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

To: Road Walker who wrote (220836)	2/25/2005 1:28:07 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571061

Did you see where the US ambassador to Canada told the Canadians they gave up their sovereignty when they decided not to go with the missile defense program? Talk about a shot over the bow! Message 21080983 ted

To: Road Walker who wrote (220836)	3/1/2005 10:41:05 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571061

John, The obligation is not gone, and neither is the surplus. Obligation is there (hence the unfunded liability that you have had such a hard time accepting), but it can be "adjusted". Doing nothing now will make the "adjustment" severe. Surplus, or more precisely the assets of the SS (somewhat non-existent) make things even worse, as the gradual worsening is hidden by paying out of the assets, the worsening later leads to somewhat hard crash. And what would that do to the Bush deficit, and to the subsequent interest rates, and the economy? For that reason alone the program is DOA. In the current budget system (that is inadequate), it makes things worse for the deficit, I would guess. The current budget is made look better that it really is, since the obligations to the future retirees are completely ignored (FDR would probably be arrested if he were a CEO for the way he handled Social Security). Now, when you go to replace junk FDR IOUs with real assets, it is going to take some pain. One approach would be to "share" the pain between holders of the junk IOUs and taxpayers. For example, a starting from some 12.4% SS tax going to beneficiaries, benefits could cut so the rate paying the retirees would be say 11% (1.4% reduction) but the tax would be increased by 1.4% to 13.8%. Another way to go would be to scrap this asset building phase alltogether, and switch money that go to this hypothetical asset pool. The money, instead would go to the private accounts, with no tax increase today, but obligation explosion much closer, that could be treated by reduction of obligations (through higher retirement age and / or lower benefits). The benefit of such approach is that it gives people taste of building their own wealth in their own account, and the remaining obligation will be viewed as welfare. Joe