I got another "Social Security Statement" in the mail yesterday. These things come out every few months, to let you know your earnings history, as far as Social Security is concerned, and to give you an estimate of what you'll receive when you retire or become disabled, and what your survivors will receive if you die.

With all of the hoopla around Social Security lately, I think it's important to note a disclaimer that's been in the Social Security Statements for years:

Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2042, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 73 percent of scheduled benefits.

Basically, what you're going to get when you retire is based on the whims of Congress. Do you trust your politicians with your retirement? If anyone in the private sector ran a pension plan like the politicians have been managing Social Security, it would be criminal.

The other aspect people don't see in writing enough is how much you've paid in Social Security taxes versus how much your employers have paid in Social Security taxes. How Social Security taxes are set up, you pay 6.2% of your income to Social Security tax, and your employer pays 6.2% of your salary in a payroll tax.

So if you make $40,000 a year, you're personally paying $2,480 a year out of your paycheck towards Social Security. Your employer is also paying an additional $2,480 a year in the form of payroll taxes. Some would like you to believe that this is coming out of your employer's pocket, but in reality this is simply considered as part of the total package of what it costs them to hire you. It also affects decisions of when to give you a raise, and how much. For instance, if your employer wants to raise your income $10,000 a year, they are also considering that it will cost them an additional $620 a year to provide you that raise.

The kicker, though, is how much this costs over time. Let's say you've been making $40,000 a year for 10 years. Over that time, you have paid $24,800 in Social Security taxes. Your employer has paid an additional $24,800 in payroll taxes, for a total of $49,600.

Let's suppose that instead of going into a failing government pension program, you and your employer both contribute 6.2% of your $40,000 a year income to some type of managed, low-risk retirement plan that returns a annual rate of return of just 6%. If you started this at age 25, over the course of 40 years, you'd have a whopping $822,485.67 saved for retirement at age 65. If you planned on spreading that retirement income out over 30 years to age 95, you'd be getting $4,931.22 a month.

Based on an income of $40,000 a year, that's way higher than what Social Security currently promises on a similar income.

If I factor in my Social Security contributions, from my age now until age 67, assuming my income never gets any higher (which is very unlikely), my retirement income would be nearly 4 times what my current projected benefits are. This is why creating private accounts inside Social Security is so viable -- it would take about a fourth of my current contributions to fund my currently projected Social Security benefits, leaving the other three-fourths to fund the current recipients. And over the long haul, as more and more recipients receive their benefits from their own accounts rather than from the Social Security and payroll taxes, the taxes can be scaled back to a less dramatic level, which will give our children and our grandchildren a better opportunity for a better life.

Why people are fighting against Social Security is difficult to understand, but why people are apathetic to it is even more difficult to understand. Social Security represents a huge chunk of our income that is being sent to a system that cannot sustain itself. I encourage you to open up and read your Social Security statement next time you receive one, and play with the numbers yourself -- see what those numbers could represent for your future if you could control even a small portion of it.

Labels: politics

I went to go see Episode III last night, at the midnight show. As usual, going at midnight is fun. Lots of fans, lots of anticipation. This is likely the last time we'll be seeing a new Star Wars movie on the big screen.

It was also Lucas' last chance to get it right. The best Star Wars movie, by far, was The Empire Strikes Back, known otherwise as Episode V. Why the best? Because it was a great story, it deepened the characters and their relationships. And it was only successful at that because Lucas didn't direct it. Lucas nearly killed himself making the original Star Wars (now known as Episode IV), and knew he needed to stay out of the director's chair to keep himself alive. So he turned to one of his trusted film professors.

Unfortunately, he didn't learn from that success, and he certainly didn't learn enough from his mentor in terms of dramatic directing.

Note: if you haven't seen Episode III yet, you might want to wait to read the rest. Or go ahead, I don't care. I'm not going to be giving away much, and if you really cared about spoilers anyway, you'd be in line to see the movie by now (5:00 pm on opening day).

Lucas has developed a reputation for changing things, but perhaps one of his boldest changes came when he described the original Star Wars Trilogy as being about Anakin Skywalker, not Luke, Leia, and Han. As he was preparing to announce the prequel trilogy (which is now complete), he wanted to assure us that it was always supposed to be about Anakin, his rise, his fall, and his redemption.

Fine, we can understand and accept that, and the desire to go back and tell the story of Anakin's rise and fall. After all, we all wanted more Star Wars.

Lucas proved with Episode I and II that he simply can't direct dramatic sequences. The scene at the Skywalker home in Episode I around the table is one of the more painful scenes in Episode I. But we all had this feeling that maybe it was just Jake Lloyd (the actor for the 9-year-old Anakin in Episode I) -- kid actors can be very difficult to work with. But even what were supposed to be heartfelt scenes with only adult actors seemed dry and contrived -- such as Obi-Wan Kenobi's (Ewan McGregor) apology to his master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) about his disrespectful comments.

Episode II didn't improve anything. If anything, it only more deeply revealed Lucas' incapability in the dramatic direction department. The entire love story between the 19-year-old Anakin (now played by Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman) simply wasn't in the same league as the romance between Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in The Empire Strikes Back.

Now, finally Episode III is out, and Lucas' ineptitude is complete.

The only reason to film Episodes I-III were to see Anakin Skywalker turn into Darth Vader. We all wanted to know (or were supposed to want to know): how did it happen? In Episode III, the moment we've been waiting 28 years for was simply uneventful. The most pivotal moment in the entire saga, and it ends up playing out more or less like this: oh, I guess I'll be a Sith now. There's simply no drama to the moment. The setup -- the events leading up to that point -- was good. He's confused, he doesn't know who to trust, and he's desperately afraid of losing the one person he cares about the most. Everything after that point was pretty good -- his confrontation with Obi-Wan towards the end of the movie was nearly everything I wanted it to be. But the turning point itself was nothing worth remembering. It should have been a moment on par with "I am your father" from The Empire Strikes Back, but instead of going into the annals of film history as that scene has, it will simply pass into obscurity, except possibly as a footnote for how a great opportunity was wasted in an otherwise good film.

Everything in the prequels up to that point was successful in terms of setting up how Anakin was at the edge of a cliff. But there was never anything truly impacting about how he fell off that cliff and plunged into darkness. A good director would have fixed that with a few small changes, a heightened sense of drama, and a better ability to tell a story. It's too bad Lucas didn't learn enough from his success with the original Star Wars Trilogy to hire better directors for the prequel trilogy. But hey, not all movie franchises can live up to expectations like the Lord of the Rings series did.

Labels: movies