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Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
True or not, that has nothing to do with privatization and only to do with current (and future) benefit levels.
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Sort of. It has to do with privatization in that I/we, effectively, are already on the privatized retirement system, and I/we are the ones bearing the double-cost, and it might be nice for the G to figure out some better way of smoothing the double-cost problem over more generations than the one that will be getting ready to retire just as the boomers bankrupt the whole system, which will be ours.
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The biggest problem with privatization seems not to have been confronted by its advocates: What do you do with the people who manage their SS accounts poorly, and end up destitute? Tax the then-current workers to support them? SS principal benefit is that it avoids having a bunch of penniless oldsters begging for help. Why get rid of that?
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Some of them do just gloss it over, but I think a lot of privatization advocates have actually tried, with various schemes, to address that. A number of them posit that a residual, basic, means-tested, public safety net will exist, which might be (correctly) called "welfare," and a lot of critics (willfully?) fail to realize that that, too, is part of those plans to overhaul SS.
And it's not just people who fuck up their accounts, of course - my real concern is for the people who don't and won't earn enough to have any realistic shot of saving & investing enough to retire on even if they're perfectly invested in a 40-year long tech boom. Those are the people this system really should be protecting, not rich fuckers sitting on their asses by golf courses in FL whining about what free benefits they "deserve." (Hell, even under the current system bad management happens - I know some pretty high-income pre-Boomers who have suddenly realized that they're 65 and haven't saved a cent and will have to work until they die. I have almost no fucking sympathy for them at all, and eagerly await their verdict on whether cat food really does taste like pate.) In any event, whether SS is reformed/replaced by privatization or otherwise, I would absolutely support retaining some form of true hardship safety net, though one would have to address the negative incentives it might create (lower savings, more risky investment).
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Tyrone
Well, if George Bush had the courage of his convictions -- or yours -- he might propose what you support, instead of suggesting that we run huge deficits.
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We are agreed. More people should run on the "pull the plug on the old rich bastards sucking the lifeblood out of the rest of us" ticket. I miss Dick Lamm.
BR(forming a nice subtext for my next vampire movie script - Chronos already sort of covered it, and likely better than I would, unfortunately; I'd go more overt political statement as high camp a la "They Live")C
