Democrats, Obama applaud their obstruction of Social Security reform

Bush wanted to privatize social security. Good thing Congress didnt act on his proposal.

 

The hypocrisy is astounding. However, when you see all those Demorats clapping, you must also see the special interests that are buying them, also clapping. Politics is a double-edged sword.

 

Because if it aint workin', don't fix it!

 

How would privatizing Social Security fix anything?

 

I'm not exactly sure if Bush's plan was privatization, but privatizing SS would mean eliminating the coercive ~12% tax on income, or at least allowing people to decide where they invest it.

This is better than forcing people to pay into a system that probably won't exist in 10 years.

As a young person you should want out ASAP, there is no way in hell we're getting anything out of this ponzi scheme.

 

Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. I agree there are potential long-term financing problems with SS, but diverting its payroll taxes to create new personal accounts is a bad idea. Creating private accounts would make SS financing problems worse.

Social Security will continue to be able to pay benefits in full until its trust funds are empty in 2042. The trust funds from the private accounts would be depleted much sooner than the 38 to 48 years projected.




Look at other countries who have tried this. Chile is a good example. The U.K. tried it too.

Also, private accounts would require huge new government bureaucracy.

And actually young people would be worse off. As would women and minorites.

 

The actual year where it would be totally worthless is 2037 now, 4 years earlier than thought last year. At this rate, it will likely be closer to 2020.

Social Security is projected to be bankrupt, ie running at a deficit, in 2016.

What private accounts are you comparing it to? Where did you get that info so I can see what's what.

Is your blog saying Chile's model isn't a successful one? Either way, your broadly comparing two different economies.

How would young people be worse off? Women? huh?

 

The chart was from an analysis in Peter A. Diamond's and Peter R. Orszag's, "An Assessment of the Proposals of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security," The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., June 2002.

They also have some other analysis's on SS Saving Social Security - Brookings Institution

Younger people would be responsible for the costs in changing the system. According to the CBO, "to raise the rate of return for future generations by moving to a funded system, some generations must receive rates of return even lower than they would have gotten under the pay-as-you-go system."
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/58xx/doc5822/09-22-PensionBrief.pdf

Women would have more to lose from privatizing SS. On the average, women work fewer years outside the home, they earn less per year, and they live longer after retiring. If the guarantees and redistributive parts of SS are replaced with a system that gives out benefits only on the basis of how much a worker earns over that worker's lifetime and how lucky that worker is in financial markets, the average woman, especially the average widow, will lose security and income.

Minorities (African Americans and Latinos) on average earn lower lifetime wages, these people would be at greater risk in their retirement under privatization.

 

Those are all pretty old studies, and they seem to be talking about completely different privatization plans than I am.

And why should minorities and women get the same retiree benefits if they don't work for them?

 

Without Social Security's guaranteed benefits, the already marginal income security for women, mostly older, would be much worse.

 

SS claims are increasing, mostly by the corporate trick of forcing workers 62+ so that they dont count as unemployed, they are "retired". This will put the system in the red for the since the Reagan recession. Then Reagan doubled the tax, the biggest tax increase ever. Of course the poor and middle class paid the heaviest burden for this.

There are trillions of dollars in SS reserve fund, but Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II took that money. That means more money will have to be borrowed to replace the fund which is now empty.

Repealing the Reagan tax cuts would fix many problems.

 

what?

sometimes i feel we really all could agree on one thing if we could just make an effort. hiking taxes up while we are in a recession isn't good, unemployment out the ass, inflation, the dollar collapsing, taking anymore away from the people indirectly and directly is just going to WORSEN the problem. If you want to tax anyone tax those with billions of dollars, who are so much better off then those making $250,000 a year and still getting by on just their income. Tax the monopolies and break them up, don't make it harder for the small business to employ and COMPETE in this market which will get us out of this depression. Our corporations are making money through waring, we are in a recession, we are securing our oil in Iraq, big motive, but no one is willing to pull out since everyone can agree it's pointless especially by now. Now we are having this big scare with "SATO", time to deploy more troops already?


Republicans and Democrats are HACKS. The only people who really ever benefit are the corporations, those with the majority of stock in the company. They are getting these people elected to power/fame and most importantly a legacy which they would of never of been able to do for themselves without their FUNDS. It ain't the HENRY's who are donating $700,000 but these banks that just received multi-hundred-million-bail-out-TAX-DOLLARS! We've just been DUPED, they put a bag over our heads and clubbed us in the god damn forehead. Now we sit here and blame our own middle and working class citizens, not these TRAITORS who have turned our constitution into a MOCKERY and leave us left sitting on our coach like a bunch of sheeple waiting for them to Report our general feelings to us but in a way which only inspires more coercion against society and turns them into Social Nazis.

 

+1, privatized business is as evil as it gets. and should be kept out of health care, and social security for that matter.

Greed is inherite in all these companies that use our tax bail out dollars to buy more lobbiest on capital hill to keep things the way they are, where all the wealth is funneled to the elite few. its a corrupt system people, admit it.

 

It´s actually working quite well though. There were various voices against it when the crisis first hit and the mutual funds started losing money, but they gained it back and are making money again.

I actually see it as a good alternative to taxpayers throwing money at the elderly.

The place it didn´t work was Argentina, where the govt took all the money and used it to "bail" themselves out, although it really didn´t help much cause there wasn´t nearly enough money there to make it work...they still took the money though.

 

I dont think you can really say its working, not at least until the system has been fully implemented and you look at the context years after.

The market still dictates, pension funds fees are high, the cost to transition into the system has affected public spending (not for the better), and the chance of people not wanting to join into makes it vulnerable to overall activity.

And who started it all there? Mr. Pinochet, the backed CIA/US government dictator.

 

Wait, What?! Who do you think these lobbyists on capital hill lobby too? Politicians, the people who run the government. What, you think the corruption is only in corporate American and not in it's precious government? Cuz otherwise, I don't understand why you think letting the government run it is the only solution. This is funny. Quite a new angle. So admit that the system is corrupt, but let's let the system take care of it...

 

All right, I´ll give you that, it might be too early to tell, but so far it´s been working and it sure is a better alternative than the system currently used in the states where the workers and taxpayers take care of the retired.

I don´t see how just because it started under Pinochet it´s necessarily a bad thing though. The system has been running under a left wing, democratically elected govt for years and I don´t really see them bent on trying to change it.

And Pinochet didn´t think it up anyway, it was Jose Piñera FYI.

 

whyyy don't we just not allow money to be considered free speech.
Maybe then the politicians will go back to relying on voters.....and pass a public option.