If you work your entire life, earn lots of money, and pay thousands into the social security trust fund, but then you suffer setbacks and end up in poverty in your retirement, you apparently would be entitled to reduced benefits. You, poverty-stricken in your senior years, spent thousands to support others in their retirement, but now the system has breached its promise to you.
And just how good are those treasury securities?
The Prez did a good job of getting the issues and the proposals before the country.
It's hard to batter your message through the lefties' broadcast news monopoly.
And, now Social Security raises are higher than needed. It's a good idea to stop giving that much increase to the rich Social Security recipients, and leave it only for the poorer recipients.
...or I could be full of crap.
"If a paper tries to report it's own ideology when it should report news, it's kind of like a chicken plucking it's own feathers"
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - A. Dent
I want private accounts, among other reasons, as a stepping-stone to eventual complete privatization of the system, but introducing this means-testing moves away from an eventual privatization of the system.
I'm not sure how to read it yet, let's see some details first about how they measure "poverty" for example, if they ever simply means tested this at retirement - reducing benefits for people who had other retirement assets like 401Ks to draw from - you would see a massive industry of people taking their 401K assets offshore so they would not be "counted" to reduce their SS benefit.
This is already true. Bush's proposal is part of the current structure.
"If you work your entire life, earn lots of money, and pay thousands into the social security trust fund, but then you suffer setbacks and end up in poverty in your retirement, you apparently would be entitled to reduced benefits."
Um...the government has ALWAYS been counting on the fact that many of us will be Good Little Earners, bust our humps, pay in GOBS of money to Mother Government, and then die early. Social Security is basically an Insurance Scam; they're betting on you to not die and keep the coffers full.
I can name a half-dozen people within my own family that this has happened to; most recently my Stepmom who paid in for 45 YEARS and collected for a two whole months before she died of cancer.
My best girlfriend died last year, as well. It took lots of "b*tch sessions" to even get her to APPLY for her benefits. Her first check arrived two days after she died. For a thousand bucks. Yep. She got her moneys worth! (She died at 47, career military, then State employee.)
People. We need to get it together. How many more years are we to be sucked dry before we rise up against this? I don't care WHO is getting the benefits. I don't care if widows and orphans and the elderly are being supported. They are a MINISCULE part of our society that could easily be taken care of through private charities.
We are soooo being scammed. Why doesn't anyone see this? President Bush can put lipstick on this pig all he wants, but it'll still be Hillary and Hillary Care, IMHO. (And I voted for him.)
Bush seems to be dumb enough to think you can "fix" a Ponzi scheme if you make sure to only screw over certain people. And get the sheeple idiots and picture-lickers to keep voting for your party, of course.
Sure, I don't agree with Social Security becoming a poverty program on principle. What I do agree with, however, is the idea that it's worth putting up with if we get private accounts.
Why? Because with private accounts everyone will see that the market offers results, while the idiots on the Left offer nothing more than hot air. And that, I think, is finally what will make it possible to privatize Social Security altogether.
Unconstitutional redistribution of wealth, pure and simple.
Please, let's reward the underachievers more than the achievers.
Let's just END socialist security, Mr. President.
Color me disgusted...
The answer is clear, with an added benefit of pitting the Dims, who have NO IDEAS anyway, against the POOR if they come out against this proposal.
This move by the POTUS is in fact .............. Brilliant!
Jackass.
Way too stupid.
I have done a comlete 180 on partial privatization--from a strong supporter--to one now completely opposed to any changes!
The President should cut his losses and drop the whole idea! It doesn't have a chance of passage if strong supporters of the President like me--have now thrown in the towel!
It has been suggested we have a weekly NATIONAL lottery, where we would have a chance to win money...lots of money. Sort of like the States who now participate in the powerball. No one will be forced to "buy a ticket"..:~)
With all the States participating, they claim the money would be more than adequate to save Social Security.
Maybe it IS this simple?
sw
I watched most of it, and that's how I understood what he was saying. I'm glad you posted this, because I thought I was hearing things.
I'll see what everyone else is saying about this.
I'll have to see the proposal to see how it works before I can pass judgment on it.
In principle, the SS program is already somewhat biased toward the poor. The benefit scale is skewed toward the poor, for example. This is one of the arguments against personal accounts -- even though the rich and the poor can both put money into them, the poor could be asked to give up a bigger return than the rich, since the poor's dollar taken out of the government part of the fund has a higher 'rate of return' than the rich. I BELIEVE, but am not sure, that this particular skewing is based each year on your earnings for the year, so it two people retire and neither has any money but one paid a lot more into the program than the other, the one who paid more will get more, but the "rate of return" for that person is less than that of the poor person.
The 2nd way it is unbalanced is based strictly on how much money you make after retirement -- it is the taxation of your SS benefits if you have too much other income.
What Bush seems to be proposing is a third application of the principle. Again, I don't know what the plan is yet, but I imagine he is going to apply some of the "benefit cuts" such as the change in indexing, but apply them based on income (not sure if it is on each year's pay, or based on income after retirement). If you are going to cut benefits, but you don't have to cut them that much, it may make sense to cut them only for those for whom it wouldn't push them into poverty.
After all, if the elderly are below poverty, we are just going to give them money through other programs anyway.
But it isn't "extra" money for the poor, it is keeping the "promise" of current benefits for the poor, while breakign that promise for richer people.
Now, if you assume that the people making more money each year are more likely to do the personal accounts, then the money THEY take out of the system is money that had a LOWER rate of return. In other words, for the money they take out, they will come out even better (or less worse). IN actuality, their return in the personal accounts will be no less under either plan.
But there is an interesting twist if this program is an indexing on current benefits. The rich who put money into personal accounts will actually LOSE less by taking their money out, because the money they take out will be that "returned" at a lower rate, while they leave in the first money which is "returned" at a higher rate (kind of the reverse of what happens with indexed taxation).
So, you might see the program sold like this:
In exchange for being allowed to invest their money, the rich accept a graduated return on investment. But the more they invest privately, the less it matters to them; and the money they take out is the money that had the lowest rate of return.
Meanwhile, the poor don't have to take chances with private accounts, because this deal has guaranteed them their higher benefits if they want to stay in.
I'm not ready to sign on, but I'm not going to dismiss this, it seems to have some merit.
Remember, we are starting from the baseline of a program that should never have existed, and should by all rights be eliminated if not for the promises already made. You can't expect the fix to smell like roses; you can only hope it has less of an odor than when you started.
I am as sick of socialism, welfare, and Democrat-style redistribution programs today as I was 20 years ago. What's with Bush?