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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (19555)	7/27/2001 12:19:11 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The reason I raise the question of the partial privatization of SS retirement is because I don't understand the proposal. I have never seen laid out anywhere just how it would work. All I've ever seen is the political pitch. I understand why that pitch is appealing to people in your situation, why you're eager to control your retirement funds, why you are averse to the tax rate, and why you see more long term risk in the program than in the stock market. I won't argue any of those with you. I wouldn't want to throw my money down that rat hole, either. Unlike you, I don't have any direct personal stake in this. I neither pay the taxes nor claim the benefits. There's nothing in this for me indirectly either since I'll probably be gone before the current program collapses. So I'm trying to look at this from a systems point of view--how it will work long term for the entire country, not just for Tim and his cohort? The present approach, a pyramid scheme, is inherently flawed. My concern is that we not rush to replace it with something equally but differently flawed because the proposal has political appeal to the President's constituency. I don't know that the proposal is flawed. I just don't know that it isn't. I thought that Kinsley asked a good question about how it would work in a zero-sum environment. I think you made a good point bringing up the risk of the current system. Yours is a personal risk. His is a systemic risk. You've obviously given this considerable thought from the point of view of your self interest. I'd be interested in your view of it from the broader perspective. Not what's wrong with the current system. I already know that. But what's universally right about the proposal. That, I don't know. My first instinct would be to scrap SS retirement altogether, pay off everyone based on their vested interest, and get Uncle Sam out of the retirement business. I don't know how that might work in detail, either. I'd like to see several options costed out and discussed, not just the singular gambit of a Presidential campaign, not the best environment for designing workable programs. Karen