Posted on 12/22/2004 8:26:42 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
PRESIDENT Bush's entire plan for Social Security privatization rests on the premise that the system is in severe crisis. But a careful look at the numbers suggests that the financial crisis is largely a myth.
For years, the Social Security Trustees have used very conservative assumptions about future rates of economic growth, productivity growth, and growth of the labor force. These assumptions, in turn, affect the projected payroll tax collections that will fund Social Security payouts.
Five years ago, in the late 1990s, they estimated the long-term economic growth rate at just 1.7 percent. The reality has been well over 3 percent.
Most economists now believe the economy can do a lot better than 1.7 percent annual growth. In its 1997 report, the trustees projected that the system would no longer be able to meet all its obligations by 2029. Just six years later in 2003, based on their acknowledgement of stronger economic growth, the trustees moved the crisis date back to 2042. So if the system can gain 13 years of life in six years, there's not much of a crisis.
But that's just the beginning. In June, the bipartisan Congressional Budget office used more realistic assumptions about economic growth. CBO puts the first shortfall year at 2052, not 2042, and it projects Social Security's 75-year shortfall at only about four-10ths of one percent of gross domestic product. Currently, that's about $40 billion a year, or one-fifth of the revenues that the Bush administration gave up in tax cuts for the wealthy.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
when SS was first created the retirement age was 65 but the avg. life expectancy was 58. It was a MONEY GRAB
Now people live to 75 or more and it has become a ponzi scheme
I can't speak for anyone else, but trying to issue a new form of ID would be a huge waste of time and money. For them to be worth anything at all the Feds would have to require that you can prove who you say you are. We all know the hijackers had fraudulently obtained drivers licenses, so using those as a starting point wouldn't work. Now, if you were to fingerprint (maybe DNA sample too) each baby at birth and issue an ID for all babies born in 2005 on, you'd stand a good chance of having a secure, reliable system. Otherwise it's just dressing up a failed system.
We need to make sure we preserve all this liberal "wisdom" about how the system is so fiscally sound.
Then when reforms of the system fail, we can use this to prevent further rate increases and or new taxes when the Ponzi scheme finally crashes.
and everytime I turn around, they want me to work longer to pay for this group......
This author obviously failed to check with Al Gore before declaring that Social Security is not doomed.
We were told in 2000 that ONLY Al Gore could save SS by placing it in his sacrosanct "lockbox." Gorebot wasn't elected, so obviously SS is in the crapper.
There is no SS deficit. SS is in surplus now, as it has been since the 1980's. The SS surplus is projected to last until at least 2017 based upon extremely pessimistic economic assumptions, and much longer when interest payments paid to sustain the Iraq war are taken into account.
Most government mischief depends upon being able to identify people to control the flow of confiscated earnings to the "entitled". Without the entitlements, there is no reason for the confiscation.
The most legitimate governmental reason to identify people is to control who is able to vote. The importance of this need would diminish greatly if our government were limited to the reasons that our Founders used to justify government.
Many of us who are more libertarian than "conservative" don't really care how many illegal immigrants cross the border. Without minimum wages, public education, state-mandated health care, public housing and welfare, there would hardly be a problem.
Please tell us what freedoms depend upon you being able to identify yourself.
In this case, let's wait until there is an actual crisis before we do something.
I got an idea. End Socialist Security altogether for people under 45 (which includes me). That would give us 20, 30, 40 years to save and invest for our retirement. If we even want to retire.
...meanwhile there is very little evidence that human activity is causing global warming. However we need to stop industralization IMMEDIATELY and throw millions out of work so we can reduce the temperature half a degree hundreds of years from now. We have to do so IMMEDIATELY as the situation is DIRE! \sarcasm
No illegal immigrants claiming anything?....Under the new Bush/Mexico totalization agreement they'll be getting ss benefits after only paying in about 15% of the time we citizens have to.
________
ONE ILLEGAL COULD COST U.S. TAXPAYERS ONE-HALF MILLION BUCKS
"If a 24-year-old Mexican national who has worked illegally in the U.S. for three years is able to present documents from a friendly doctor and either a W-2 or pay stubs that indicate $12,000 in annual earnings, he will be eligible for the following: nearly $8,000 per year in disability income (adjusted for inflation), until age 65, at which point he would receive the same amount as retirement pay. (If he manages to get an under-the-table job in the U.S. or Mexico, he will be able to double-dip for a second income stream.) If he is survived by his wife or dependents, his family would be able to receive up to almost $12,000 annually. If he dies at 60, and his widow lives to 85, U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for nearly a half-million dollars. That’s for one worker brought into Social Security by the pact." Source: Joel Mowbray, National Review, 1/27/03, pp. 22, 24
162,000 MEXICAN BENEFICIARIES?
" ‘We are concerned about the sheer magnitude of the agreement,’ said a House Republican aide who is an expert on Social Security. About 94,000 beneficiaries living abroad have been brought into the system by the 20 existing international agreements. A Mexican agreement alone could bring in 162,000 in the first five years." Source: Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, 12/19/02, p. A1
Which is the case only if you believe that the Social Security "Trust Fund" holds actual assets - and therefore believe that you can both spend money and invest it simultaneously.
I don't think illegal immigrants should be able to claim anything! And anyone claiming anything should be required to prove the claim (i.e. - citizenship/ID card, etc.)
And any earnings by illegal immigrants (paying into the Social Security system) should be automatically forfeited with no rights to claim the value of earnings .... since they were earning money under false pretenses.
Perhaps "guest workers" should be part of any privitization system (similar to what Chile set up.) They would have about 6% of their own salary that could be deposited into a personal retirement account. The employer would put a matching amount into the government system to pay for existing benefits. No value would accrue to guest workers, since they are only guests.
Mike
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