “Mad Scientists.”

The fiat system and abolishment of The Constitution and The Bill of Rights are already back-firing on it’s own citizens. Now… Soon, per ex-VP, Dick Cheney - there will be some major “terrorist” catastrophe coming to America - very soon. Nuclear or biological - whatever.

So… don’t worry about your 401k… it’s just fiat money. Pooof! And they are all gone. Just as they did in Russia in 1992. All retirement funds disappeared.

Good luck to you all…