P.S. I stayed in two RV parks in your state this summer. One in Keytone and one in Wall. We enjoyed our visit, especially Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park.

Are my retirement benefits figured on my last five years of earnings?

Social Security benefits are based on earnings averaged over most of a worker’s lifetime. Your actual earnings are first adjusted or “indexed” to account for changes in average wages since the year the earnings were received. Then we calculate your average monthly indexed earnings during the 35 years in which you earned the most. We apply a formula to these earnings and arrive at your basic benefit, or “primary insurance amount” (PIA).

Since I’m having a difficult time tracking down historical BUD quotes as they merged with InBev this year; do you already know the answer? Did you buy the BUD stock?

One last question on SSA. I forgot whether you were/are married and if your wife got a check on her own earnings or on yours? I’m working on your total return on your “investment”.

A large portion of these “town hall meetings and tea party crowds are also seniors. Their biggest concern? That someone younger than them might get some help and it might cost them “something”. They’re not sure what but they don’t want to lose anything. Now, the real topper is all this bru-ha-ha about not getting a cost of living adjustment in their SSA payments next year. It doesn’t matter that there has been no inflation or that they got 5.8% this year. They are entitled to a COLA. These are the same folks complaining about the government spending money it doesn’t have. But as I have mentioned a number of times, everyone has entitlements – it’s only the others with their hands out that don’t.

I’ll add a recent comment by my favorite conservative:

The Washington Post’s George Will summed up the situation in a recent column.

“Because the cost of living declined 4 percent last year, the 57 million are not entitled to the actual COLA, but they evidently are going to be declared entitled to monetary consolation for the misfortune of not experiencing misfortune,” Will wrote.

You kept insisting that I estimate how much social security I have received and how much I paid in. I answered you the best I could, so now I am asking you again: Back up your spin on my generation with some facts.

I have drawn social securiy for 15 years. It started at $840.00 and has graduated to $1120.00 monthly. I have retired employees that draw more han I do and I have an English friend that only worked in this country for ten years and he draws more than I do. I estimate that I have drawn about $180,000.00. As to what I have paid in, I have no idea. I paid in the maximum amount every year except two. Two years before I sold my company, I reduced my salary about 40% due to the fact that I was spending the majority of my time with another business interest. Little did I know that the amount you draw is based on your salary for the last five years you are employed.

If I had invested the same amount weekly in Budweiser stock for 50 years, what do you think the amount would be?

I’m surprised you haven’t heard of the COLA thing, I hear about it, literally, every day on TV, Radio, the net. But then, I’m not out there painting parking lots – maybe, I need a job!

So, how much do you think you have paid? Received?

I don’t agree that there is a huge difference between auto vs health and I explained why earlier. But even if I did agree, that wasn’t the discussion. It was about Don’s comment that “govenment forcing a citizen to purchase anything is ridiculous and then fining them if they don’t is even worse”. He said “anything”.

I already stated you personally were excepted from the generalization. I didn’t bring up the hand out business in the first place you did. But since you bring up your 50 years of payments, I don’t see how that is an answer as to why you are entitled to a COLA next year. I’ll ask you the same question I asked BG: How much have you paid in and how much have you received? P.S. You can’t count those payments you made as an employer.