It's true that the $3000 earning 10% will outperform $9000 earning 2% over a 30 year period, but if you were given an option of taking 25% of your money and trying to outperform what the government could do with 100%, you should be comparing what you can do with $3000 vs what the government can do with $12,000. Those would be your two options, after all.
That is in fact what I did. I just suck at trying to restate it when I eff it up the first time.
$12k annually for 30 years at 2% =$486817
$3k annually for 30 years at 10% =$493482
Oh, ok. That's pretty surprising, actually. I still don't know how you plan on averaging 10% interest over a 30 year period, though. That seems like a best case scenario. My biggest gripe with your plan is that it is almost impossible to actually outperform SS when you opt out, and lots of uninformed people would choose to opt out and wind up with almost nothing. Then the government would be tasked with taking care of them anyway.
The government would probably be in a much better financial position to help the poor if it didn't have the SS and Medicare albatross hanging around it's neck. A better plan would be to pay non-profit corps to take care of those that qualify through donations and government grants.
I'm pretty sure the government is already doing this.
Yes, but that's in addition to the failed SS and Medicare experiment. SS, Medicare and safety net programs account for 54% of the federal budget. Somehow, I think we could do it much more efficiently, but that's an anti-government stance as government is anti-efficiency.
I wouldn't mind seeing SS go away if there were a fair way to eliminate it. Unfortunately, there is not.
This is why we should never let this health care bill get started. If we are already spending $2,000,000,000,000 per year on SS, Medicare, and safety net, how much more are we going to need to insure 30 million more?