Let Your Voice Against Privatisation Of SS

[Cal]

Originally posted by Amillia@Mar 3 2005, 11:07 PM

Working families need your help in getting signatures on a

petition telling Congress to sign the Pledge to Strengthen

Social Security. Please click the following link to download and

print out the petition--and ask everyone in your workplace to

sign it.

Download petition:

http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/socia...ad/petition.pdf

The more signatures you collect on the petition, the more

pressure you'll put on your members of Congress to sign the

pledge. They'll know how many of their constituents want them to

stop Social Security privatization in its tracks.

Once you have plenty of signatures, fax the petition to

202-637-5172. We'll make sure your U.S. representative and

senators get the message.

Privatizing Social Security would devastate working families. It

would slash guaranteed benefits, explode the federal deficit,

saddle our children with massive new debt, open Social Security

up to corruption and Enron-ization and make America's retirement

security problems worse.

Please print out your own copy of the petition and ask all your

co-workers to add their names to yours:

http://www.aflcio.org/issuespolitics/socia...ad/petition.pdf

Thank you for taking action. You can keep up with what we are

doing at http://www.aflcio.org .

Sincerely,

Working Families e-Activist Network

You certainly have my vote. The neo-conseratives have been trying to undo the New Deal since they got a smiggen of power. SS is supposed to be a safety net to make sure that our old folks don't starve to death in the gutters. It's just not a pretty sight in a country that is supposed to be the compassionate and wealthy nation to the world.

Privatizing it is tantamount to eliminating it. If people could simply invest and take care of themselves privately, SS would have never been suggested in the first place.

Bush and his cynical and greedy Financial lobby supporters simply want to raid the public Trust fund and channel the profits into private stockholder pockets.

Not everyone is a financially savy as PD and Snow--and I don't mean that in any negative way guys. Some people simply don't know how to make themselves fiancially secure--why should we believe that the people who need SS AT ALL would be capable of wisely investing the money deducted from their paychecks? If they could, they wouldn't need SS anyway? It is the nature of the very people SS is supposed to help take care of to NOT be able to invest wisely.

Should the elderly simply be left to fend for themselves just because they don't know how to invest for the future or can't? Should the punishment for bad finacial management through a life time be to starve to death in the streets. That is what will happen to many, if SS is privatized. Those that make poor investment choices will lose most their SS account money, and be left with the same amount had SS never existed.

So, again, what is Bush trying to accomplish. The goal is transparent. Line the pockets of the private finacial concerns on wall street.

Send Bush back where he came from, then, as PD suggested in another thread (if I can stretch his statement a bit) pave over Texas and use it as a giant solar collector.

[Outshined]

As I recall, the suggestion was not to privatize all of SS, but give citizens the option of privatizing a portion of it if they want to.

[Cal]

Originally posted by Outshined@Mar 12 2005, 02:51 PM

As I recall, the suggestion was not to privatize all of SS, but give citizens the option of privatizing a portion of it if they want to.

But what is the point? What is the purpose of social security? The last time I looked it was to provide a safety net for those who aren't able, for what ever reason, to provide for themselves, PRIVATELY, a decent, survival level retirement. Why should the Federal government participate, even partially, in private retirement investment. I doesn't make any sense. If people were wise enough to make private investment decisions that would leave them with a survivable benefit, we wouldn't need SS in the first place.

No, any move toward privatization, is a transparent raid of the public trust fund for private gain. End of story. Bush just wants to line the pockets of some of his financial croanies in the Financial services industry. The move makes no sense otherwise.

When Bush first came into the white house he had about 3 trillion surplus he could have used to secure SS. Instead, he gave all the money back in a tax break, mostly for the rich, that even the american public didn't really want. His closest financial advisers, including his first Sec of Treasury, recommended just that, and he ignored them---to important to repay the rich guys who put him in office.

[Outshined]

I should have the option of investing part of it the way I want if I want, rather than rely on a failing system to be there when I retire. Well, we can leave it the way it is and watch it collapse. It's been on it's way to doing that for years.

Some resources on SS reform:

http://www.socialsecurityreform.org/index.cfm

http://www.socialsecurity.org

http://www.sscommonsense.org

[Snow]

Originally posted by Cal@Mar 12 2005, 01:46 PM

Not everyone is a financially savy as PD and Snow--and I don't mean that in any negative way guys. Some people simply don't know how to make themselves fiancially secure--why should we believe that the people who need SS AT ALL would be capable of wisely investing the money deducted from their paychecks?

That's the point. People want government to provide for them instead of them providing for themselves. In reality the level of required sophistication is absurdly low. Get a 401K or Roth IRA, put it into a managed retirement instruments like a balance mutual and bond funds and save more instead of saving less. Zero expertise is required. In my main investment with Vanguard, I pick my retirement year, my desired retirement income and Vanguard takes care of the rest. Five minutes tops. If I could take half the money I put into SS and invest it at the rate of return the funds in my portfolio have performed at (some of them dating back 70 years), my retirement income would be multiples above what I will get from SS. Instead I am forced to let Uncle Sam treat me like an idiot who can't be trusted with his own money so that they can give me a return that is rock bottom low.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Another thing is that SS and Medicare are essential compulsory insurance programs. Social Security benefits are paid according to payroll taxes paid in. In essence, the government requires you to save for retirement, which would also be the case with personal accounts. It's just that with Social Security, you are limited to one "investment" -- the government's promise to give you some amount of money later on, which incidentally can be lowered and probably will be.

I don't mind subsidizing people who aren't as financially adept as I am (given the present state of my finances, I take Cal's description of me as money savvy to be a ludicrous bit of flattery), but neither do I think that tying the main retirement system of all Americans to the dumbest common denominator is a good idea. By all means, build some guidelines into the system to help the foolish not lose their shirts, but make providing for the failures the exception, not the governing principle for the whole group, most of which are not as supremely dumb as it apparently has become Democratic orthodoxy to believe the American people.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Cal, another point: As for giving "all the money" in the surplus back in a tax break, that just isn't true. The tax cuts accounted for significantly less than half of the deficit's increase.

Plus there never were actual trillion-dollar surpluses. There were trillion-dollar projected surpluses, based on projections of the economy continuing as it did during the late 1990s -- which it didn't. If I remember right, the dot-com peak resulted in a capital-gains-driven surplus of about $200 billion -- a drop in the bucket compared to Social Security's future unfunded liabliity.

[Cal]

Originally posted by Outshined@Mar 12 2005, 04:15 PM

I should have the option of investing part of it the way I want if I want, rather than rely on a failing system to be there when I retire. Well, we can leave it the way it is and watch it collapse. It's been on it's way to doing that for years.

Some resources on SS reform:

http://www.socialsecurityreform.org/index.cfm

http://www.socialsecurity.org

http://www.sscommonsense.org

It wouldn't be failing in the first place if Bush hadn't purposefully ignored it years ago. And now he uses that as an excuse to privatize.

As I said before, if you want private investment for retirement, get an IRA. Don't make the government a party to it--there is no basis in reason for that.

[Cal]

Originally posted by Snow+Mar 12 2005, 04:31 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Mar 12 2005, 04:31 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Cal@Mar 12 2005, 01:46 PM

Not everyone is a financially savy as PD and Snow--and I don't mean that in any negative way guys. Some people simply don't know how to make themselves fiancially secure--why should we believe that the people who need SS AT ALL would be capable of wisely investing the money deducted from their paychecks?

That's the point. People want government to provide for them instead of them providing for themselves. In reality the level of required sophistication is absurdly low. Get a 401K or Roth IRA, put it into a managed retirement instruments like a balance mutual and bond funds and save more instead of saving less. Zero expertise is required. In my main investment with Vanguard, I pick my retirement year, my desired retirement income and Vanguard takes care of the rest. Five minutes tops. If I could take half the money I put into SS and invest it at the rate of return the funds in my portfolio have performed at (some of them dating back 70 years), my retirement income would be multiples above what I will get from SS. Instead I am forced to let Uncle Sam treat me like an idiot who can't be trusted with his own money so that they can give me a return that is rock bottom low.

But again, Snow, not everyone is as savy as you. What seems simple to you is not so simple to a lot of, shall we say, less fortunate types. Less fortunate in that they weren't born with the mental machinery to make wise decisions for their futures. And some are just victims of some very bad luck--health tragedies etc.

What should the government do. Sit back and watch them all wander homeless in the streets. You seem to be oblivious to the fact that there are a heck of a lot of people that simply can't survive without some help in their old age. It's simply a social necessity--blame it on thier own stupidity if you want to, but that changes nothing. Our government has a policy of preventing its elderly from starving in the streets. If you don't like that, I just hope you are never in the position to need it.

You seem to take the attitude that if people bring it on themselves, then that relieves the rest of us from any responsibility to help them. You often defend the BoM ( at least more so than even I do)---then read what it says about helping the poor.

[Cal]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Mar 12 2005, 05:12 PM

Another thing is that SS and Medicare are essential compulsory insurance programs. Social Security benefits are paid according to payroll taxes paid in. In essence, the government requires you to save for retirement, which would also be the case with personal accounts. It's just that with Social Security, you are limited to one "investment" -- the government's promise to give you some amount of money later on, which incidentally can be lowered and probably will be.

I don't mind subsidizing people who aren't as financially adept as I am (given the present state of my finances, I take Cal's description of me as money savvy to be a ludicrous bit of flattery), but neither do I think that tying the main retirement system of all Americans to the dumbest common denominator is a good idea. By all means, build some guidelines into the system to help the foolish not lose their shirts, but make providing for the failures the exception, not the governing principle for the whole group, most of which are not as supremely dumb as it apparently has become Democratic orthodoxy to believe the American people.

I take Cal's description of me as money savvy to be a ludicrous bit of flattery),

OK, PD, you said it, I didn't. I will retract my statement.

Some of my response to your comments would be the same as I made to Snow. Secondly, you wish that SS didn't take out as much given that it is a "subsistance" allowance, so to speak. Well, SS, the last time I looked, doesn't take all that much out of the average pay check, and provides only a fraction of what a good retirement would be. We are hardly breaking any ones back financially.

LIke I said to Snow, your "dumbest common denominator" is exactly the group that needs SS. You have plenty of opportunity to invest for retirement on your own. SS was developed a plan for the "dumbest common denominator". If the governement had any real reliable way to tell the difference, then maybe what you are saying would work--but any one of us, with a little bad luck, could fall into the "dumbest common denominator" category--think about it---there are a myriad of scenarios that one hopes would never happen, but if they did--your might just be thanking uncle sam for forcing you to save something.

[Cal]

Originally posted by TheProudDuck@Mar 12 2005, 05:16 PM

Cal, another point: As for giving "all the money" in the surplus back in a tax break, that just isn't true. The tax cuts accounted for significantly less than half of the deficit's increase.

Plus there never were actual trillion-dollar surpluses. There were trillion-dollar projected surpluses, based on projections of the economy continuing as it did during the late 1990s -- which it didn't. If I remember right, the dot-com peak resulted in a capital-gains-driven surplus of about $200 billion -- a drop in the bucket compared to Social Security's future unfunded liabliity.

If I exagerated the figures a bit, Bush STILL ignored the projections. He never made any attempt AT ALL to rescue SS when he could have. And now, he wants to privatize it. With what rationale? So that smart people can have a better retirement? Smart people are ALREADY going to have a better retirement through their own private accounts. So what is the point? Bush's rationale is a thinly veiled attempt to benefit private Financial institutions at the public expense.

[USNationalist]

just noticed this thread.... Is there something i can sign to cancle out some elses signature who had signed that thing you linked to?

[Outshined]

Originally posted by Cal@Mar 13 2005, 12:28 PM

It wouldn't be failing in the first place if Bush hadn't purposefully ignored it years ago. And now he uses that as an excuse to privatize.

As I said before, if you want private investment for retirement, get an IRA. Don't make the government a party to it--there is no basis in reason for that.

It's Bush's fault that SS is failing? I don't think so. Let's not forget every other president in the last few decades, or the fact that SS was not originally intended to be a long-term solution.

It can and should be fixed. And yes, people should invest in their own IRAs instead of waiting for the government to take care of them.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Originally posted by Outshined+Mar 14 2005, 04:27 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Outshined @ Mar 14 2005, 04:27 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Cal@Mar 13 2005, 12:28 PM

It wouldn't be failing in the first place if Bush hadn't purposefully ignored it years ago. And now he uses that as an excuse to privatize.

As I said before, if you want private investment for retirement, get an IRA. Don't make the government a party to it--there is no basis in reason for that.

It's Bush's fault that SS is failing? I don't think so. Let's not forget every other president in the last few decades, or the fact that SS was not originally intended to be a long-term solution.

It can and should be fixed. And yes, people should invest in their own IRAs instead of waiting for the government to take care of them.

Re: "It wouldn't be failing in the first place if Bush hadn't purposefully ignored it years ago" --

Then why was President Clinton calling the Social Security situation a "crisis" in 1998, if George W. Bush, The Root Of All Evil caused the whole problem starting in 2001?

You're saying the whole problem with Social Security dates back no further than four years -- that nobody recognized any problems on the horizon prior to 2001?

Personal accounts (or private accounts -- but not privatization, implying the whole shebang is to be privatized, which it isn't) are a good idea, crisis or no crisis, but are an even better idea in light of the coming shortfalls and probable benefit cuts, which have been recognized as inevitable for at least a decade. (I actually blame President Reagan and Paul Volcker for stopping the Nixon-Ford-Carter-era inflation, in response to which inflation Congress, trying to be smart, indexed Social Security benefits to wage growth increases instead of cost-of-living increases. The idea was that wages would grow more slowly than prices, and SS would save money. Instead the opposite thing happened. Inflation was crushed and wages kept growing, with the result that Social Security benefits are worth more in real value than before. Oops.)

Cal, you suggested that there was "no basis in reason" for "mak[ing] the government a party" to "private investment," as in allowing a worker to elect whether to divert part of his payroll-tax liability into a private investment account. Why is that? Essentially, that would be a mandatory old-age insurance program -- which Social Security already is. The government currently requires you to "invest" a certain percentage of your earnings in what are essentially T-bonds held by the government (with the catch that the government has full discretion to claw back part of that investment if it decides it needs to.) With personal accounts, the worker would have a broader range of investments -- still circumscribed by guidelines to make sure those investments are diversified and kept conservative, so to minimize risk.

Broadening the range of investment options for the mandatory old-age insurance framework of Social Security doesn't change the character of the program at all. The government already allows -- in fact, requires -- mandatory insurance in many situations, and has no problem with that insurance being provided by private carriers. For example, California requires drivers to have car insurance. Employers have to have worker's compensation insurance. Contractors who work on public projects have to have a whole range of insurance. All of this insurance is absolutely required by the government, and all of it may be provided by the private sector.

So there is no fundamental bar "in reason" to prevent private involvement in a mandatory insurance program. The government's role in mandatory-insurance laws consists of requiring that people be insured, which the government may legitimately do. (Leave the libertarian and federalist debates out of this for the moment.) There are perfectly good reasons for the government to require mandatory old-age insurance: people do not always do what is rational. I'm as guilty of this as the next guy. I should be contributing more to my IRA than the pittance I presently do, but there always seem to be more pressing claims on my resources. With my payroll tax, on the other hand, I don't have any choice -- it's deducted from my checks and I never see it. The same logic would operate with personal accounts. It would essentially be a forced-savings program, just as legitimate as any other kind of government-mandated private insurance.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Cal@Mar 13 2005, 10:37 AM

But again, Snow, not everyone is as savy as you. What seems simple to you is not so simple to a lot of, shall we say, less fortunate types. Less fortunate in that they weren't born with the mental machinery to make wise decisions for their futures. And some are just victims of some very bad luck--health tragedies etc.

Thank you that illustrates my point exactly.

The liberal mentality is that people are too stupid to run there own lives therefor we need smart liberal elites to forcibly take their money from them and give them a measly percent and a half return because, again, they are too stupid to do it themselves.

Fine, for all you stupid people, by all means, don't take advantage of a self investment SS option, let the govt. do it for you - but for heavens sake don't force the rest of us be treated like be are so stupid that we need big brother to take care of us like you think big brother needs to take care of you.

[Cal]

Originally posted by Snow+Mar 14 2005, 07:46 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Snow @ Mar 14 2005, 07:46 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Cal@Mar 13 2005, 10:37 AM

But again, Snow, not everyone is as savy as you. What seems simple to you is not so simple to a lot of, shall we say, less fortunate types. Less fortunate in that they weren't born with the mental machinery to make wise decisions for their futures. And some are just victims of some very bad luck--health tragedies etc.

Thank you that illustrates my point exactly.

The liberal mentality is that people are too stupid to run there own lives therefor we need smart liberal elites to forcibly take their money from them and give them a measly percent and a half return because, again, they are too stupid to do it themselves.

Fine, for all you stupid people, by all means, don't take advantage of a self investment SS option, let the govt. do it for you - but for heavens sake don't force the rest of us be treated like be are so stupid that we need big brother to take care of us like you think big brother needs to take care of you.

The problem with an opt-out provision for SS is that too many people who SHOULDN'T opt out, will, leaving the rest of us, in some form or another, to foot their bills. Better we all pay a little, get a moderate benefit and make sure no one has to wander the streets looking for food at age 75.

Again, PD and Snow, what is the point of the government overseeing even a partly privatized SS? You still haven't convinced me that ANY privatization has any merit for the people who actually will need it.

PD--I realize that SS has needed on going supervision, its just that Bush, and I will grant, Clinton, was the first president in how long to have anything of a projected budget surplus, and STILL did nothing to "shore up" SS. A pox on BOTH of them.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Cal@Mar 14 2005, 07:40 PM

The problem with an opt-out provision for SS is that too many people who SHOULDN'T opt out, will, leaving the rest of us, in some form or another, to foot their bills. Better we all pay a little, get a moderate benefit and make sure no one has to wander the streets looking for food at age 75.

I , and everybody else for that matter, do not understand the math but your post suggests that you believe that SS is not a self-earned retirement benefit, but rather a transfer of wealth entitlement for those who can't or won't provide for themselves subsidized by those who can and do..

[Snow]

I can help but think, Cal, how similar the forced idea of SS is to the plan of forced salvation proposed by Satan before the world was.

[Guest TheProudDuck]

Cal,

If I haven't convinced you by now, I'm probably not going to. I did point out that there are plenty of examples of the government requiring and overseeing other private insurance programs. If that government/private partnership is good for worker's compensation or auto insurance, why not Social Security?

Also, keep in mind that the personal-account proposals will not allow anyone to opt completely out of Social Security. People will be allowed to divert only 2 percentage points of their payroll taxes into private accounts, with a corresponding reduction in their eventual government-paid benefits. (I'm betting that the government will ultimately reduce those benefits by approximately that same amount anyway -- so what's the downside)?

In other words, nobody would be sent out in the streets at 75 looking for food. They'd still have about 3/4 of their Social Security benefits guaranteed, even if their personal accounts went to zero -- which would be unlikely, given the restrictions there are proposed to be on the kind of investments personal accounts can contain.

[begood2]

My 1st thought was: I don't want the gov't. to tamper with SS. It seems that in some programs, the more gov't. tampers with the system the worse it becomes.

After reading the post here however I can see good points of view on both sides.

I'm going to follow this issue in the news with an open mind and hear all sides of this issue before I make up my mind.

I thank everyone for their post ... It has been good food for thought.