PLEASE READ AND PASS ON TO EVERY THINKING PERSON YOU KNOW. China does NOT hold the largest amount of U.S. DEBT; U.S. Social Security Administration does! Consider: If a woman or man dies at age 65 before collecting one benefit check. She/he and her employer paid into the system for almost 50 years and she collected NOTHING Keep in mind all the working people that die every year who were paying into the system and got nothing. And our governmental morons mismanaged the money and stole from the the system, so that it's now going broke. BEAUTIFUL! And they have the audacity to call today's seniors "vultures" in an attempt to cover their ineptitude. DISGRACEFUL! The real reason for renaming our Social Security payments is so the government can claim that all those social security recipients are receiving entitlements thus putting them in the same category as welfare, and food stamp recipients. THIS IS WORTH THE FEW MINUTES IT TAKES TO READ AND DIGEST! Changing the name of SS contributions gives them the means to refute this program in the future. It's free money for the government to spend under this guise. The Social Security check is now referred to as a Federal Benefit Payment? I will be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you. Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment." This is NOT a benefit. It is OUR money, paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security, but our employers did too! It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. (This should be enough for you to forward this message, if not read on.) 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 employers’ contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved. That 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). And 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 (or Lyndon Johnson). They took our money and used it elsewhere. They "forgot"(oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They did not 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 have told us that the money won't support us for very much longer. (Isn't it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments ?) But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they are calling it a benefit, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it This is stealing! Just because they borrowed the money, does not mean that our investments were for charity! Let's take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it. Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income. Sadly, 90% of people won't forward this because they don’t get it or are too lazy, or have lost hope, but if we don’t and Congress knows we aren’t stupid or gullible, they’ll move on to the next way to screw us. Thanks for at least reading this.