To the editor:
To save Social Security, let's cut current benefits by one-third so the money will be there for my generation. Sounds kind of selfish, right? While I don't support that, it's what's going to happen to my generation if nothing is done. Twentysomething workers are awaiting a one-third cut in benefits, trillions in unfunded liabilities and massive hikes in payroll taxes to keep a broken system afloat.
President Bush is right to propose reforms such as price indexing and optional personal retirement accounts. Social Security is a system that can't invest in younger workers like it did for past generations. The demographics support the fact that the system is unsustainable. Congress "fixed" Social Security 20 times through tax hikes; look where we are today!
I'll take the opportunity to have a PRA inside the system rather than just accept an unavoidable 30 percent benefit cut inside the current system. So to the naysayers, give younger workers a fair shot, and stop thinking that you own Social Security. While these reforms are new and uncharted, it's a much safer route than staying on the sinking ship of insolvency. Do the math, you'll see. God bless.
Justin Smitley,
Lawrence
Comments
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merrill (anonymous) says…
In claiming that the rate of return on a stock investment is guaranteed to be greater than the return on any other asset, Bush is lying. If an investment-firm broker made this claim to his clients, he would be arrested and charged with stock fraud.
The article is about far more than the president. It provides
an explicit explantion of Wall Street and Social Security. Social Security can only go broke if legislators want it that way. Of course Wall Street wants $2,600,000,000 taxpayer dollars annually to improve their bottom line.
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/0505or...
I like keeping Social Security insurance in the event Wall Street investments don't work. Insurance and investments are like apples and onions.
What if your investment fail at the age of 61...then what?
Remember the Savings and Loan Scandal? Which corporations are still cooking their books...how many retirement plans got ripped off? How many had to go back to work at minimum wage. How many families split up? When you are 55 and older employers are not eager to hire.
Invest in Wall Street but retain Social Security Insurance as part of your diversication plan.
The borrow and spend approach cannot go on forever.
craigers (anonymous) says…
You can't keep raising taxes to fund this program either. There aren't very many options. The funds have to come from somewhere and if we keep dumping more into SS then we will be in the same situation we are always in, having to fix Social Security. With private accounts, you are your own investment broker. If you don't like risk, then put your money into short-term bonds, but if you do like risks and are young enough to ride out the ups and downs of the market, then you can do that to. Private accounts are the way to go. I know I would like to have some benefits when I get older, but I guess that requires some of the older generations to let that happen.
erichaar (anonymous) says…
Justin,
You are a wise young man to realize that Social Security in its current form cannot and will not stay solvent. And you are correct to conclude that younger workers should have the right to voluntairly invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in an investment that will almost certainly earn a greater return than the paltry 1% average the current system has earned its participants over past decades.
Today their are only 3 workers contributing Social Security taxes to each of today's Social Security recipients. Long before you retire, there will be only 2 workers contributing. At that point, America will no longer enjoy a Social Security surplus, and the system will go into deficit. By the time you and your children retire, you can indeed count on a severe reduction on your Social Secuirty beneifts-- that is, if nothing is done today to reverse the trend.
Now is the time for courageous men and women to look to the future and realize that Social Security has metastasized into a program that promises benefits that simply cannot be met. Now is the time to allow workers under the age of 55 to voluntarily invest a small portion of their total Social Security contribution into secure investments in America's infrastructure-- it's economy.
moderationman (anonymous) says…
I call BS on erichaar. Eliminate the ceiling on taxable income and the system is solvent forever. Increase the average rate of return by 1/2% and the system is solvent forever. The US has had deficits in the trust funds before in the 60's. Since its still operational, I guess that wasn't the end of the world. The system can provide the benefits with almost no tinkering. And as for the so called private accounts...99% of all funds are invested the system is run on 1%. Having worked for years in the investment business, I guarantee you that no investment house can match that. The use of so called private accounts benefits only one group...investment firms. In fact, the president's own proposal doesn't allow you to keep the excess you MIGHT earn, it goes back into the pool. Do some research and get past the Bush BS.
Speakout (anonymous) says…
Not only that, moderationman, when we get rid of the false ceiling, and all of the income from every facet of employment is taxed, there will be plenty to go around for years. We would need to reduce the amount of SS Tax.
BUT, the rich Republican Cronies are depending on BUSH to keep them rich. Like the oil problem right now. We don't have a shortage of oil, we have a shortage of oil refineries that have been shut down by the BUSH administration so their friends in the oil business could make more money on the oil they refine. He closed more than 50% of the refineries because they were not being used to capacity. think about it!
merrill (anonymous) says…
Erichaar is only speaking for Jim Ryun who got his orders from GW Bush who lied to the american public on this matter. Jim Ryun and others were told to go out and present a new argument as they did many times to convince voters/taxpayers that killing people in Iraq for oil would be a piece of cake...one trillion dollars and many dead people later we now know they did not know what they were talking about. Wall Street would likely funnel some of the $2,600,000,000 in social security tax dollars back into political campaign chests.
I would listen to an expert from Dollars and Sense before I would listen to Eric or his boss Jim Ryun.
merrill (anonymous) says…
social security
If President George W. Bush had succeeded in privatizing Social Security in 2001 (something that will probably occur if he is re-elected), where do you think that money would have been invested? The one name that comes to mind is ENRON. Where would the Social Security Administration have to take money from if the government had Social Security money invested in ENRON when they collapsed? It couldn't have come from the very poor... they have no money to give. And we all know it wouldn't have come from George W. Bush's "base" of "haves" and "have-mores". The sound you hear is the knocking on middle-class America's door. Pony up everybody
And where would the 1 trillion dollars in transition costs have come from for the Social Security Privatization plan?
Eight Nobel laureates and 300 other economists advised that the Bush Tax cuts and proposed spending increases would exhaust the projected surplus of both Social Security and Medicare.
The total cost of Bush's Social Security privatization plan is close to 1 trillion dollars. According to candidate Bush, the plan will offer younger workers "a better rate of return so that they'll have a retirement plan in the future." One of President Bush's 2000 campaign ads said "President Bush will keep the promise of Social Security. No changes. No reductions. No Way." In order to privatize Social Security, even if the market stayed up, the cost would still require deep cuts in benefits. And if the market went down, or if an investment went awry (e.g.; if Enron had been one of those companies invested in, around 2001), then the cuts would have to have been much deeper, the deficits higher or billions would have been cut from an untold amount of programs. State aid would have been cut and local taxes to the middle class would have risen.
"This (the Bush Social Security Privatization Plan proposed in 2000) frightens some in Washington because they want the federal government controlling the Social Security like it's some federal program." George W. Bush at a campaign rally in Missouri.
bisky1 (anonymous) says…
speakout: could not agree with your more. i am so steamed about all this, i have been a bush supporter from day one and i am still waiting for my check. i am not in the oil business but i still deserve a check. please call whoever it is you get your information from and tell them to get me my check.