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

To: Cogito who wrote (672248)	2/15/2005 1:42:38 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Shove your numbers: The REAL return for SS for anyone entering the workforce in the last 20 years is no 1%. It is negative-as in "below zero" (for any Englishmen who can't handle the math.) Private accounts are ABOVE ZERO (in fact WELL above) and prevent the brutal destruction of the system and the PUNISHMENT of the Boomers that we are GUARANTEED to see if privatization does not begin soon. Today it's REFORM. Tomorrow it's WAR...

To: Cogito who wrote (672248)	2/15/2005 10:27:03 AM
From: Johannes Pilch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

But I don't see where they account for the administrative costs of the private accounts, which would necessarily be far higher. Indeed, and as you have noted, the Brits have lost money because the organizations investing on their behalf literally shafted them with administrative costs. Undoubtedly, a program wherein the public is forced by law to invest with certain, likely pre-approved organizations, the American public will also be shafted right along with the British. Bush's SS proposal is equally as coercive as the current Democrat SS paradigm. In fact, it is essentially the same program, except that it will allow the United States government to, sometime in the future, hold markets culpable for any future failure of the SS system. But markets cannot legitimately be held responsible for failure if market participants are not completely free. The government will still be blameworthy in any future problem in SS, and Bush's SS plan, if it is realized, will still be a scam. The plan will not repair the current SS program. In fact it likely will make SS even more volatile than currently. Our government ought not be in the business of forcing its citizens to pay for the retirement of anyone else. It has no responsibility to, as you say, 'ensure that people put enough money into private retirement accounts to prevent them from becoming greater burdens on society.' Freedom has its responsibilities. Americans need to grow up and realize that they are ultimately responsible for their own lives, their own comforts and their own futures. What government can do is offer products, alongside private organizations, that promise future rewards to their purchasers, allowing free people to buy these products of their own will.