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

To: Srexley who wrote (551571)	3/15/2004 8:53:48 PM
From: Steve Dietrich	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

<< I still say the opening paragraphs of the report have some meaning too.>> Of course they do. They just don't mean what you think they do. The whole report says the same thing: solvent until 2042, then it can pay 73% of benefits, and that's with no changes and making fairly pessimistic assumptions about economic growth. <<My feeling is that individuals could do better, but the dem position is that we are too stupid (as is you position) to do that. It's a government boondogle in my opionion that pays far less than what is put in.>> You still don't even understand how SS works. When it was instituted, over half of our elderly were living in poverty. They didn't say, "hey let's start taking money from workers, hold it for 40 years and then give it back to them." They took the money from workers and gave it directly to the elderly. Those people (a whole generation of workers) paid little or nothing into the system but received a lifetime of benefits. The system has always been a generation behind like that, it's a social transfer of wealth from one generation to another. The idea of the trust fund didn't start until 1983 when Reagan raised the SS taxes so it would run surpluses to prepare for the baby boomers. It'll stop running surpluses in 2018, i think. The Trust fund was a temporary fix to the boomer problem. It doesn't change how the system fundamentally works. It would cost around $1 trillion to convert SS into a straight retirement account like what you think it is. No one ever says where that $1 trillion is coming from. I guess that means they favor a $1 trillion tax increase by Bush logic. Steve Dietrich