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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chalu2 who wrote (19253)	5/20/2000 2:22:00 PM
From: Augustus Gloop	Respond to of 769670

Even if tax payers were forced to place the money in a 6% annual return account they would be better off. The only thing the current system ensures is that many older adults will be living check to check. I think we need to attempt to figure out what Medicares's needs are going forward (better than they did in the 60's) and allow the rest of the SS (both employee and employer parts) to be self directed. If need be the feds can restrict us to "CD" like accounts but lets get this monkey off our back once and for all. I guess it's nice to dream <g>

To: chalu2 who wrote (19253)	5/20/2000 2:51:00 PM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Chulu2, we can never be assured of anything. A meteor shower could hit the world next year and kill all life. Perfect assurance is not what is needed. What we need to do is come to thoughtful conclusions based on reasonable assumptions. Assumption 1. People controlling their own retirement money will invest it better than the government. Assumption 2. The present system does not provide for long term sustainability unless taxes are raised, or benefits sharply curtailed. Since more and more people are getting older, the older generation will vote to raise taxes on the young in order to pay for their benefits, instead of cutting them. Assumption 3. If the people of Chile can set up a privatized social security model that works reasonably well, America can too. Assumption 4. The value of the stock market will continue to outpace inflation when dealing with a minimum 20 year cycle. Assumption 5. Having people invest a portion of their social security funds in the stock market will create more capital for businesses, which in turn will help them grow and provide more and more jobs. To me, this is such a no-brainer it's pathetic! If government workers can do it, why can't the rest of America? Are they more intelligent than the average american? No system will ever be perfect. To believe we must have perfection in order to improve the current social security model is not realistic. If I am beating my head against the wall, all I need to do is stop first. The plan of (optionally) investing a paltry 2% of ones income in the stock market is way too conservative to me. We should allow people to invest 100% if they choose. The hysteria I've seen around the boards of SI toward this proposal of George W's is ludicrous. People seem to be saying. Yes, I am smart enough to invest my retirement money, but joe-blow is not. There is a word for that kind of thinking, but right now it slips my mind. Michael

To: chalu2 who wrote (19253)	5/20/2000 4:40:00 PM
From: haqihana	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

chalu, Why should any governmental office "bail out" investors who make poor decisions? They don't bail out any other gamblers, do they?? The stock market is nothing but a "crap shoot". You pays your money, and takes your chances. If you lose, you just flat lose. No recourse! The investor can blame no one but himself. If there is a bear market, any potential investor has to make decisions based on that condition. God forbid that they would have to go to work for a living!! ~H~

To: chalu2 who wrote (19253)	5/22/2000 8:10:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

>>I keep re-thinking this 2% proposal LOL. There is no evidence that you ever "thought" about it. Gore the Hysteric By George F. Will Sunday, May 21, 2000; Page B07 Al Gore thinks it is risky. The antecedent of the pronoun "it" could be anything (school choice, tax cuts, entitlement reforms, the internal combustion engine, repeal of the designated hitter rule) that George W. Bush favors. But the risky thing currently alarming Gore, a professional hysteric, is Bush's proposal to allow Americans to invest a small portion of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts. The biggest risk is in doing nothing--neither raising Social Security taxes nor cutting benefits nor causing, as Bush proposes, retirement funds to grow faster. The Social Security Administration says doing nothing will force a 25 percent to 33 percent reduction of benefits for 150 million people currently under 40. Some critics of Bush's plan worry that individuals might invest retirement funds recklessly, assuming that government would be the insurer of last resort--that if there were a long cycle of declining share prices, government would at least cover their losses. But under Bush's plan, investors would choose not individual stocks but a few "steady, reliable funds." The most risk-free way (free of economic risk; political risk is another matter) to start fixing Social Security would be to raise the retirement age. If in 1935, when Social Security was enacted, the retirement age had been indexed to life expectancy, the retirement age today would be about 73. Bush's basic approach is supported by many Democrats, including Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who says, "It turns capitalism in a direction that is very defensible." He notes that liberals should know by now that inheritance taxes are ineffective at doing what something like the Bush approach to retirement security would do--help narrow the gap between rich and poor. Allowing people with modest resources to attempt to multiply those resources in the stock market is the best way to open broader access to affluence. But although about half of American households now own stock, Gore portrays the stock market as irrational, like gambling (last week he referred to "stock market roulette" and "rolling the dice"), and riddled with fraud. Pandering to students at the Fordham Business School in Manhattan, he said:... Gore warns that Bush's proposed personal retirement accounts would divide Americans into winners and losers. Actually, the basic division would be between winners and even bigger winners. Mitchell says that looking at the best and worst 46-year periods (the span of an average person's working life) in market history, workers' personal retirement accounts in the best period would have done almost twice as well as those in the worst, but those in the worst would have done much better than by relying on Social Security alone. Congress does not rely on it. Under the Thrift Savings Plan, members of Congress, and other federal workers, can invest up to 10 percent of their salary annually in one of three retirement funds--one stock-based, one based on corporate bonds, one based on government bonds. Over the past 10 years the average return from the stock-based fund has been 18 percent. Last year's return was 20.95 percent. The 1988 legislation creating this plan was co-sponsored by Gore. Today, in his infinite condescension toward the American public, he thinks that plans of the sort Congress created for itself and other federal workers, and that Bush proposes for all Americans, are just too complex ("risky") for "tens of millions" of Americans. search.washingtonpost.com