Nine Out of Ten Morons Agree

Recently a friend commented to me that I ought to be glad that my Social Security dollars were not invested in the stock market as some had advocated a few years ago. After the meltdown of the last year or so, IRA and other investments are worth a lot less today than they were 18 months ago. As the econonmy continutes to crap out, and as President Obama struggles to get things moving again, the market will continue to be a very 'risky' place to put our retirement funds, my friend maintains.

Though tragic, at that moment, I realized that my friend is a moron.

Though my investments have lost roughly a third of their value, I still have them. I own them . They are mine. With Social Security, I have nothing but a 'deal' with the government. The government promised that they would take money from me each payday, which they did. In exchange, starting at 65 years of age, Social Security would send me a stipend for the rest of my natural life. Hmmm....not a bad deal...especially with life expectancies approaching 80 years.

Ah, but there is a catch in the giddy-up. Social Security will be broke in just a few years. This isn't news. We have known that it was acturiarly unsound for several decades. The weasles we send to Washington have not had the guts to fix it, thought they did figure out that if they give Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who 'follow a path' to citizenship, they will have a whole new class of paupers dependant on govenrment handouts for their existance.

After a lifetime of being coerced into contributing to and relying on a government promise of a retirement fund, the benefits side of the promise is about to be changed. Unless you are one of the thousands of illegal aliens who have never contributed to the program but whom the government wants to grant Social Security benefits to, the benefits side of that government 'promise' are about to change for the worse. The reality is that those who have contributed the most to this program are about to become the ones who recieve the least.

My 401k is invested in the America. I contribute to it every month. No matter whether the market is going up, or going down, I put a percentage of my income each month into my retirement accounts. I put my faith in free enterprise and capitalism. Through diversification and prudence, I protect my funds as a shepherd protects his flock, and I pray that President Obama doesn't nationalize anything have an interest in. ( It's really just a fancy way of saying the government stole a business.)

My friend laughed when I told him that I had lost roughly a third of my portfolio's value.

I asked him what he had. He said he had Barak Obama and Social Security.

I laughed.

You can't fix stupid.