Let's Finally Deep-Six the Privatization of Social Security
If there's any silver lining to the current credit crisis, it is the widening realization that forcing people to manage their own retirement accounts is nasty and irresponsible public policy. It's one thing to manage your 401(k), knowing a fixed pension is also coming your way from Social Security. It is another to have to manage your Social Security investments as well, which is what privatization is all about.
Reality bit over the last month. Not only do markets fall, but even money market funds may not be safe. Who knew? Not the pros. So how can the amateurs? There was the retired woman on the front page of the Wall Street Journal who had one third of her next egg in the local bank, now gone belly up. She couldn't imagine that bank's demise. But let's not forget the thousands of employees who lost most of their personally managed retirement funds at Enron not too long ago. And countless other examples.
How can a decent society expect people to manage their entire retirement next egg on their own? How dare they call that personal responsibility? Yet that is exactly what the privatizers, now led by John McCain, would like us to do. Barack Obama has taken on the McCain privatization plan in ads in Florida. He should take them on nationwide. Grandchildren are watching their grandparents get punished by the unexpected market woes. Even the young are beginning to understand the cruel folly of privatization.
On top of which, people increasingly must manage their retirement accounts as business abandons the defined benefit pension for the defined contribution plan.
Let's devote the nation's attention to guaranteeing the fixed benefits of Social Security and put privatization (including medical savings accounts) to bed for a long night's sleep.
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I don't necessarily agree with the article because if I could, I'd be buying corporate and municipal bonds right now with the currently very high and yet still relatively risk free returns. It is an absolute ripoff for my social security contributions to only appreciate at only a couple percent a year.
PLEEEEASE, don't show your stupidity... Anyone who has read the WSJ realizes that bonds have a down side also.. The bonds are devalued when the interest rates go up because they are not as valuable with a lesser rate of interest...
Give me a break, anyone with half a brain must know now that at least 90% of the increase in stock appreciation is going to the top 1%.... They are the ones who always get out at the top and in at the bottome...Do you think that anyone besides Warren Buffett will get the kind of returns he is getting on Goldman Sachs? Even the US government will not get that good a deal or if it is that good a deal, then the RISK will be overwhelming...
Forget about it, even Jeremy Seigel is going to cash and no longer trusts the index funds....that is the problem, RICH people are taking their GAMBLING money off of the table, Remember BUFFETT AND GATES ARE SITTING on close to 100 billion dollars of their VERY OWN MONEY
Some of the top US fortune 500 companies have unbelievable bond yields at the moment because of forced deleveraging by funds. I would gladly buy up these bonds with my social security funds if I could. Your argument about "bonds being devalued when interest rates go up" isn't a good one unless you know what the current yield on the bond is and what interest rates will be. And considering we're currently in a deflationary and not an inflationary environment and interest rates are coming down not up, you've just strengthened the case for bonds, especially on the high yielding AAA corporate bonds. About Buffett, he has been sitting around with lots of cash for many years, and that has little to nothing to do with the current crisis. In fact, he has just started putting money to work in recent weeks and months.
Yes, I think Obama ought to go nationwide with this, but I also think we can help. Let's not sit back and wait for Social Security to be "fixed" for us.
Write your Congressional representatives with the really easy forms available at http://www.congress.org
and make it clear: Social Security funds cannot be used for anything but Social Security payments.
You need a blue water navy person to deep 6 privitizing Social Security. McCain won't do. He's an air dale, a fly boy. He is good at crashing his own air craft & surving but it takes blue water people & rescue choppers to rescue him. Get an experienced officer, enough experienced rating, a sturdy, sea worthy craft to deep 6 the jury rigged privatized Social Security hazard to navigation & do it right the 1st time.
If I hear one more 'young Republican' whine that social security will not be there for them, I think I will scream. It will not be there for them if they do not take their blinders off and fight for a social net in this uncertain global world. And let me remind everyone that almost all of Social Security money is respent in the U.S, Most other tax dollars are spent in foreign rat holes.
I doubt we will lose S.S. now but what will go up is Medicare (thanks to ex republican senator BILL FRISK).
Let's talk about BILL FRISK and his PROTECTION RACKET as soon as we hang ex republican senator PHIL GRAHAM.
Republicans aka Conservatives despise the concept of social insurance of any kind. So-called privatization is just another killer amendment to social security. If Republicans actually think that the vast majority of people can save and invest enough to provide for there retirement, they are bigger fools than I thought. Even if we were not in a period of financial distress, there would be a need for social insurance.
Social Security is a pay as you go system. It is a method in which society agrees to provide a modest income to people when they become old and are unable to work. It replaced a system that existed when we were an agrarian society, when the old folks lived with their families on the farm. ANd when the old folks had no surviving family, the community took care of them to one degree or another. The industrial revolution killed the old system.
The Republican solution: Get rich or DIE! A liitle Darwinism. (Don't tell the Creationists)
I used to work at Social Security taking applications from people from the pensions. You can't even imagine how many of these people had NOTHING else but their Social Security. Some of these people were widows who had been housewives all their lives and had absolutely nothing else. I often wondered if they didn't get that Social Security check what would they do. There are those who might suggest they should have planned better, but how do you do that on $20000 a year to raise a family and plan for retirement.? I think paying into Social Security for the COMMON good is much preferable to sending each person out on their own to invest or lose their savings. Remember if they lose all their money in a stockmarket crash, taxpayers will end up supporting them one way or the other!
Exactly (you can't just shoot the poor, can you). But for this to be politically acceptable by the majority many more people would have to experience severe financial distress. Now, too many would have too much to loose (who really wants to share with the poor?). This financial storm can be understood as a chance for such a change.
I also find it hilarious when politicans talk about taking money from younger generations to fund the elderly. Who do they think would be asked to contribute to the care of granny if she didn't have Social Security? Or even regular old boomer parents?
No one - amateur or professional - can gurantee performance of stocks and now, even bank bonds (once thought totally safe). Without Social Security, many people would now be facing a retirment with NO INCOME. Maybe some young people would be able to tell mom and dad, or grandpa and grandma that they could just starve, but not most. So, young people are going to be funding the care of the elderly in one way or the other.
OBAMA NEEDS TO TELL PEOPLE BUSH HAS BEEN USING THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND
TO OFF SET THE TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY!!!!!!!!!
BUSH DID THE SAME THING IN TEXAS.
BUSH ROBBED THE TEXAS TEACHERS RETIREMENT FUND TO COVER TAX CUTS FOR BUSINESS
Yeah, cause facing the reality of financial ruin will cause the GOP sheeple to wake up and do the intelligent thing.
Right.
Gonna happen any day now.
Unless we put a stake in its heart, cut off its head and fill it with garlic then bury it at the cross roads at midnight, it will arise again at the next election.
See Neil Grossman's Profile
Privatization does not even solve the Social Security/Medicare Medicaid nightmare. And, if the current events should demonstrate, the amount of reliance on equity styly investments (irrespective of who manages them) is not necessarily a good idea. Remember, also, that in periods where retiree /worker ratios go up, the "price paid" for assets will almost certainly drop.
BULL FEW PEOPLE LIVE TO 68 TO REITRE AND DRAW.
BUSH HAS BEEN ROBBING SOCIAL SECURITY TO OFF SET TAX CUTS FOR MILLIONAIRES.
IT IS A TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE WEALTHY.
BUSH IS TRYING TO BANKRUPT THE SYSTEM.
Money is a means for transfer, not for storage. This is why a pension or retirement security payed for by the young makes much more sense.
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