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

To: Brumar89 who wrote (549584)	2/12/2010 1:40:45 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574490

Great article. This in particular caught my eye: Second, almost $20 trillion of the $45.8 trillion of spending involves three programs -- Social Security, Medicare (health insurance for those 65 and over) and Medicaid (health insurance for the poor -- two-thirds goes to the elderly and disabled). The message: The budget is mainly a vehicle for transferring income to retirees from workers, who pay most taxes. As more baby boomers retire in the 2020s, deficits would grow. Third, there is no way to close the massive deficits without big cuts in existing government programs or stupendous tax increases. Suppose we decided to cover all future deficits by raising taxes. Taxes would rise in the 2020s by roughly 50 percent from the average 1970-2009 tax burden. mindmeld => my view is that we need to privatize social security. We need to immediately put the obligation to all citizens on the books in order to quantify the debt owed. This will help everyone understand how serious this issue is and account for it properly. Next, we need to tag all future contributions to people's social security number and have a slow phase out of this defined benefit plan and move to a defined contribution, 401K-like plan. In short, I think our government needs to get out of the business of social security, but retain the mandate that people save for themselves through a contribution that is tagged to you and only you. But good luck getting the Dems to sign onto that one. As much as the GOP hate to do anything about health care, the Dems are equally as hostile to changing social security. That's why we're in the mess we're in.