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AP
Should we not have the final choice on whether we participate in social security or not?

Your post also suggests that Bush wants to totally privatize social security and that our seniors will live their final days in poverty.
Is TOTAL privatization what Bush has said?
And isn’t your hypothesis about seniors living in poverty also “fear mongering?”
Both sides are guilty of “creating undue alarm.”

The truth is, nobody KNOWS what would happen with social security reform, they can only guess, just as you and Bush have done.
What is known is that social security participation should not be FORCED onto us.
It should be OUR choice, not the govt’s.

Indeed. If the program is solvent for the next half-century, I don’t see the rush to put us a couple of trillion dollars in debt.

It’s strange how few people mention the financial solvency of the program. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Bush’s deficit spending and looting of the SS trust fund, we wouldn’t even be in the very mild pickle we find ourselves in.

Gaelen - If you had read the report to which AP links, you would know that “looting” is a misnomer and has not really happened (at least, that’s the liberal line).

Also, if you read my new post over on the Conservative side, you would know that there’s a lot more in play here than AP suggests.

Is there really any problem with eliminating Social Security altogether?
We could pass a law that will stop paying Social security 40-45 years after the date of passage, except for the people already on it at the time. Taxes, at that time, could be lowered proportionally to the rate of payment over the coming years.
That way, people just entering the job market would be able to save or their own retirements. It wouldn’t affect anybody paying into or receiving social security now.
Obviously, in real life this plan would be a lot more complicated, but I’d like to know how people feel about it.
(I also posted this on the red side.)

Actually, if you look it up, you’ll find Social Security is a voluntary program. Always has been…You can withdraw at any time, get back your payments as along as you never intend to draw from the benefits pool.

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“Actually, if you look it up, you’ll find Social Security is a voluntary program. Always has been… You can withdraw at any time”

I didn’t know that. How do you do about doing it?

TheTraveler, I did not know that it was a voluntary program. What is your source for that information, please? Thanks.

AP, the long term solvency of SS depends entirely upon a long term budget plan to insure that solvency. It is not, by any means, too early to establish our budgetary priorities that will permit SS to remain a solvent safety net against dying in streets and alleys in cardboard box shelters after society has decided we are no longer useful to its workforce.

AP,

If you happen to find time after refuting your detractors here and a far, maybe a quick conspiratorial inquiry should pose no problem?

You alluded to ‘ideology’ as being the reason Social Security is on the administration’s agenda. I’m assuming therefore, some wacky, convoluted neo-Con, Heritage Foundation think tank, supply-side Economic Doctrine is somehow involved?

Warm?

wolfer, that’s interesting. If you could provide a link that expands on that, I’d appreciate it.

kctim, why don’t we put it to a national referendum. Then everyone can vote on whether to keep Social Security as it is, or chuck it. I suspect you’d be in the minority.

Chops, that’s an interesting article, but it doesn’t actually refute mine. You point out, as I do, and as kctim underscores, that the two side’s positions are ideological.

You can solve the problem in two ways: either make sure the program is funded to support current programs, or cut programs. To say fully funding Social Security is not in the budget begs the question, who makes the budget?

You also don’t address why Mankiw states that partial privatization (thanks kctim) is pointless without cutting benefits. Nor do you address the cost or the risks of partial privatization.

The president’s plan for partial privatization puts the federal government in the same position that Enron was. They’d be encouraging Americans to invest their retirement benefits in the market, rather than the current safe but low-yielding bonds. When the bottom drops out of the market again, and every American loses a substantial amount of their retirement savings, what is the government going to do?

Will they blow us off and say Americans should have read the fine print before investing their Social Security benefits in the market? I doubt it. The more likely scenario is a taxpayer-funded bailout that will make the S&L bailout of the 80s look like chump change.

From the document I link,

The creation and expansion of Social Security in the twentieth century is one of the main reasons why the poverty rate among the elderly declined from more than 35 percent in the 1950s to around 10 percent today. Social Security is an essential source of retirement income for the majority of older Americans, providing an average benefit of about $10,000 per year. For almost two-thirds of households headed by someone age sixty-five or over, Social Security provides more than half their income; for 12 million of those households, the program provides at least 90 percent of their income.

I don’t find $10k per year excessive. How much of that do you advocate cutting? Do you just want to cut the disability benefits? Exactly which benefits are you talking about cutting?

Even Bush doesn’t want to go there.

Bert, the conservative ideology is more like what Chops talks about in his article: an idyllic society where everyone takes care of themselves, and screw the other guy.

If grandpa lost all his retirement savings in a series of unfortunate investments, too bad. It’s a shame he was so unlucky.

Before Social Security, tens of millions of seniors lived in poverty.

That fact alone should have these “society of stakeholder” dreamers scratching their heads. It completely invalidates their position.

Social security is financially unsustainable because it is regularly robbed by congress.

If the Congress were held to accounting standards they’d all be in jail. Frankly,that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

SS was a Ponzi scheme from the outset. Means test it. Put it in a lockbox.

Stop rampant gov’t giveaways, then it might have a chance. Not in my lifetime will this happen.

I do want to add that Bush does want to underfund and cripple Social Security all New Deal/Great Society ideas. His plan is a big giveaway to Wall Street.

I agree with AP on this. That is why I strongly advocate a means test.

Screw Gramps and Grammy is exactly right. Put ‘em on the ice flow. Unless, of course, they’re filthy rich and can put sonny boy in a business where if he borrows a couple hundred thousand he’ll make 10 million in five years.

Meanwhile, cry for all those babies those scummy welfare moms are aborting.

When will the morons in the “red” states see this for what it is? Classism. Sadly, they think they are white, and upwardly mobile. Remember the golden rule: Those with the gold rule.

Ever notice how outsourcing is tied to underfunding of pensions?

If you aren’t in the club then you are a filthy animal to be used and “dealt” with.

AP
I am sure I am in the minority on this one.
But I do not want to just chuck SS, I want a choice.
Besides, if were are such a minority, what would it hurt to let us small number of people to simply opt out of paying SS?

If I were president, I’d make an exception for you, kctim. :)

Seriously, the problem that may or may not occur forty years from now is because the number of workers vs. retirees will be temporarily out of balance.

We need you!

In fact, we need everybody to participate. More than everybody. Maybe that’s why Bush is trying to legalize all the illegal workers in the US. That would be a huge boost to Soc Sec. :)

Hmm… Didn’t Chops mention increased immigration as part of the “wildly” optimistic projections? Maybe those optimistic projections really are more mild than wild.

The problem is NOT with Social Security.
There’s lots of money and ways to fix S.S.
and the many problems with the U.S.

There’s only one thing standing in our way: Congress (a.k.a. Master-Parasites)

…. AND the dim witted Voters that empower them.

We should simply vote them all out, ALL incumbents,
vote only non Dems and non Republicans,
every election, no exceptions, until things improve drastically
(say 8 or 12 years; after some changes have been made so that we can
easily identify the bad politicians and ONLY vote out the bad ones).

TOO MUCH focus and energy is wasted
trying to fix what Congress screws up,
when the people should focus their energy on the perpetrators (Congress)
and a way to make them accountable.

Fix Congress, and a multitude of wonderful
improvements would naturally follow.

Or, we can all continue to wallow in
the petty partisan politics, bickering, and
squabbling of which we are so fond of.
Perhaps the primary flaw with Democracy is
the inability of voters to ever unite to
do something as simple as focus on the root
cause of their problems (Congress), and
simply use the ONE thing they already have (their vote)
to remove the parasites sucking the life out of society.

I see where Bush isn’t going to suggest raising taxes to pay for the private accounts. That leaves cutting programs.

Hmm… Encouraging workers to play the stock market with their retirement accounts, cutting benefits, all based on worst-case predictions of what might happen forty years from now… Sounds like dismantling Social Security to me.

Hey! Look at that! Bush is gearing up all the personalities and think tanks, and getting the Scare America tour bus ready to sell America on the “disastrous consequences of inaction” on Social Security,

To build public support and circumvent critics in Congress and the media, the president will travel the country and warn of the disastrous consequences of inaction, as he did to sell his Iraq and terrorism policies during the first term, White House officials said. He is also enlisting well-funded conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation to help build the case for change — or “reform,” in the words of the White House — through ads and commentary on television and in targeted publications, the aides said.

I wonder if he’ll follow Schwarzenegger’s lead and have a pyrotechnics show, too. That played pretty well in California.

Here’s a good analysis from the Washington Post,

Bush warned the conference yesterday that in 2018, the Social Security system will begin paying out more in benefits than it receives in Social Security taxes. By 2042, the system will be able to pay beneficiaries no more than 75 percent of their promised benefits.

“Once that line in the red has been crossed, the shortfalls will grow larger with each passing year,” he continued.

But those projections are based on a dire view of the nation’s economic future, one in which the growth in economic productivity crashes from the 3.4 percent rate of last year to 1.6 percent from 2012 on. Economic growth is anticipated to be cut nearly in half from historic trends, to 1.8 percent between 2015 and 2080.

So, “[t]he fact that there’s a mad scramble to ‘save’ Social Security right now, forty years before its worst-case projected insolvency in 2042, tells me the administration’s agenda is more about ideology than keeping our seniors from living their final years in poverty and squalor,” huh?

Once upon a time, the very same agenda was pushed by the Democrats—shortly before they revealed themselves as shameless hypocrites:

“We have a great opportunity now to take action now to avert a crisis in the Social Security system. By 2030, there will be twice as many elderly as there are today, with only two people working for every person drawing Social Security. After 2032, contributions from payroll taxes will only cover 75 cents on the dollar of current benefits. So we must act, and act now, to save Social Security.”

George W. Bush? No, William Clinton: February 1998.

“Save Social Security first.”

George W. Bush? No, William Clinton: State of the Union speech 1998.

Americans cannot afford any new spending “before we take care of the crisis in Social Security that is looming when the baby boomers retire.”

George W. Bush? No, William Clinton.

The administration?s economical advancements cannot go forward as long as the U.S. is “threatened by the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security. We have a great opportunity now to take action now to avert a crisis in the Social Security system.”

George W. Bush? No, William Clinton: February 1998.

According to Byron York, National Review White House Corespondent, “In September 1998, Vice President Al Gore went to the Capitol for a Social Security pep rally with congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and others.

“Gore said that in coming years ? by 2032 ? ?Social Security faces a serious fiscal crisis.? Everyone in the group stayed remarkably on-message as they warned that the future was dire.

“Save Social Security first,” said Gore.

“Save Social Security first,” said Gephardt.

“Save Social Security first,” said Kennedy.

“Save Social Security first,” said Boxer.

DEMS: NO SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS? CHECK PAST DEMS’ CRISIS CRIES

Funny how things change, isn’t it?