| Author | Message | ||
     cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2962 Registered: 8-2003 |
"The Bushies Want Social Security to Fail." Please tell us what the Bushies did to bring about Social Security's current failure. | ||
| Rastro Citizen Username: Rastro Post Number: 577 Registered: 5-2004  |
I don't think the administration caused the problems with SS, but they're deinitely exploiting them. I don't blame them for that. It's part of their political platform, and people expect it. But there's a difference between causing the problems of SS and wanting it to fail. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2965 Registered: 8-2003 |
If there wasn't a problem to fix, Republicans wouldn't be talking about it. The last time republicans and democrats talked about it was with a squishy republican minority who went along with raising taxes and the retirement age. The only way to fix the system within it's current framework is to cut benefits and raise taxes, only to have to repeat that same procedure (ala Europe) down the road again and again. THAT'S the issue, and Democrats don't have the guts to admit the truth about their position because anyone with a brain knows it's a endless, bottomless rathole if you look at the demographics of it all. | ||
| Rastro Citizen Username: Rastro Post Number: 579 Registered: 5-2004 |
But that does not mean that the administration doesn't want SS to fail. Nor does it mean they do. As I said, wanting something to fail and causing its failure are two different things. I don't blame Bush for the failure of SS, but I have little doubt he's not unhappy about its demise. Again, that's not a slam. It's part of what he was elected to do. | ||
| ffof Citizen Username: Ffof Post Number: 3192 Registered: 5-2001  |
ALso I think they are overstating the state of it's failure so that they can put into motion it's ultimate failure. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2967 Registered: 8-2003 |
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| Bobkat Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 7147 Registered: 5-2001 |
I still don't know where the two trillion dollars (which given this Administrations fuzzy math is probably higher) to finance Bush's plan is going to come from, but excluding that small amount of money I have some issues. Over a forty year period the stock market is going to go up, at least that has been the historical situation. However, timing is everything and when you retire and need the money is an issue. I am going to assume a lot of people are going to buy annuities and a ten percent dip in the stock market just as you retire is going to hurt the return on that investment. Second, since this is essentially a defined contribution plan, not a defined benefit plan, if you don't annuitize the money if you are lucky enough (unlucky enought?) to live longer than the actuaries expect, you just plain run out of money. Third, most of us aren't savvy investors and I am afraid people are going to churn these accounts based on short term trends in stock prices and in bond prices. Market timing doesn't always work for professionals and I doubt if it going to work for Joe Lunchpail, who is the guy who really needs the income from the plan when he retires. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5019 Registered: 1-2003  |
Your second point is quite salient, and in fact, you can mix that into your third point, because, SS is currently a safety net. That net is supposed to prevent disaster. If this plan works as proposed, it has higher return for some and lower for others. The risk of failure is much higher, because currently, SS income is guaranteed, low as it is. I guess it's acceptable to call unlucky people stupid now and to imply or claim that they deserve what they get. So much for the Christian value of charity. Fcuk 'em. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2969 Registered: 8-2003 |
No one is saying that Tom as far as 'fcuk stupid people.' Thanks for the implication. SS income that is guaranteed today isn't paid for given life expectancies. Social Security has been billed politically as a retirement system, not just the safety net that it should be. Now, we use wage indexing to bring some sort of parity with people in the active work force to those who have left it -- based upon an amount of savings and rate of return that sustain NONE of it! So have a safety net -- fine. Not an unsustainable comparable hammock as current retirees are allowed. As for the conversion of assets to fixed instruments as one nears retirement -- that's what is behind time-line funds that gradually shift the balance to more bonds than stocks as retirement approaches. They could certainly be part of the mandated strategies for these funds. If your (mandated at certain asset levels?) annuity doesn't sustain you as you live longer than expected, can't the safety net click in there? | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5028 Registered: 1-2003 |
I believe Michael Janay has said stuff that amounts to "fcuk stupid people" on other threads. I believe he is far from the only person who feels this. Are your proposals (above) part of the official proposals? | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2970 Registered: 8-2003 |
Not yet. My meeting with the president isn't until next week. | ||
| wharfrat Citizen Username: Wharfrat Post Number: 1492 Registered: 6-2001 |
January 10, 2005 For the Record on Social Security Late February is now the time frame mentioned by the White House for unveiling President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. The timing is no accident. By waiting until then, the president will conveniently avoid having to include the cost of privatization - as much as $2 trillion in new government borrowing over the next 10 years - in his 2006 budget, expected in early February. In this and other ways, the administration is manipulating information - a tacit, yet devastating, acknowledgement, we believe, that an informed public would reject privatizing Social Security. For the record: The administration has suggested that it would be justified in borrowing some $2 trillion to establish private accounts because doing so would head off $10 trillion in future Social Security liabilities. It's bad enough that the $10 trillion is a highly inflated figure, intended to overstate a problem that is reasonably estimated at $3.7 trillion or even considerably less. Worse are the true dimensions of the administration's proposed ploy, which were made painfully clear in a memo that was leaked to the press last week. Written in early January by Peter Wehner, the president's director of strategic initiatives and a top aide to Karl Rove, the president's political strategist, the memo states unequivocally that under a privatized system, only drastic benefit cuts - not borrowing - would relieve Social Security's financial problem. "If we borrow $1-2 trillion to cover transition costs for personal savings accounts" without making benefit cuts, Mr. Wehner wrote, "we will have borrowed trillions and will still confront more than $10 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This could easily cause an economic chain reaction: the markets go south, interest rates go up, and the economy stalls out." At a recent press conference, Mr. Bush exaggerated the timing of the system's shortfall by saying that Social Security would cross the "line into red" in 2018. According to Congress's budget agency, the system comes up short in 2052; according to the system's trustees, the date is 2042. The year 2018 is when the system's trustees expect they will have to begin dipping into the Social Security trust fund to pay full benefits. If you had a trust fund to pay your bills when your income fell short, would you consider yourself insolvent? In suggesting that 2018 is doomsyear, the president is reinforcing a false impression that the trust fund is a worthless pile of I.O.U.'s - as detractors of Social Security so often claim. The facts are different: since 1983, payroll taxes have exceeded benefits, with the excess tax revenue invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities. (An alternative would be to, say, put the money in a mattress.) That accumulating interest and the securities themselves make up the Social Security trust fund. If the trust fund's Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities. The president is irresponsible to even imply that the United States might not honor its debt obligations. Mr. Bush's reason for ignoring the far more pressing problem of Medicare while he pursues Social Security privatization is especially tortured. Over the next 75 years, the mismatch between revenues and Medicare benefits for doctors' care and prescription drugs is 3.5 to 6 times as much as the shortfall in Social Security, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Medicare hospital trust fund mismatch is two to three times as big. Asked by a reporter last month why he wouldn't tackle Medicare first, Mr. Bush said that his administration had already taken on Medicare by pushing through the $500 billion-plus prescription drug benefit. Drug coverage, he said, would save money for Medicare by paying for medicine that would prevent the need for expensive heart surgery. "I recognize some of the actuaries haven't come to that conclusion yet," he said. "But the logic is irrefutable." Logic? That thinking is wishful to the point of being magical. Medicare is not going to fix itself any more than tax cuts will pay for themselves. And Social Security is not a crisis for which enormous borrowing, huge benefit cuts and risky private accounts are a solution. Rather, it's a financial problem of manageable proportions, solvable without new borrowing by a combination of modest benefit cuts and tax increases that could be distributed fairly and phased in over several decades, while guaranteeing a basic level of inflation-proof income for life. It appears that the president and his aides are trying to sow ignorance to gain support for their flawed privatization agenda. Lawmakers, policy makers and the American people have to let the administration know that they know better. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | ||
| ashear Supporter Username: Ashear Post Number: 1637 Registered: 5-2001 |
Can any of the president's supporters explain something to me. Over the next 75 years Social Security will cost 3.7 trillion, the new Medicare drug benefit will cost 8.1 trillion and making the President's tax cuts perminant will cost 11.6 trillion. Why is the crisis Social Security. Really, it's a serious question. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_09.php#004373 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/politics/10social.html?oref=login | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2988 Registered: 8-2003 |
Well, it's not a crisis if you plan on cutting benefits and raising taxes again...and again...and again. It is a crisis waiting to happen if you do nothing -- which has been SOP since 1983 when Greenspan and company just kicked the can down the road and put off the ultimate day or reckoning, at the same time making it more expensive. Medicare is a mess that needs to be fixed. And if you want to raise taxes and take away Bush's tax cuts, that's a separate argument as well. It does nothing to take away from the fact that Soc Sec starts taking on water in 2018 and sinks in (enter various dates here). Seems to be the answer offered by the left is "don't fix it." | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5053 Registered: 1-2003 |
I don't hear anyone saying "don't fix it." I hear a call for facts and figures, so that the problem is given the commensurate attention and budget. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2990 Registered: 8-2003 |
The democrats aren't offering a fix to the problem, the crisis, the impending trillions of unfunded liabilities, whatever you want to call it. So far, they've said there really isn't a problem, and if there is a problem, trillions in unfunded liabilities is not that bad. | ||
| wharfrat Citizen Username: Wharfrat Post Number: 1493 Registered: 6-2001 |
In suggesting that 2018 is doomsyear, the president is reinforcing a false impression that the trust fund is a worthless pile of I.O.U.'s - as detractors of Social Security so often claim. The facts are different: since 1983, payroll taxes have exceeded benefits, with the excess tax revenue invested in interest-bearing Treasury securities. (An alternative would be to, say, put the money in a mattress.) That accumulating interest and the securities themselves make up the Social Security trust fund. If the trust fund's Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities. The president is irresponsible to even imply that the United States might not honor its debt obligations. | ||
| cjc Citizen Username: Cjc Post Number: 2991 Registered: 8-2003 |
Republicans haven't said 2018 is 'doomsyear', only that that's the year that what's taken in is less than what's paid out. That isn't something that can be sustained past the year (pick your year. 2052?). | ||
| Michael Janay Citizen Username: Childprotect Post Number: 1426 Registered: 1-2003  |
I never said Fcuk stupid people. I said its not the governments job to insure stupid people against their own stupidity. If someone wants to squander their money for their entire life, then why should the government have to bail them out? Look at Mike Tyson. He's lost over 100 million dollars some say. He squandered it on booze, drugs, women, and friends that took advantage of his stupidity. Yet I guess the government should finance his old age. Of course if he'd have saved just 1% of what he made, he'd be set for life. Great, raise my taxes for idiots like him. Idiots that invest all of their retirement money in get rich quick schemes, or who are too stupid to understand the difference between income and growth investments (by the way, have you ever met anyone that stupid? I haven't). On the other hand, yes, Fcuk the stupid. The stupid that rely on government to provide for them no matter how dumb their decisions are. The stupid that want the government to run everything. The stupid that believe the rich are obligated to give their hard earned money to the poor. The stupid that can't understand that saving money for your retirement is important and that there are options for doing so. Fcuk them all. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 5066 Registered: 1-2003 |
There you go. I knew you could say it. Michael, tell me what you learned about charity when you were young. What do you think of those lessons now? |
