Social Security And The Singularity

Should you take your Social Security benefits as soon as you're able at age 62 or should you wait until age 70 when they max out? What if your mind is moved into an android body and you live forever? Does that change the equation?

Here are the raw income numbers, normalized to a $1,000 SSI income at age 66.

• Age 62 payout: $750
• Age 66 payout: $1000
• Age 70 payout: $1320

If you take the money and run at age 62, by the time you're 66, you will have fleeced the Millenials for $36,000. If you wait for age 66 to steal from the young, you will start catching up by $250 per month. It will take you until age 78 to have brought in the same gross income as if you'd started at age 62.

If you scoff at the idea of spending the whippersnappers' money and wait for 70 candles on your cake, you will catch up at a rate of $570 per month, but now the delta is $72,000. Your gross proceeds from that will equal what you would have gotten starting at age 62 when you hit the ripe old age of 80 1/2.

Will you care at that point? I don't know about you, but I find it hard to walk when I get up in the morning these days because it takes about five minutes for my achilles tendons to stretch out after tightening up all night in bed. I have to hold small print at arm's length to read it. I can't imagine what new treats lie in store for me as I continue to age.

When the singularity comes and we're all moved into android versions of Natalie Portman's body, the #metoo movement having made male bodies illegal by then, our life expectancies will become infinite and we'll have to go back to work anyway, so what difference does it make? Honestly, I only added it to the title to get a few more hits. Whatever.

Working In Non-Android Form

If you choose to continue to work prior to age 66, Social Security will send people to your house to beat you with sticks until you pay them back all of their money. They take back $1 for every $2 you earn over $17,040*. That means if you do anything more valuable than stacking empty cardboard boxes in a store room for a few hours a day, you will be thrashed to within an inch of your life for having the temerity to contribute to society in a capitalist way. Remember, socialism is the future and you have none. As the head of Social Security once said, "Bite me, you greedy exploiters of the workers! Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Sanders, I didn't mean you. Please, continue to live in your three mansions and yap all day about greed and injustice."

I seem to have digressed.

In short, if you're slothful and don't intend to work past age 62, take the money and run. If you're going to work, you will probably want to wait until 66 to steal money from your children. If you wait until age 70, you'll end up looking like Natalie Portman in a jumpsuit, stacking boxes in a closet and nobody wants that.

What's all the fuss about this chick? She doesn't look even vaguely feminine. Meh.

* - This number was arrived at by taking the age that a certain senator began having an affair with his 17-year-old "secretary" and putting a zero in between them.