Powder Blue Report: Social Security Reform

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Social Security Reform

Tell me it isn't so. I've been reading alot lately about Bush's Social Security reform trial balloons. I am all for letting my generation and future generations putting part of their social security earnings in a private account similiar to an IRA, but I am not for them raising the income limit so they can grab more of our money. We've had enough of the soak the rich mentality in Washington. The answers lay in cutting spending, period, end of story. I don't think any social security reform can pass the Senate anyway because the dems are sure to filibuster any reforms that include private accounts. There are not five democrat Senators in my opinion willing to cross the aisle on this issue. They will just continue to demagogue the issue.

2 Comments:

At 11:59 PM, Ted Pavlic said…

The Century Foundation has put together The Social Security Network, which posts a lot of good articles on the subject of social security reform.

Paul Krugman, an internationally known economist, often writes articles for the New York Times in which he has said a great deal about the privitization of social security. See The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive for more of his writings. His New York Times columns are given there as well, which, of course, includes the ones he's written on social security and the agenda of the Bush administration.

There are plenty of other resources like these that all agree that privitizing social security only makes the problem worse, and it actually makes the payout less for everyone involved. Right now social security is paid for up through 2052. For only a HALF OF A PERCENT of our GDP we can extend social security for another 100 years.

And additionally, keep in mind that the big problem with social security isn't a problem with the system but a problem with there being so many baby boomers collecting retirement.

So the real problem isn't social security, it's medicare.

However, if you're really concerned about retirement, start looking at public employees' retirement systems. There's a bigger problem there than there is with social security, and when those programs run out of money, they borrow from social security. Medicare is a big issue there as well.

If Bush wanted to reform social security, he should have done it four years ago when he had the money to do it. Any reform is going to cost trillions of dollars. We don't have that money, completely due to Iraq, and so we really cannot even consider reform.

But the big thing is... we probably DON'T NEED IT.

One of those pages is Twelve Reasons Why Privitizing Social Security is a Bad Idea.

Now,
At 8:39 AM, Unknown said…

I appreciate your comments, but I'm not impressed with the arguments that your source talks about. First, the Century Foundation is a liberal think tank so of course they're against any kind of reform. As far the arguments against that you spell out, I don't know how you can say that there is not a crisis in social security. It's a ponzi scheme, pure and simple. It was started back in the 30's with the people receiving it not having paid into the system. It also had a 20 to 1 ratio of workers to people receiving benefits. Now that ratio is down to 3 to 1. Pretty soon when all the boomers start to retire the ratio wil go down to 2 to 1. How anyone can argue that is not a crisis is ridiculous. No one in my generation that I have talked to about social security thinks there will be anything left when we retire so why should we keep the same sysytem. It just doesn't make sense.