These programs "as we know them today> are headed for insolvency and will of NECESSITY be changed anyway. What Ryan is suggesting will fix the plans sooner so the fix will be less painful rather then later when any cuts or tax increases will of necessity be greater. Ask your friends to explain where any Rep ever claimed to want to deprive seniors of their health care or other retirement benefits? It never happened and you must explain this to them
A very good friend of mine and a Conservative like myself were discussing (years ago) the Geo Bush plan to privatize SS. Now this guy was a previous worker on many campaigns locally and at the State level (Republican) and could be expected to know what was going on. Not so. He believed that allowing people to invest their retirement money in the Stock Market is dangerous and should not happen so he was against the SS privatization.
I explained to him that first of all the program was 100% voluntary and one could stay in the current system. Also no one over 55 could leave the present system and finally the investment vehicles would be strictly limited within the individuals retirement account to savings accounts, Cd;s our own government debt instruments and balanced equity funds. I also explained what I believed was the best feature of the proposed changes which is the retiree maintains complete ownership of the account and upon their death can have what is left passed on to their family. These are things my friend, who believed he knew what was going on did not know because he never took the time to investigate and instead watched the networks for his news. I convinced him to check out what I said and he did. He then agreed it was a good idea, explained it properly to his wife who also agreed and he said he would tell his 3 grown children.
My rather long point here is that we cannot depend only on the candidates to get their messages out through a media which is heavily biased. We all must do our part by speaking to family and friends.
VERY good post!
If my husband and I had been allowed to invest our SS money in a manner that we chose to....we would have far more today than we actually do.
Ryan is going to HELP people with his plan. If we go the way the Dems want....NO ONE will have any kind of social security.
And you are right....the correct information NEEDS to be spread.