Example Persuasive Speech (From Writer'S Inc.) printable pdf download

Example Persuasive Speech (From Writer’s Inc.)

Introduction:

Imagine that you’ve just finished school, gotten a job, worked forty hours all week, and this $1.00 bill

represents your whole paycheck. [hold up dollar bill] As your employer, I’m about to hand you the check,

when I stop, tear off 20% like this, give it to Uncle Sam and say, “Here’s my employee’s income tax.” Then I

tear off another 30% like this, give that to him, too, and say, “And here is her Medicare and Social Security

tax.” Finally, I give you this half and say, “Here hard worker, this is your whole paycheck.” Would that make

you angry? That’s your money! Senator Alan Simpson doesn’t think so. In the last issue of Modern Maturity,

he says that unless legislation changes the Social Security system, 1. our generation will have to pay 20% of

our paychecks as income tax, and 30% as Social Security tax. That means we can only keep 50% of what we

earn. Does that seem fair? But the news gets worse. Remember this 30% [hold up piece of bill] that we paid

Social Security? 2. Well, that won’t be enough money for us to live on when we get to be 65 in the year 2050.

Remember that year, 2050—we’ll get back to that soon. What’s the problem? The Social Security system

can’t insure our financial security. What’s the solution? We have to start our own savings plans, and the

earlier the better. In fact, 3. if we all start saving money as soon as we get our first paycheck, we all will be

able to support ourselves financially in the future.

Background Information:

In almost every financial situation that you deal with, there is the idea of an “account” involved: a

savings account, a checking account, and when you get older, a retirement account. You put money into the

account, and later you can retrieve the money that you put in. The Social Security system is nothing like that.

You put money into Social Security, and it is immediately paid out to the people collecting Social Security

checks; Americans who have retired. Ever since it started back in 1935, The Social Security system has never

been secure. According to , in 1935, when Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into

law, there were a lot of people who needed benefits (because of the Great Depression), but there was no

money to pay those benefits with. The idea at the time was that people currently working would pay into the

system and their money would immediately go back out in the form of benefit checks. Each generation of

retiring workers would get paid by the people currently working, and therefore the system would fund itself

forever despite the fact that the system had no money to start with. In 1935, there were many more people

paying into the system than those receiving benefits. The ratio of workers to retirees meant that workers did

not have to pay much into the system. In the future, the retirement of millions of baby boomers will hurt the

ratio -- there will be so many retired people that the working people will not be able to support them.

Argument 1:

You might have heard that the Social Security system currently takes in more money than it pays out in

order to try to handle the baby boomer problem. What happens with the excess money the system collects?

The Social Security system buys U.S. Treasury bonds with the surplus. Essentially, the government (in the

form of the Social Security Administration) loans the surplus to itself. Did they ever ask us if they could borrow

our money? Oh, but they will definitely be able to scrounge up that money when the time comes to pay those

retiring baby boomers, right? Many people think that Social Security will be fixed before the problems will

Example Persuasive Speech (From Writer'S Inc.)