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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (214495)	1/9/2005 1:53:43 AM
From: SilentZ	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1572453

Ivins: Let's get this straight. The Republicans do not want to fix Social Security, they want to kill it. Period. They don't want to "partially privatize" Social Security, they want to end it. Exactly. -Z

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (214495)	1/9/2005 10:00:17 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572453

Raymond, it is not propaganda. Think about it. If you have a savings account and you spend more than you contribute, then that savings account will eventually be depleted. Social security has a trust fund and both left and right leaning actuaries estimate that outflows will exceed inflows by 2018 and the fund will be depleted somewhere between 2042 and 2052. Read the Social Security Administrations own website. This is where I'm getting those figures. When they say that SS benefits will have to be adjusted downwards to 70%, what they mean is that in order to ensure we match benefit outflows to incoming contributions after 2042, we'd have to reduce benefits outflows. So in every post I have been saying you can solve the problem in several ways: reduce benefits, raise taxes, run deficits, or privatize and let the market earn the beneficiaries more money to make up the difference. I know quite a bit about social security, because I've read the Social Security Administration's own recent report and the figures that their own actuaries have published. I suggest you do the same. It is quite educational and is more reliable than what critics and proponents in the media might write, because the SSA is unbiased. They are concerned about one thing and that is figuring out how to ensure that the system is long term sustainable.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (214495)	1/10/2005 9:57:48 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572453

The Social Security issue is a perfect example of the right-wing bias of our main-stream media. There are a number of simple ways to expose the ridiculousness of the SS-bashing. Josh Marshall has a nice one: <<< ... Here is one of many comparisons and observations we'll be making to provide some counterweight to the White House's efforts to deceive the American people about Social Security. The Social Security Trustees estimate that over the next 75 years the program faces a budget shortfall of $3.7 trillion. As we've noted previously and will again, the Trustees use a very pessimistic estimate of future economic growth to arrive at that figure. But, for the moment, let's stipulate to that amount. $3.7 trillion is a lot of money. But how much will the president's Medicare drug benefit plan cost over the next 75 years? $8.1 trillion, say the Trustees of that program. And over the next 75 years how much will the president's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts cost if made permanent, as the president wants? $11.6 trillion. So you add that up and you get $3.7 trillion we need to cover Social Security's shortfall and $19.7 trillion we need just to cover the costs of the two major domestic policy initiatives of the president's first term. And yet Social Security, says the president, is in crisis and destined to chew through the rest of the federal budget. (These statistics are noted in this budgeting summary from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.) I would submit to you that in any reasonable universe this simple comparison shatters the president's credibility on fiscal 'icebergs' and spending crises. And yet these basic facts seem to garner little notice. That is because, in the last couple decades, in the culture of Washington -- particularly among the elite commentators and reporters (just watch Meet the Press) -- presuming that Social Security is financially unviable has become a ready shorthand for public policy seriousness, much as many use a basic knowledge of imported wines or a familiarity with classical music to signal refinement. This is something the president is exploiting. And the defenders of Social Security must find ways to overcome it ... >>> talkingpointsmemo.com Tom