SSI Checks Now Known As "Federal Benefit Payment"

Pay attention to your next Social Security income, whether you or someone you know receives a check or an electronic deposit.... note what it is now called. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This isn't a benefit – its earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employer’s contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month. That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration (Google it - it’s a fact).

Your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65). I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and loaned it to offshore banks, and lined their pockets with the rest. They somehow “forgot” that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them, and they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently, they've told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. Now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit,” as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. They borrowed the money from us, stole the interest off the principal, devalued the currency, and are now giving us a small pittance of what's left and calling it government charity. Maybe we should start our own fundraising campaign and call it "Bullets for Bankers". One round would be collected for every dollar they stole from you, to be returned to them with interest at high velocity when the economy collapses.