Evolving from Social Security to a real retirement plan...

How to design a more effective social marketplace for retirement savings -- Sadly, Social Security about to enter the predictable failure phase of ponzi schemes... What are the options? 

It's not that complicated when one learns how to address the problem from a social marketplace perspective that isn't constrained by offering one size fits all socialist/collectivist solutions such as Social Security.   Yes, it's possible to evolve from Social Security, where one really doesn't have a pension with your name on it, to one that does, while also providing a safety net for existing Social Security recipients who rely upon Social Security for their basic needs..

• Start by designing a private pension/IRA system where the existing SS framework would put $1 per hour into each worker's pension/IRA. 
• This would be about $2000/year going to the typical worker's IRA if they work the rough average of 2000 hrs per year.  
• Workers of all sorts would still pay the regular FICA tax with employer matching into SS and most of this would go to help pay the current SS retirees. 
• Workers could choose to direct more to go into their IRA, their spouses IRA, or whoever they want to help out, if they wished to. 
• This means, the older workers with higher incomes paying more into FICA would be helping get lower wage younger workers get their IRAs kick started...
• There would be a default IRA one could choose from, probably something like the investment portfolio of Federal Employee Unions. Optionally, one could move other IRA approved investments of your own choosing.
• A typical well chosen IRA might double in value every 7 years -- that's how the Fed's pension portfolio works... So if you start working at 20, 42 years later, your $2000 IRA started at age 20 from working 2000 hours flipping burgers would have doubled 6 times to be worth $128,000. Your $2000 IRA for the next year at age 21 would be worth slightly less, etc, etc, for each subsequent year...It would amount to significantly more than a one million dollar pension.

In other words, folks would have a real pension, in their name, that they could pass on to their heirs, that they could use to pay medical coverage and bills, housing, and judiciously enjoy their retirement based upon a life time of working, without sucking taxes from future generations for their measly SS benefits...  Yes, sad truth is SS is a horrible retirement benefit that is barely earns more money that one put into it years ago... 

Additionally, with a capitalist marketplaced base retirement system,

• all the money invested in IRAs would have created lots of new jobs and new wealth.  
• This in turn would help pay for transitioning out of the Ponzi SS system... 
• This is unlike the current SS system which is heading towards needing huge taxes on future generations of workers (making future economies and generations poorer with little to show for their work)..

Folks, this stuff isn't rocket science, but apparently private pensions are too complicated and controversial for our bozo socialist collectivist politicians to agree on because it empowers the individual and the marketplace to be in control, and not politicians and burrOcrats...  .

CO2 is good for life on earth, not bad...

For those who might like a science approach to CO2 warming being baloney --

There's (only) 4 C02 molecules per 10,000 air molecules. That's like one blue haired kid at the average four year high school of 2500 teens. Translation -- C02 is almost a rare gas...

The average weight of 10,000 moles of air is 290kg (or 640 lbs). The weight of 4 moles of C02 is (44 grams X 4) or 176 grams... The weight of the 10,000 molecules of air is 1650 times larger than the weight of the CO2.

Air molecules at any given speed are moving around with an average speed and weight of the molecule so that when they collide with other air molecules, no additional speed or momentum is provided to the entire volume of air (Conservation of Energy Law of Physics).

For the four C02 molecules to increase the speed of the 10,000 air molecules, is like a six ounce robin trying to push a 670 pound bowling ball by pecking at it. Except, the robin is really C02 and as C02, it has no brain to focus it's energy on such a task... Air is just a dumb thing of weight X and average speed Y at temperature Z. Translation -- Global Warming is attempting to take the mythical the Jedi Force of Star Wars and make believe it's a 'real' thing... It's just so much nonsense...

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Additional reality check -- Life on Earth is carbon based. One of the primary ways that carbon moves around our biosphere is via C02. Plants are very effective about taking C02 in the air and converting it into O2 and new carbon based biomolecules for the biosphere... That's why, in spite of millions of barrels of fossil fuel being burned up all the time, the CO2 in the air barely moves a tick. More C02 means more life on earth. Less C02, less life... Those are also basic facts...

In other words, it's total numbnuts to focus upon sequestering C02 from the biosphere. Or taxing C02 to reduce it's concentration in the biosphere of the Earth. Less C02 floating around in the biosphere just makes life less plentiful. Full on stupid, IMHO...

Take the huge forest fires that rage in the summer months up in the north areas of Canada. This is going to release tons and tons of C02 into the air. This C02 from near the arctic circle will move around the earth's biosphere and be converted into jungles,corn, cows, insects, and all sorts of life around the world where it might otherwise never get to, save for the huge fires raging in the lodge pole pine forests of north Canada... These trees are barely larger than a baseball bat and with forests so thick it's a challenge to walk thru. They have no useful value as wood or most anything...

These fires have being happening for eons and eons... If you drive the AlCan highway from Canada to Alaska, there's 20 to 30 mile (or more) stretches where everything far off into the distance has been burned... Then a couple years later, the lodge pole forest will return, to burn again at some time later... It's a cycle of life thing that is far beyond man's ability to control... Man is more likley to just muck things up trying to manage C02...

Mole Madness

Here's how to deal with mole infestations. 

Get some dry ice, gloves and a hammer. Google Dry Ice near me -- it's available from a wide variety of sources. $10 block should do fine...

Carefully uncover the tunnel of a mole mound of dirt.
Use the hammer to make a chunk of dry ice about the volume of a golf ball and using the gloves to prevent frost bite, put the chunks in the tunnel, then cover the hole with the dirt without caving the tunnel in...

Optionally, use some folded newspaper or cardboard to protect the tunnel from caving in and cover that with the dirt.

Repeat until all mounds in the yard have been treated.

Sometimes an additional treatment is needed in a few weeks if more activity shows up...

The cold, odorless CO2 pushes out the warm air and puts the moles and the grubs in the tunnels that they eat into a permanent sleep...

This technique can eliminate large communities of mole activity in one or two treatments... Frequently, they never return... Or if they do a year or two later, you know how to deal with the problem...Get some dry ice, gloves and a hammer. Google Dry Ice near me -- it's available from a wide variety of sources. $10 block should do fine...

Carefully uncover the tunnel of a mole mound of dirt.
Use the hammer to make a chunk of dry ice about the volume of a golf ball and using the gloves to prevent frost bite, put the chunks in the tunnel, then cover the hole with the dirt without caving the tunnel in...

Optionally, use some folded newspaper or cardboard to protect the tunnel from caving in and cover that with the dirt.

Repeat until all mounds in the yard have been treated.

Sometimes an additional treatment is needed in a few weeks if more activity shows up...

The cold, odorless CO2 pushes out the warm air and puts the moles and the grubs in the tunnels that they eat into a permanent sleep...

This technique can eliminate large communities of mole activity in one or two treatments... Frequently, they never return... Or if they do a year or two later, you know how to deal with the problem...