John,
The market doesn't decline consistently for 30++ years, all it has to do is a have a cumulative decline, as it has for the last 4 years.
What last 4 years are you talking about? We are barely down in last 4 years.
If you are talking about the decline from 2000 to 2003 which amounted to 45%, if you listened to Bush speech yesterday, you would know that he said that the fluctuations should be removed from accounts of people near retirement (moving to funds to treasure bills from more volatile instruments?).
Over the long term, about half of the 45% decline has already been reversed by the market, and over 30 years, well, S&P index goes back only 23 years, and it is up 856%.
Dow, over last 30 years is up 1,522% in last 30 years.
And BTW, under what conditions is your doomsday scenario more likely, whe SS has zero in the checking account and 10s of trillions in liabilities, or when 10s of trillions of dollars of capital has been created and invested?
This is a democracy, remember? SS would be the last thing to be eliminated.
Under your doomsday scenario, Congress would be removed from budgeting and replaced by a board run by creditors, and the hard debts would take a priority over "soft" SS liabilities.
As far as the possibility of Congress confiscating private property from private accounts of SS savers, while that is possible, then nothing is safe.
Joe |
