Fiscally insecure

So the next big battle looming is Social Security. As I've said before, any sort of private investment plan should be called the destruction of Social Security, because there is no security involved with it. You fail, you lose. That's it.

Bush has begun to push that Social Security is doomed to failure. Kevin Drum helpfully points out that people have been saying that for years, and that since a doomsday prediction in 1994, Social Security's lifespan has actually lengthened by three years. If that's a doomed system, it seems to be doing pretty well to me.

Of course, it is not like more money cannot be diverted from other portions of the budget to flow into Social Security to make up for any shortfall. After all, the government often takes money out of the Social Security fund to pay for other things. Turnabout is fair play, right?

One of the latest ideas floated for public consumption is a cut in future retirement benefits by up to six percent. Bush and co. seem to think that because these are mere projections we are talking about, that these cuts aren't actually taking place. That, of course would dismantle the whole argument for "fixing" Social Security, because these are only projected shortfalls we are talking about, they do not actually exist yet.

Keep in mind that Social Security will never actually "go broke" as long as people are working in America (which may be a stretch to imagine in Bush's America). Current payouts are funded by current workers. Certainly payouts would decrease substantially, but there would still be payouts nonetheless.

Now what is to be done? Digby argues that Democrats should savage Bush for what he has proposed using the same doom, gloom, and fear that was used on Bill and Hillary's healthcare plan which, ironically, may have solved some of this problem in the first place.

People need to be convinced there are sensible solutions to this problem, and that Bush is in a rush to establish a legacy for himself. His plan is doomed to failure even more than the current system because it essentially solves nothing. I'm not sure how taking money out of the Social Security system will "save it," because private investment accounts have nothing to do with making your future secure. It's a crapshoot with loaded dice, and there is no way to safely predict if you will earn anything from them. Think back to all the people who lost money in the last stock market bust. Now imagine they had invested their retirement there. Who's left to take care of them now?

You can argue if you want, that the government should not be in the business of securing our financial futures. That, in essence, becomes what this debate is about. But the people I know and work with have never once said to me, "I wish taxes weren't so high so I could save more money for my retirement." Instead, it's talk of credit card debt and new boats, about mortgage payments and new dirt bikes.

Personally, I've gone to the American Academy of Actuaries site and played the Social Security game. There you can make choices on what you would do in order to "save" the system without worry of backlash from your fat cat constituents.

I can't get the site to work now, but if I remember correctly, raising the taxable income number showed a surprising amount of benefit. Those who make close to 100,000 a year could probably afford a little more investment in their future on top of the money they can already afford to save. And by lowering the rate at which Social Security payouts are increased, I think I saved it completely.

And I never asked anyone to gamble with their future in the stock market, either.

*WHOOPS* I forgot to point out this:

After years of trying the deregulation of public pension funds and after substantial financial losses, despite what Republicans’ friend British Prime Minster Maggie Thatcher promised in the 1980’s, the British are going back to what worked.

The British government is now urging people back into the government system.

What's that about those who don't learn from the past? Too bad we have a man who seems to have been innoculated to curiosity in the White House.