social security reform???

Originally posted by orionthehunter
.... The Medicare prescription drug benefit is the real crisis I read where money problems will appear next year I believe I read and the debt burden from that prescription deal alone will cost 17 trillion dollars due soon. Apparently, our politicians have already dug us a big hole (make that a humongous sinkhole) and our government hasn't saved a dime to fill it in. Therefore, I think I may be willing to take whatever control I can over my future savings. As a taxpayer, I am a bit upset about how well our government has managed our money we pay. They call a plan Social Security and then dig a 28 trillion dollar hole.

On the bright side at least there is discussion on the topic now. I am not in favor of raising my taxes 2% to fix the Social Security system like the democrats are proposing. My 2% savings of my own wages will be a lot more I believe than the government plans on paying me back.

What you said: As a taxpayer, I am a bit upset about how well our government has managed our money we pay.

What this means to me:As a taxpayer, I am a very upset about how our government has mismanaged our money.
And if the new senior drug program is ANY indication about how our ogvernment will conduct a social security revamp, we should be verrrrry afraid. They are claiming if you are 55 and over, nothing willl chnge. We need to see the tiered changes for those 54 and younger. We need to know how soon these changes will go into effect.

But most of all, We need to tell our congress people how we feel!

I keep looking for more reliable information on how this will effect "older" Americans, basically over the age of 35, low income folks, etc.
Here's some Q & A's from the Cato Institute:
www.socialsecurity.org...

Another view on individual accounts:

Advocates of reforming Social Security by allowing workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes through individual accounts have long argued that private investment would provide a higher rate of return and, therefore, higher retirement benefits than Social Security. After all, in any dynamically efficient economy the return to capital will exceed the return that can be generated by a labor-based system such as Social Security. Recently, however, some critics have suggested that that analysis is wrong. Among other things, they suggest that future returns to equity investment are likely to be far below historical rates of return. They also suggest that studies predicting higher returns for private investment do not adequately reflect the risk and administrative costs of those investments or the cost of transitioning to a private system.

www.socialsecurity.org...

Another update:
The game of words is heating up. "Private" and "personal" accounts. Is the system in a crisis or merely having problems?
What is the public willing to pay for?

Rhetorically, that piece of Social Security change could be especially tough for the administration. The only choices that have been popular with the public involve raising taxes on wealthier Americans, such as charging Social Security taxes on income above $90,000. Bush insists on no tax increases, though he has not specifically addressed the idea of raising the income cap. Other options - raising Social Security taxes, raising the retirement age, and lowering the growth in benefits for future retirees - are all unpopular. But the Democrats know Republicans won't put forth an obviously unpopular plan.

The larger rhetorical challenge Democrats face is in the way the Social Security debate is framed - that is, how it fits into the "fundamental frames" that Republicans have used on issues such as Medicare, the environment, and regulation, says George Lakoff, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley.

www.csmonitor.com...

UPDATE
[quote"We hear a lot about transition costs," Arizona State University professor Edward Prescott, 2004 winner of the Bank of Sweden Nobel Prize in Economics, said. "But I'm going to use some economic jargon, not 'political accounting' jargon.

"There are no transition costs," Prescott said at the Cato Institute Feb, 9. "Re-labeling debt is not a cost."
After reading this article, I can see why we need to re-vamp social security. If what this article explains is the truth, there is no social security fund sitting around anywhere.

"One dollar comes in, one dollar is borrowed. Eighty-four cents is borrowed to pay current benefits," Hunter explained. "Because we're taking in more than we need to pay current benefits, the government borrows the other 16 cents to pay for everything from paper clips to battleships."