a valid question...

[acroyear]

"if Social Security privatization is supposed to be about making "younger workers" better off, as Bush has said, will he please explain why piling yet more debt on their backs should make them grateful?" -- Editorial on Social Security reform at the 'Post.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

1) it kinda depends on what is meant by "off budget". if the expenses are removed from the budget, but the income revenue is not (meaning current expenses only come from the existing load), then it looks very good for the budget, only the SS will be depleted much more rapidly. i doubt anybody's proposing that, but its an interpretation that can be read into the editorial since "off budget" isn't explained.

2) i certainly agree that the current system will NOT pay for the boomers when they hit their stride in the next 5-10 years (my own parents qualify for main checks in 8, and dad's already looking at social security disability pay as a result of his stroke). i also don't think in the short term that the privatization in and of itself will remove so much of the "cash in the bank" that current recipients will run out of money anytime soon.

however, the privatization plan does favor those who actually bother to pay attention to stocks and growth markets and all that crap. most people don't want to (and as the dot-bomb and the many internet scams show, most people wouldn't know a good market from a bad in any instance). so conceptually, the plan favors those already good at investment (and willing to invest the time it takes to manage investments), who also happen to be those least likely to be in need of such a plan.

i'm not so sure the "irony" (of repubs and dems changing places on this plan) is really there. this plan favors investors, and investors *tend* to favor incumbent government officials over the upheaval of developing whole new lobbying efforts to freshman congressman and new presidents. This issue may have been an issue lobbied for by investors, not a "bright idea" from either party's own leadership, and as such, the lobby goes to who's already in there.

Both sides now have majorities in places that the other sides used to have years ago (republicans in the rich industrial north (outside of city labor), dems in the rural south was the "rule of law" handed to me in my 12th grade gov class) and as such, many aspects of the sides have changed hands or are still in transition. A recent comparison map of 1860 shows the republicans having taken all the states that used to be "slave" states (or territories) -- the parties have almost entirely changed sides but geographically the country is exactly as divided as it was 150 years ago (at least at the state level).

this implies that the parties have been changing slightly to solidify their baseline in the states they dominate in, by taking on other issues that were once the exclusive of the other party when that other party held that state. and especially in the south, all that is recent.

3) ok, this is annoying. i get extremely tired of "out of context" (or irrelevant source) quotes from the right-side pundits (hannity and coulter are masters of it). just because it seems to work for them doesn't mean the left has to follow suit.