Great article, Legion.

Yep...I'm 31, diversified and well prepared for retirement, and don't expect one penny from SS. SS is socialist wealth redistribution at its finest.

Yes, but will we see it go away in our lifetime? I'm not sure. No doubt it misrepresents America's financial demographics in many ways, but I guess the question I have is within the last twenty years, are there more wealthy people who are forced to chuck their money into a failed system, or more people below the poverty line to which something like SS could be of benefit? Or has the amount of rich and poor remained the same? If so, then I don't see the benefit of SS, except to maintain the status quo.

The Galveston Plan: Alternative to Social Security
 

BTW, the feds put the kabash on any more of this foolishness:

"The initial Social Security Act permitted municipal governments to opt out of the system - a loophole that Congress closed in 1983."

In 1981, employees of Galveston County, Texas, chose by a vote of 78 percent to 22 percent to leave Social Security for a private alternative. Brazoria and Matagorda counties soon followed, swelling the private plan to more than 5,000 participants today. In the private plan, contributions are similar to those for Social Security but returns are quite different.

Rick Gornto with First Financial Benefits administers the plan.
"We set up this program up on a banking model, a guaranteed contract, basically guaranteed annuities, which give a good return, a stable return, as opposed to investing in the market, which subject the participants to the vagaries of the market."
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But while the cost of the private program, known as the Alternate Plan, is virtually the same to the employee and employer as Social Security, the benefits are far greater. According to First Financial Benefits, Inc., which created and administers the plans:

A person retiring today at age 65 with 40 years of deposits and an annual salary of $20,000 would retire with $383,032 in a personal account.

Someone with a $30,000 salary for 40 years would retire with $573,782.

And a person with a $50,000 salary for 40 years would retire with $956,303.
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A personal retirement account this size provides a much larger postretirement income than does Social Security. Moreover, retirees under the Alternate Plan have a number of options not available to retirees under Social Security. For example, those with the Alternate Plan can choose among several annuities or take their money in a lump sum. As the figure shows, under one option:

A retired $20,000-per-year worker with the personal retirement account would receive $2,740 each month at current interest rates, while Social Security benefits would be about $775 per month.

A $50,000 per year worker would receive $6,843 from the private plan, compared to $1,302 from Social Security.
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And, unlike Social Security, every dollar that goes into private accounts belongs to the worker's estate, cash assets that can be passed on to heirs.

Judge Ray Holbrook recalls the case of a county worker. He said, "He was young, only 45, and he had a heart attack at the airport and passed away. His wife got an insurance policy of $150,000 plus $100,000 he had paid in the plan, over 10 years. She ended up with $250,000.
***From Social Security, she would have gotten $255."***
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http://www.ncpa.org/~ncpa/ba/ba215.html
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