Mr. Plezia:

Your response to Mr. Tuchler's well-written, thoughtful post is inaccurate, impolite, misleading and totally unacceptable.

My Phi Beta Kappa daughter, who maintained straight A's through seven years of college with her gifted "grey matter," accessed social security records from the Internet dating from 1935 to date, from which she did an ACCURATE computation and agreed with Mr. Tuchler's calculations.

You assumed the amount contributed by your employer to the government would have been part of your income if it had not been paid into social security - THAT'S A FANTASY. In addition, the actual percentage of contributions over the past thirty years, since 1966, averages 5.24% rather than 7%. (My figures, not my gifted "grey matter" daughter's.) Medicare is a separate withholding that cannot be included in your computations.

Finally, you completely missed what Mr. Tuchler was saying. Please read it again.