I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
The point is to make lots of money for the masters of big business and screw the small investors.
Okay, uh, Frist. really, they'll trying to run this country on the Venezualan model.
Venezuela
Not to worry. In thirty years when every one of these poor bastards have seen their retirement savings fleeced by Wall Street, there will appear a market-based solution.
Namely, as these retirees die in the streets, they will be scooped up and transformed into snack food to be sold back to the population. Soylent Green wasn't just a movie--it was free-market prophesy.
The point?
Deny legitimacy to collective claims to social welfare. Or put differently, updated social darwinism.
I vote Republican because I don't want to be identified with 'poor people', even though I'm poor.
The Old Age portion of Social Security is just one feature. A lot of people forget that even the OASDI portion of Social Security funds Survivors benefits and Disability Insurance for millions of workers. What happens to disability insurance if Social Security disability benefits are cut or the Social Security age increased? Every major disability insurer offsets Social Security disability benefits and disability pensions.
If privatizing Social Security is such a good idea then why hasn't Bush made any effort at all to do so over the past 3+ years? He has control of all three branches of government, but he is still too scared to even make an attempt at enacting this great idea.
The only thing worse than a pussy for a president is a pussy with a stupid idea.
Actually, there are cases where forced savings has worked out rather well for both citizenry and government (let me just preface this by saying that I'm not a fan of the current fixes for social security and, in case you're thinking of accusing me of trolldom, I'm pretty close to the democratic socialist end of the spectrum.. okay here we go):
In Singapore, the government mandates that the citizens save an enormous amount of money. Somewhere around a fifth is taken out and put into a gov't run savings account before you even get a paycheck, and then another chunk is taken out by you and put in the savings account. The government guarantees the accounts, but until they have to pay out, they loan themselves the money. This has allowed Singapore to accomplish certain things (like it's rather brilliant and state-of-the-art transportation system) with a kind of rapid speed that would give you whiplash. Also, the accounts earn fairly amazing interest, so when poeple retire/re/expatriate they're left with a really good chunk of change.
I vote Republican because my family has always had money and belonged to the country club. I'm not aware of many wealthy Democrats.
I've decided to switch my vote to Bush. He looks and sounds good. His gaffs make me laugh.
One of the things that concerns me about this plan to shift social security into private "investments" is what effect this has on the stock market. Since the vast bulk of stock "investments" aren't actual capital investments but re-sales of existing equity, the tendency to drive smaller investors into the market with their retirement funds must increase the liklihood that the entire market will be over-valued. I think that some stock ownership is a good thing, and I'm not an economist so I don't know the answers to all of this, but I've seen stats to the effect that close to 90% of market investments are trades as opposed to investments in IPOs or whatever market instruments can actually channel capital into the hands of "producers". So if billions of "new" dollars get drawn into the market, doesn't that just mean the value of stocks in general go up on the sole basis of the pool of willing buyers (and not very saavy ones at that) increasing ? Issues of productivity increases linked to increased capital investment are marginal in this scenario - it's more about money management by pros who ALWAYS are winners, much like casino owners.
American business stopped performing a competetive function years ago, and now its only reasons for existence are to loot the savings of ordinary people by forced privitization and to suck the gov't infrastructure dry. When they get it all, they'll go somewhere else, like locusts
I can't believe, based on where the stock market and everyone's 401k's went a few years ago, that any thinking American would support Bush's scheme.
I think Bush supporters are actually gullible enough to believe that 1) there will always be some sort of safety net and that the government wouldn't let them starve and 2) the stock market will grow and they'll actually have money in a private account when they retire. Fat chance.
As much as I'd like to see these smug self-righteous wingnuts spending their golden years in a cardboard box under a bridge (or as the main ingredient in snack crackers), which is a true possibility given that few Americans save money and most have mountains of debt, I cannot tolerate this raping of our country's future.
However, privatizing SS will greatly benefit the retirement saving of mutual fund managers and brokers nationwide. So there's that.
He's so holy he's got two halos!
Or is that Mickey?
The Singapore savings plan sounds like it's got some potential for actually using capital for productive investment. Christ - it's damned socialistic, if the government is directing capital into infrastructure investments.
Any plan pushed by the GOP is going to funnel the money mostly to Wall Street & Friends, where a lot of it goes into a sinkhole or creates "opportunities" for sharks to make a fortune manipulating & re-cycling over-valued stocks.
It's simple logic on why privatizing is bad.
Private is the opposite of social.
If it's in a private fund, it's most likely not secure.
Social security has to be both social and secure if you're gonna call it social security. Am I the only one who thinks about this semantic logic?
Scott - be careful. Although I agree with you on this one, semantics and logic aren't necessarily the same thing, or sufficient. Ex. "Compassionate conservatism" - which manages to defy semantical analysis or simple logic and really requires good old empiricism (what have the fuckers actually done?) to prove that it's a crock of shit.
Peter Peterson on a recent CSPAN gave a lecture called "Running on Empty" in which he advocated leaving Social Security (including the payroll tax) as it stands and also instituting a mandatory savings plan. The idea for leaving the payroll tax is that it's necessary to pay for current and near-future retirees (unless we want to go another trillion dollars into debt). The idea behind mandatory savings is that he is scared to death of the fact that America is rapidly approaching the point where the average net worth is negative. That's not sustainable in the long-term.
The Chimpster has made us aware
That the rich never pay their fair share.
They exploit the loopholes
To increase their bankrolls.
Let the poor dress in hempen neckwear.
Bush wants to get corporate interests to the size where they can drown us in a bathtub.
(Beegrudging thanks to Grover Norquist for the inspiration.)
Stop saying privitization.
It's commercialization.
jazzlover has a diary on this at dKos.
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/9...9/22/13553/
6977
What's that book out now about how Republicans win on language and because we let them frame the issues with their labels? Anyway, privitization sounds good because privacy is a good thing. But when we talk about commercializing Social Security then people have a frame that is more truth telling.
brcuds,
what have the fuckers actually done? On the compassionate side? How about trying to take away overtime benefits? And they did a good job of hiding caskets and tolerating abusing "prisoners", shall I continue?
brucds - your 12:35 post is a yes-and-no thing. New money chasing stocks means more money chasing bonds which drives down the interest rate which allows cheaper borrowing and the wheels go round and round.
But you're quite right that new money chasing stocks also drives up the price of those stocks. One of the factors that led to the late 90s 'bubble' was the proliferation of 401k programs in US businesses. Private social security accounts would do the same thing, for the same reason. So if this madness ever looks like it's going to pass, be invested...
If they whittle it away slowly the program can\'t pay for itself and can\'t survive. They can then say, \"See, this doesn\'t work\", and they can completely obliterate it just as they planned.
It makes perfect sense to them. When we understand what they intend, it makes perfect sense to us. The problem is that most people can\'t even imagine in their worst nightmares what their motives are.
Just to add a bit of historical perspective, before the advent Social Security the single largest impoverished group in this country was senior citizens. Before that, retirement was largely a matter of... private investment! Yep, that ol' stock market took care of everyone jest fine. Apart from, y'know, that depression thing...
These assholes want to take us back to a society and an economy that existed around 1890. Don't take my word for it -- Grover Norquist as much as admitted it. Now, to be fair to the 1890s, that was a really good time for anybody who already had a lot of money. But these conditions also yielded two or three major depressions between 1890 and the Great Depression. (Which is why it's differentiated as "great.")
Here's another thought: Is it just a coincidence that America's rise as a world power coincides with increases in its commitments to social programs?
"I vote Republican because I don't want to be identified with 'poor people', even though I'm poor."
Thanks to Democratic innovations such as Social Security and Medicare, many people who once were poor no longer are. So now they vote Republican.
The Republicans are a party of "ideas" on dismantling all the gains workers and the middle class has made over the last hundred years many being killed in the process. It's a shame we're so worthless that we're just letting them strip away all the hard won protections those before us fought so hard for.
By "discussing" the issue they are 'dealing' with it, offering 'options' and 'solutions'. It is not about finding a REAL solution, but re-inforcing the broad themes and strategies of the Repubican party (lowering taxes, increasing personal wealth, reducing size of gov't).
Much like the medicare perscription drug bill, if they actually inacted legislation, it would be more costly, less effective, and big a big payout to Financial Services industry.
Rather than "rise as a world power", which is actually wrong and is extremely wrong-headed to begin with, we would ask, is a strong country one that takes care of and strengthens its own, that can fall back on a sturdy middle class and healthy infrastructure, or a third world-like state that looks to its military for all national glory and stability?
if we think that stock markets returns are positively correlated with GDP then we investing in the stock market is a horrible form of retirement insurance. The whole point is to have money when things are in the tank (i.e. the economy and/or the stock market).
So what happens to Grandma Millie and other bad investors?
If I were a right-wingnut, I'd resent any rhetoric that suggests the Federal government would have to bail her wrinkled ass out for having bad investments.
I mean, it's not really investment if there's the dream is we all can only win and nobody can lose or there's no risk (Atrios' point, I believe).
The privatization of Social Security seems like just another of BushCo's ways to skirt Govermental responsibility and create greater wealth for the wealthy.
Privatize Me
We have it already. It's your 401(k). And your company pension. And your union pension. And your savings.
The government is there to provide a floor so that you can "survive"; unless there were some guaranteed minimum income, I don't think we should be f*cking with social security.
Let's frame the "privatization" idea in terms of what it really means: "piratization"
("Profiteering" also works.)
Piratization of social security was tried in Chile, with all the usual wingnut BS about how wonderful it would be.
If there are any posters from Chile on this list, I'm sure they can verify how 'wonderful' it was for ordinary people of Chile...that is, about as great as the Pinochet junta.
Privatizing Social Security is at first glance attractive to many people. My feeling is that it is a component of whatever bounce Bush did get at the convention. For Kerry to win I think he has to attack the radical nature of this and other elements of the Ownership Society. I prefer to call it the "You're On Your Own Sucker" society.
mandatory savings = nice name for tax increase on working people
" we would ask, is a strong country one that takes care of and strengthens its own, "
That, in somewhat different words, was exactly my point. Whether you like the phrasing or not, though, the last century was marked by the emergence of this nation as a world power. We can debate the reasons, the significance, and the terminology, but that is a fact.
And in that emergence, two of the most significant players were both Roosevelts. And each of them represented watersheds in terms of the expansion of the commitment of the US government to the welfare of all of its citizens. Coincidence? I think not -- although Tom DeLay would disagree. I would argue that both Roosevelts thought much as you do in your post above.
Truman carried things further, and of course carried on the New Deal. Eisenhower, for all his faults (one might even say 'sins' if speaking of civil rights and, say, Guatemala) also strengthened this country, and wisely decided not to do a damn thing to the programs of the New Deal. That gave unparalleled prosperity to go with our global reach. Again, I think that more than coincidence.
Hell's bells -- even Nixon had more of a commitment to the overall welfare of the people of this country than the current band of loonies who call themselves Republicans! And that's a scary thought...
Forcing citizens to be invested in the stock-market is part of BushCo's vision of an "ownership society." What they want is for everyone to be, de facto, part of Big Business. You're not going to be as tempted to object to policies that benefit G.E. when your retirement is based on GE doing well. You'll be more likely to overlook corporate welfare and relaxing of environmental, anti-monoply legislation, etc.
It's a brilliant, evil move.
My favorite is the story I heard from a friend who had in his econ class at Harvard a blonde who came up with the bright idea of investing Social Security in high-yield government bonds.
And then couldn't figure out what was wrong with her proposal.
So, mandatory savings, eh? This reminds me of one time when I was engaged (such as it were) in a comments thread on Slashdot with a Libertarian who kept insisting that I should save $1 for every $1 I spent. There was no way in hell I could convince him that my fixed costs, many of which are not reducible at all, take up approximately 2/3 of my net income.
The logical next question, therefore, is how? How do you mandate savings when many people's wages are hardly more than their cost of living? And what do you do with people with no income? I suppose that they believe that imminent starvation is "incentive" towards employment...
This smells like another multi-step program planned out with a built-in neoloon safety valve.
Start out with a mandatory savings law, then when your first big economic crisis hits, junk it - or better yet, convert it into a mandatory investment in government securities to fund whatever invasion we're staging that year.
I don't claim to be as economically astute as most of the folks in here, but this is troubling. It's bad on its face, but there's something even more rotten behind it.
BTW, I've put money into the stock market and lost about 20% of it. The woman my father in law is currently seeing is some sort of investment councillor. We asked her if she could give us a hand. She said sure, all she'd need is $100,000 dollars to start with, and she could turn that into real money in no time at all. We couldn't help thinking if we had 100K to put into the stock market in the first place, we wouldn't actually need that much help. If you've got a 100K lying around for anything, I'm guessing you're pretty much set....
It's Bush's payoff to Greenspan. Greenspan and the banks can't encourage people to save with 2% annual interest rates so Bush will force Americans to take 2%. Free market, my ass.
The point is to wean the people off of the government teat, and let them be responsible for their own retirement. Those who don't prepare for their retirement get exactly what they deserve, nothing.
They want to mandate savings in order to pay back their corporate masters.
They want mandatory stock ownership. There will then be no question that we have become a fascist state.
Good God...somebody stop this.
Let's look at other "First World" countries and see how they treat their citizens. Is there a first world country that doesn't have some equivalent to Social Security? I'm not even going to mention all the other social insurance/welfare programs the European countries have; let's just stick with the old age stuff (IIRC, Bismarck started the Social Security ball rolling in Germany in the 1880's).
Now let's look at countries that don't have the equivalent of Social Security. We could even look at the United States prior to the 1930's. How did Senior Citizens do in those countries?
These are our parents we're talking about, our parents and our grandparents, and, if we're lucky, us.
What kind of people would say "screw you" to their own parents and grandparents for the sake of putting more bucks in the pockets of a bunch of investment bankers and stockbrokers?
What the hell is going on with this country?
Partial privatization made sense in a number of countries. However, did anyone notice that American retirement benefits are ALREADY partly private? So the question is not "should part of the retirement/disability benefit come from private investments", but "how large part should"?
Private schemes have their advantages if everything works well, but they have disadvantages too. Defined benefits plans can belly up. Defined contribution plans can have mediocre performance (as they do now). Survivor benefits are much worse, proportionally than in Social Security. There is no indexing, so one may be out of lack if she reaches say, 90, and is still hale enough to care. Therefore we need a component in our retirement planning that is CERTAIN. That is the essence of INSURANCE.
An average middle class family expects that once they retire, similar portions of the income will come from Social Security and from the private plans, plus some money from ordinary savings. Re-allocating 2% does not offer a drastic improvement, but it may drastically decrease the portion of the income that is absolutely assured.
The logical next question, therefore, is how? How do you mandate savings when many people's wages are hardly more than their cost of living?
I don't know how it will turn out.
But we'll all be dead, so who cares?
401k caused the CLinton Boom.
The tech bubble burst was curbed by 401 k. Clinton had us on a steady course. Our dollars bought more with a surplus, so the 401k/balanced budget was a dual device to supplement retirement and create tax shelters.
Bush is trying to claim an idea that already works for his own. He was still drunk and coked out so he forgot 401k were here and thriving.
Someone remind this aWol chump the recent fiscal history is alreay contradicting every point he's made about markets. Also he does not regulate markets enough for investor confidence.
I'd put money in the EUROS- less depreciation, and OPEC may soon be their number one currency of exhcange.
EUROS, with NATO expansion, are much more likely to access soviet petroleum, and several countries are set at 20% renewable energy right now, so they are much more competetive. Not to mention education levels that have enabled better proctivity and market competetiveness.
Buchco is setting us up for on enourmous fall. He doesn't care, his family is vested in China fully. He's on a Kissinger model of globalism and republiclowns just ignore and drink more kool-aid.
It should be privatized for no other reason than that the current system, in which you pay for retirees now and the government controls the money, is a disaster.
No matter how much a retiree paid into social security over their working lifetime, the maximum they can get is about $1800, and in almost every case it's lower. All this infrastructure debate, aggravation, just so the government can pay you about $22,000 per year.
Like I've said before, If you are under 35, just assume there will be no SS when you retire at 65, and act accordingly. Stop waiting for someone else to take care of you.
THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL
I love how the seamintics of the argument have shifted. Now we are talking about "insurace" as if the current system is insurance. It isn't. It is not guaranteed to be there when you retire, so it isn't insurance, no matter what they call it.
If you want insurance, pass laws to let the market create tax-free insurance policies for that 2% that pay when you retire. Then you'll have competition for premiums etc that you don't have now.
Why do you assume the current system is so great? It stinks, and always has.
THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL
The point of diverting 2% of worker's paychecks into stock investments is not to improve the worker's retirement income prospects (it won't). The point is to direct billions in new dollars to Wall Street in the form of fees and commissions on the investment products that will be sold to those workers.
“The Case for "Privatizing" Part of Social Security. Actually, I don't think there is one. What would be the point?”
Our current system punishes poor folks for dying younger than rich folks. Everybody pays into the system through their working years, but the longer you live in retirement, the more you collect. Rich folks, due to less hazardous working conditions and superior healthcare, tend to outlive the poor folk, so you wind up with a massive, wrong-way transfer of wealth. This proposal is a flawed attempt to address that inequity. The 2% would pass to the heirs, rather than being, in essence, forfeited. It is actually an idea with some merit, and this administration doesn’t have many of those.
I love the glaring omissions of the Bush Plan to Improve Things: nobody mentions that people actually LOSE money in the stock market, and the transition costs alone are close to $1 trillion. How will Bush pay for these things? Deficit spending, of course! Let future generations worry about the cost.
If you could pay for retirement and health care anyway, why would you need some complicated plan from the Bush administration that funnels $15 billion or more into Wall Street fund managers' pockets every year?
What a joke.
"The point is to wean the people off of the government teat, and let them be responsible for their own retirement. Those who don't prepare for their retirement get exactly what they deserve, nothing."
Maybe where you work you don't have SS deducted from your check? SS is not any kind of "government teat" it has been a goldmine for the government, but they have not been very responsible with the excess funds.
The problem with the " Those who don't prepare for their retirement get exactly what they deserve, nothing."" argument is that it screws over stay-at-home moms whose husbands didn't plan well. And that's a demographic republicans are supposed to be helping.
Of course democrats haven't helped them any either, because they refuse to let what hubby paid into SS pass to the wife on his death. She gets a measley few bucks to cover the funeral and shes on her own.
This is why, if it wasn't for the war, I wouldn't vote. Neither party is capable of fixing the system.
The only way to do that is to saddle some generation with having to pay double - once to cover the contemporaneous crop of retirees, and a second time to contribute to their own future retirement covereage. After that generation, succeeding generations would just have to contribute to their own future retirement covereage.
I'd like to see someone propose that and get elected.
THEY CALL ME PASTABAGEL
foodnamedLiar, Greenspan already "fixed" the Social Security crisis and then went back and got it fucked up again. That was during the 80s. Do you recall "paying double" during the 80s?
"Of course democrats haven't helped them any either"
The Dems are doing worse than not helping. When they say "NO" to SS privatization, they're saying "Screw You" to every one under 45. The Bush plan is too little but its better than zero. Reducing the withholding requirement also reduces the future liability of the system. Atrios wants to know: "What's with the mandatory savings?" It's because, thanks to the Dems demagoging the issue so effectively, for so long, mandatory savings has to be part of the fix to make it politically feasible.
"This is why, if it wasn't for the war, I wouldn't vote. Neither party is capable of fixing the system."
So, don't vote for Bush to give him the punishment that he deserves for the war, and vote for the Republicans for congress so that you won't get screwed out of your SS "contributions".
That was a rather silly rant. First, you would have to be brain-dead to think that Congress is simply going to cut off Social Security in 45 or so years, or is going to declare to voters as they enter the most important voting demographic, "You won't get Social Security in 20 years, but you'll keep paying for it until that time."
Second, observers of Bush's history in Texas should recognize that this isn't about savings. It is about forcing public money into the stock market, preferably through the hands of his friends who can take a staggering commission for managing the money.
Private pension plans were better able to save for retirees than the present maze of "self-funded" retirement plans, because they could hire teams of professional managers to make it their full-time job to watch the market and to try to maximize the return on investments. If Bush truly thinks that private investment is better, he can ask Congress to authorize a percentage of Social Security funds to be managed by what amounts to an enormous blind trust, responsible for making the best investments with our money.
But he won't do that - because that would leave the government, and not individual retirees, holding the bag if this experiment fails.
If you do some quick research you will find out that vitually every assertion Pastabagel made was wrong.
Every fucking one.
Amazing. He knows less than nothing. A true Bush voter.
Go to the Social Security site. Download the 2004 report. Examine the table on page 88 which claims that the most optimistic outlook for productivity growth in the out years is 1.9% (Low Cost) and that the most likely outlook is 1.6% (Intermediate) cost. Reflect on the fact that given 1.6% long term growth, an immediate boost in payroll tax of 1.89 percentage points closes the whole projected gap (p.3). Download earlier reports, say back to 1996. There the cost of fixing the gap was 2.23 percentage points of payroll tax boost.
A crisis that left unaddressed for eight years requires less intervention is not a crisis. A crisis that assumes that the economy is going to expand on average at at 1.6% rate is a phony crisis. Social Security is not underfunded, under any reasonable economic projection (try punching in the White House one) it is currently overfunded. And a lot of people need to stop talking out their asses and check out some real numbers.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/pubs.html
If privatization is needed it won't be possible, if privatization is possible it won't be needed. And that is as true today as when I came up with the phrase in 1996.
Medicare is a different story. Which is why Greenspan was careful to link them together when testifiying to Congress the other week. But the assumption that we will simply allow medical care to absorb an ever increasing piece of GDP, as assumed in the Medicare scare piece (erm, I meant annual report) is nonsense. Limits will be drawn. To say nothing of the fact that there are developments on the horizon that present the possibility of huge cost-savings. Think of a pill that prevents the onset or progression of Alzheimers. The savings would be in the trillions. The currrent debate on medical care in the next forty years reminds me of the debate on the future of computing circa 1948 - when IBM went out on a limb and predicted the world market could support four computers.
Today we have PlayStation boxes that could probably outthink Uniac.
http://www.statcan.ca/english/ed...y/
computers.htm
Why do you always insult my intelligence?
WTF. Stop being so patronizing.
We both know it all comes down to one question -
Does an extra dollar spent in the private sector improve our lives and the lives of our children more than an extra dollar spent in the public sector.
Sadly, currently the correct answer is yes.
there is no reason to involve Social Security - but there is a need to makea simple way for ppl to invest retirement funds in tax-free accounts with a govt stamp of approval.
Many ppl now have some option to invest in such an account but with the alphabet soup under which these are offered - that's just too confusing and there are way too many funds/investment options with only limited info (or in depth prospectus - unintelligable to just about everyone) to halp you distinguish among them.
Give ppl the option to invest in a single program regarless of who their employer is and put 2-3 % away in an account they own andcan willto their children. No need to mess with actual Social Security. But the program needsto be univeral and portable.
"Does an extra dollar spent in the private sector improve our lives and the lives of our children more than an extra dollar spent in the public sector."
Dennis Kowlowski of Tyco spent $17,000 on a shower curtain: for the maid's bathroom. If this was an import, and given the price I supect so, how did that improve our lives? If I throw a party with $100,000 of French champagne, pate de foie gros, Beluga caviar straight from the Caspian sea, how did that improve our lives? The world is just full of people who took Intro to Econ and who babble about the "miracle of the market" and "Adam Smith's invisible hand" as if they actually knew what they were talking about. I don't know who you were accusing of insulting your intelligence, but after that you can include me in.
Assertions are not facts, despite the best efforts of folks on all sides of the blogosphere.
I don't think many of you understand - demographics are changing throughout the Western world. There are fewer and fewer workers per retiree each year. This means that in the current "pay-go" Social Security retirement scheme, workers will need to pay more and more every year to provide the same benefits to retirees. In 20 years, the need for increasing payroll taxes and decreasing retirement benefits will make the real returns negative. They are barely positive now.
Europe is actually going to face this "demographic inversion" sooner than the US will. They are going nuts now trying to work out the problem.
Britain has already began a program to get workers to invest in private securities rather to reduce their future burden on the "pay-go" scheme. British workers can put 25% of their payroll taxes into "Personal Pension" plans.
Poland, Sweden, Peru, and Mexico also have partially or fully "privatized" social security plans.
As to the risk, the long-term risk of equities is low. You just need to switch out of them at some point 10 years or so before your retirement.
The question is whether your retirement savings are better used investing in, say, Microsoft or investing in, say, wars in Iraq, which is the current situation where the Social Security surplus is invested into government bonds, with the money going into general spending.
Some day those bonds will have to be redeemed with - guess what - general fund tax dollars. So infact we are paying twice for Social Security now, once in payroll taxes, and twice in later taxes.
Characters Remaining:
Commenting by HaloScan
