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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (61317)	4/23/2008 11:25:01 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542465

Yeah, Dems aren't cavalier about it. They're just dishonest. The pols, I mean. Not you. It's not too late at all. If we are serious about paying these promised benefits, then we effectively owe the debt already. We just haven't recognized it on the books. The longer we wait, the amount of the unrecognized debt just gets bigger, but the problem is the same. As for current retirees' checks, that's not a valid objection. They are already subject to the willingness of congress to tax workers to pay them. The only difference is that congress would have to recognize the expenditure on the books. The check is drawn on the treasury either way, whether it's passing through from current workers' SS taxes or is funded from some other tax. But for the retirees, they can actually be made more secure than that. They would be issued an asset just as any other participant based on the present value of future earned benefits, an asset that congress cannot take away from them. They could take a guaranteed annuity for life if they so choose, so they can't outlive their income. Even better, if upon reaching retirement the government's annuity deal isn't competitive, they could could choose to roll over into a private one, say, from MetLife or Northwestern or some other highly rated insurance company just like one might do with a lump sum distribution from a private retirement account. Morphing into a proper system is only an issue because of politics, not because there are serious real problems with doing so. Other countries have successfully transitioned from unfunded to funded systems without great difficulty. We could too, if our pols could just see past their own short-term political interests.