AARP is composed of left-wing, pro-big government socialists, as I will go on to demonstrate. If you let them speak for you, you will end up losing, and so will the country.
Social Security is a case in point. Currently the government confiscates 12.4% of one's income for SSI, half paid by the employer. (Medicare is extra.) I remember in high school (I am now 62) I read somewhere that based on life expectancy at that time, that social security as it was set up would confiscate "X" amount of money, and pay out "Y" (some $20,000 (?) less than one had paid in!). The point of the article I had read was that instead of receiving one's money with interest, one actually lost money out the behind.
I couldn't remember the exact figures, so I started fresh with a hypothetical case today: a male age 22 who would make the maximum taxable amount ($90,000). He would "pay in" (have forcefully taken away from him and his employer) $11,160 per year. The current retirement age for such a hapless individual is 75 years old, so he will pay for 53 years for a total of $591,480—over a half million dollars.
But wait! Had he been able to invest that money (or even been obligated to do so by the government for his own good) at the rate of 10% compounded monthly, he would have waiting for him at retirement a total of $21,941, 672! Nice return on his money, right?
Not with the government involved.
Not only is the government not investing his money for him, it is stealing him blind to fund other things, like make the deficit appear less large, buy votes from special interest groups, whatever. If a private insurance company ran its retirement accounts like Congress runs ours, those same senators and congressmen would rise up and howl in self-righteous indignation and there would be investigations, hearings, and perhaps jail time for the principals of said company. But they themselves, on the other hand, steal, manipulate, cook the books, co-mingle, misappropriate, and generally commit malfeasance with our retirement money and exempt themselves from prosecution.
By the way, I have ignored the amount of our worker's pay-in that may go to cover his possible disability, since I am not an actuary and can't figure that part of it. But since there are lawyers who can afford to run incessant tv ads for clients who have been turned down for Social Security disability and apparently make a good living representing them, I can assume that disability payments aren't that big a crunch in the Social Security Administration's (SSA) budget anyway.
Back to our hypothetical individual. Our lad, now at age 75 is finally able to collect. He is entitled to draw $17,326 per month. (But a working stiff making a lot less in retirement income and having retired at the earliest possible age might have to work to make ends meet, only to have his paltry SS retirement income re-confiscated by the feds. It's a benefit, see? Not something that belongs to you outright. If you work and supplement your income you don't have a right to your own money that you paid in all your working life.)
Well, ok, how much can our lad who started at age 22 expect to draw during his retirement? Will he break even? Will he come out a loser? How much did he lose having the government handle his pension for him? Is it still that $20,000 figure? If you use the SSA's own life expectancy chart, at age 22 he can look forward to living 53.35 years. But he has to wait until he is 75 before he can draw full amount. Um, let's do the math. 22 years old plus 53.35 equals? Well, you figure it out. He may get a check or two out of them; they get to pocket all the rest.
This is the system AARP defends. Keep Social Security strong, they say. See why I called them those names up top? Keep it strong how? Smelling? Read what they say about how to keep SS strong, and it is about confiscating even more from the hapless workers, lowering payouts by messing with COLA adjustments, forcing the ones who are currently exempt to cough up like the rest, raising the retirement age even further and, as we have seen, past the time when we drop dead. How sick these people must be. How insane they have to be to be so blatantly hard hearted and cold blooded, so pro-government, so anti-people.
Join AARP (if you must) for their benefits (magazine, insurance, etc), but don't forget they do all that so they can tout their membership numbers in Washington and appear to be a big political machine, and then push for more socialism and larger and more onerous government.
If you want to belong to AARP, but want to remain free, or at least not any less free than you already are, it would behoove you to notify your elected representatives that AARP does not speak for you.
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