Subject: Re: Healthcare Costs Going Way Up,
It's not a feature ad. The purpose of Social Security isn't limited to making sure that you only have enough money to avoid poverty in your old age. It's not an individually-directed retirement account. It's a program intended to make sure that everyone in your life has protection against poverty in your retirement. So it consists of: i) your retirement benefit; ii) a lifetime disability insurance product; iii) a spousal benefit product; iv) a minor child disability product; and v) a surviving minor child benefit. You don't get to just disaggregate them.

So it's a mistake to look at 100% of your social security payments and treat them as if they are just funding i) on that list above. They're not. Add in the tax advantages (at least 15% of your social security income is always tax free), and you'd have a hard time duplicating that package if all of your funds were in a private investment account with 100% risk-free assets.

Thank you for saying more completely and coherently what I have said a number of times over on the old place. If an insurance company were to put all those benefits into one product, can you imagine how much it would charge?