Too much choice
 

I think the opposition is purely ideological - the DEMs don't want to see an undoing of one of the pillars of the New Deal.

It seems to me that there is a lot of room to strike a deal here. Would you object to some combination of raising the minimum age and allowing self directed investment accounts for a portion of an individual' SS account?

Too much choice
 

They should.

This is a now or later problem. It would cost between $1.5-2.0 trillion now, or up to $10 trillion later.

Too much choice
 

Oh, piff. Dems don't want to see SS undone because it has worked extraordinarily well. Identify a Republican program that has achieved its desired goal for 60 years and is projected to achieve it for another 30.... and achieve 75% of its goal thereafter. SDI?

When the undoing of the program will cost 4 trillion dollars (yes, I know -- Bush only wants to borrow 2 trillion or so, but what will the cost of that debt be?), and will not address the problems of the program, and may well give rise to new and worse problems.... well, I suppose that's merely an ideological response, right?





Why does the former require the latter? The minimum age should be raised to reflect reality -- the reality of longer lifespans, longer working lives, etc.

The gov't has already provided numerous options to allow for self directed, tax-advantaged retirement funds. 401(k)s, Keogh, SEP-IRA, IRA, Roth IRA, cash balance accounts, term life insurance, 529 plans (technically not retirement but covering an expense that itself interferes with retirement saving), etc. SS is supposed to be a safety net -- how does it function as one when exposed to the stock market?

Social Security Trust Fund Poll
 

Do people believe that the Fed will actually repay its debt to Social Security?

Or are Repubs finally ready to admit that Ronald Reagan is the biggest tax (the poor)-and-spend President of all time?

Too much choice
 

I think the opposition is ideological, and not based merely on nostalgia.

Raising the minimum age? Fine by me, but what are you going to give us for going along with that? I mean, what's the deal?

On the self-directed investment accounts, this is the rub. It's ending Social Security if you don't have a guarantee at the bottom. And how are you going to pay for it? It's making the problem you're pretending to solve worse.

Too much choice
 

Again, don't automatically presume that people opposing catapults do so only because they have a vested interest in selling train tracks.

After all, at least some Dems voted for welfare reform, you may recall.

I don't pretend to be an expert here, but my understanding is that even Bush's own Social Security Commission concluded that partial privatization just doesn't work.

• Who thought the Bush Social Security Commission would have such a pitiful demise? The whole point of the Commission -- which, improbably enough, had libs jittery and wingers giddy -- was to send up a privatization proposal which would have the wind in its sails, define reform as privatization, and perhaps even arrest Pat Moynihan's precipitous slide into mendacity, hackdom and irrelevance.
  
  Now the last of these three objectives was obviously a pipe dream. Number two was a tough proposition. But who would have thought they wouldn't even be able to manage number one? I mean, the whole cliche about presidential commissions is that their reports sit on library shelves collecting dust. Releasing not a report or a proposal but three different vague policy recommendations really charts new territory on the barren wasteland of commission fecklessness. No wonder privatizers in the media feel like they've been had.
  
  The denouement is pitiful but the reality behind it is instructive. For years, privatization opponents have insisted that when it came down to brass tacks, there was no way to hash out a partial privatization plan that actually worked. That is, it was impossible if you defined 'working' as a) insuring long-term solvency for the program, b) not requiring massive benefit cuts, c) not requiring sizeable tax increases, and d) not being based on bogus accounting.
  
  What happened is that when the Commission tried to do it they discovered that this was pretty much true.

Too much choice
 

Hogwash. I note that you ignored the post where I pointed out that the White House's Social Security numbers are based on much less favorable predictions about productivity than they are otherwise making.

Social Security Trust Fund Poll
 

Of course they'll repay the bonds. They have to, because the Social Security "reform" that Bush has in mind depends on selling trillions of those bonds to the Chinese and Japanese, and that's not going to go so well if he's refusing to stand behind them. It's a talking point to snow people now.

Too much choice
 

Well the problem with privitization is there is no guarentee you won't lose it all, right? The very nature of a net to make sure you have something at the end of the day is contrary to letting it be something that you can blow. Is it okay if people make an informed decision to opt out so that they can invest, and they'r ejust screwed if they go belly up? No. They'll be living on my streets. That was the point in the first place.

you guys always miss the easy answer with your mile long blogs.

Too much choice
 

$2 trillion now invested at a 5% rate of return will be worth about $19 trillion in 2050. So even if your numbers here are right -- and if the system is going to go broke in 2050, that's still not a $10 trillion problem in 2050 -- let's try fixing, say, the Bush deficits first.

Too much choice
 

That's why I said in #645, that you're "ending Social Security if you don't have a guarantee at the bottom." Don't blame us for your reading comprehension problems.

Too much choice
 

But given the demographics, it can't work indefinitely, and you have stated several times here that something has to be done. Maybe you don't like what you think the Bush proposal is (which, I repeat, has not been released yet), but I like the fact that he is willing to confront the problem.

This is a bait and switch. Pure GOPers propose cutting programs, not enacting them.


Again, I don't know how you know what Bush's program is if it hasn't been released. I'm in favor of upping the triggers for eligibility, which I understand would go a long way towards fixing the problem. I'm also in favor of self-directed accounts, not so much for the "fix" but because I believe that I should have control over how my money is invested (though I'm willing to settle for "safe" investments).

Too much choice
 

Who can read all of it? This is why the big firms invented boilerplate.

Too much choice
 

I thought that at least some DEMs had supported raising the minimum age?

Why is it ending SS if it's only a portion of each individual's account?

Too much choice
 

I think they should use the same projections. I don't know how that effects the projected costs that I haven't seen challenged anywhere. I'll grant Sidd that the interest costs would push the fix it now costs up higher, but the do nothing costs still are roughly $10 trillion.

efs

Too much choice
 

Fine by me.

Too much choice
 

• There is no Social Security crisis.
  
  Until very recently, I believed, as most of my generation still does, that Social Security was facing a crisis. Thanks to a declining birthrate and increasing longevity, at some point during my lifetime the program was going to go bankrupt and people my age were going to wind up with nothing after a lifetime of payroll taxes. I was -- and the bulk of young people still are -- the victim of a massive fraud, perpetrated by Social Security abolition advocates and unfortunately re-enforced from time to time by liberals seeking an argument against Republican tax cuts. This fraud, which is ongoing and in which a lazy media has been complicit, is crucial to understanding the politics of Social Security.
  
  Democrats charge the president with submitting a plan that will cut benefits and force people to rely on the vicissitudes of the stock market to ensure a dignified retirement. This is true. But if you believe that Social Security is currently headed for self-destruction, it's also irrelevant. Smaller benefits and an investment portfolio that may or may not pay off sound like an excellent deal compared with a pension plan that's going to go bankrupt. It is only if you try to see the truth -- that there is no crisis -- that criticisms of the Bush plan become compelling.
  
  Some Social Security proponents have been convinced by consultants that turning around young peoples' attitudes on this question is impossible. It is possible, and if the program is to be saved, it must be done. For if Social Security is not eliminated in 2005, its enemies will simply try again later. Over time, the older Americans who are currently the bulwark against privatization will die off and be replaced by the younger, pro-privatization bulwark. Saving Social Security means at least getting started on the work of changing people's minds. It shouldn't be that hard to do.
  
  Social Security is healthy and successful. There is no crisis. The president and the Republicans in Congress are trying to scare the American people in order to destroy the most successful program in American history -- a program that presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Harry Truman to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have been committed to preserving.
  
  George W. Bush wants to break Social Security's bipartisan promise to the American people, and now he's making up stories to try to persuade voters to go along with it. These scare stories are based on a pessimistic assessment of the country's potential for future economic growth, an assessment the president does not embrace in any other context. Nor is it an assessment that he should embrace. Instead, we should be working to ensure robust future growth by improving America's health care, education system, and basic infrastructure while devising policies that make it easier for couples to have and raise children and remaining open to immigration from the rest of the world.
  
  But even if the president's pessimism about America's potential proves warranted, his scare stories are not. As this chart clearly demonstrates, even if we do absolutely nothing to change the system or prevent economic growth from slowing, Social Security checks will never stop flowing, and benefit levels will always be higher than what today's retirees enjoy. The Social Security pessimists have been proven wrong again and again in the past, and even under their "doomsday" scenario, the system can continue to exist in its present form while still providing a decent benefit to all.
  
  Young people, though supposedly immune to the liberal message on retirement security, are, in fact, going to be the biggest victims of the Bush plan. The president proposes to offer us a guaranteed cut in benefits and $2 trillion in debt, plus the possible burden of supporting our parents if the stock market underperforms, in order to forestall the mere possibility that benefit growth may have to be curtailed sometime in the 2040s. This is, when stated clearly, a horrible deal for Generation Y, and liberals need to have some confidence in our ability to make our case.
  
  Advocates of eliminating Social Security argue that this is wrong and that the program holds no "real assets" instead of "mere IOUs." These IOUs, however, are U.S. Treasury bonds, considered far and wide to be the safest investment in the world. In times of grave national crisis, from the Revolutionary War to World War II, the federal government has financed its activities be issuing these bonds -- and they've always been repaid.
  
  The president has chosen to finance a series of tax cuts for people earning more than $100,000 a year by selling these bonds to the central banks of China and Japan, and to Social Security. Now he says that he doesn't want to pay back what he's borrowed from my generation's retirement fund. That's just wrong. Worse, what kind of message does it send to the Chinese and others that Bush plans to offer an additional $2 trillion in bonds when the U.S. government takes the position that these are just IOUs that don't need to be repaid?
  
  Faced with current projections, the responsible thing to do is to close the massive hole in the government's non-Social Security budget while thinking of ways to prevent the dramatic slowdown in economic growth that forms the basis of the president's doomsday scenario. Instead, Bush wants to tell scary stories to young people in the hope that we'll panic and abandon our support for the most successful, and most fiscally sound, program our government runs today.
  
  Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

I guess we need a new name for the ruling party we've got.

Too much choice
 

$10 trillion when? I'd rather have 2$ trillion now than $10 trillion in 2050. Wouldn't you?

Too much choice
 

Because you could invest it, and make lots more?

Too much choice
 

I think I'd just pay down my debts. It doesn't make sense to invest and have to pay taxes on the profits when I already owe so much.

Too much choice
 

I read that the first time you posted it.

Yep. Republicrats.

Too much choice
 

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think I posted that before.

Too much choice
 

Must have read it on my own.

Fallujah
 

For those who have followed his reports (and even those who haven't), reporter Dexter Filkins of the NYT gave an interview with Terry Gross of NPR yesterday (link to audio).

Filkins was embedded with a company of Marines in the recent battle in Fallujah, and spends time during the interview telling the tales of bravery and tragedy that he saw there, and the horrors of urban warfare. Gripping stuff.

Fallujah
 

Wow.

Coalition member to US: Drop Dead
 

Notwithstanding the installment of Micronesia's protective coral reef of beads and shells, and Bush's considerable diplomatic skills, it appears that the coalition continues to fray at the edges.

Brad DeLong excerpts a WSJ.com article on Poland's disenchantment.

• Opinion polls show a big majority of Poles want their troops out of Iraq and also want Europe to have a common defense policy, something Washington views as a possible threat to the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
  
  Washington's ebbing influence in this most pro-American swath of Europe reflects a broader phenomenon this series of articles has explored: Some of the largest challenges facing the U.S. now flow from the sources of its great power.
  
  Its democratic domestic politics can leave it deaf to even its closest friends abroad. America's sheer size and might breed resentment and, in the geopolitical marketplace, stir competition. Its economic example spurs Europe to band together to compete. Its faith in elections prompts an effort, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to impose democracy through arms. For many abroad, America's goals inspire, but its actions often exasperate.
  
  "America failed its exam as a superpower," says Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity trade-union leader who became Poland's first post-Communist president. "They are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us." Mr. Walesa laments what he sees as America's squandered leadership because he thinks the EU isn't ready for prime time.... [C]an Europe offer itself and the wider world a vision to match, and perhaps one day even supplant, America's role as "leader of the free world"?
  
  In a campaign debate this fall, President Bush chided Sen. John Kerry for belittling the coalition in Iraq. "Well, you forgot Poland," said Mr. Bush. On a host of issues, however, many Poles, as well as some other allies, wonder if Mr. Bush has forgotten them.
  
  Many Britons, for example, complain that Prime Minister Tony Blair has gained little in return for his steadfast support in Iraq. From climate change to treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the Middle East peace process, Washington has mostly sidestepped British requests. Poland, America's other keen ally on the Continent, smarts over Washington's refusal to grant Poles visa-free access to the U.S., a privilege enjoyed by France and 26 other countries.... A state-owned arms company filed a formal protest earlier this year after it lost a bid to equip the Iraqi army. Polish officials also feel they got short shrift in Washington when they tried to influence U.S. decision-making in Iraq.
  
  "We shed our blood for them but they don't treat us well," says Mr. Walesa, who visited the U.S. this fall to meet officials and politicians. He had no trouble getting a visa himself but made little headway in securing easy entry for his compatriots. "America doesn't like Poles; it only likes Walesa," he says.

Random rant
 

This just requires me to get something totally unrelated off my chest.

Read the fucking boilerplate, assholes. If you show up at the closing whining like a little bitch because you finally noticed the provision that has been in every draft of the document without comment for 3 months requiring your client to pay transfer taxes, I will slap you upside the head like the little girly-bitch you are.

Also, litigators should think twice before trying to negotiate transactions. At the least, please try to prepare in some way, like maybe skimming an ABA model or parsing through the table of contents of a how-to manual downloaded off the internet, before trying to "negotiate" with me based on your "never in your career" having seen something as outrageous as your client being expected to rep as to its due incorporation, valid existance and good standing, and ownership of the transferred property. You incompetent, bumbling fucks, tell your client to get a real lawyer, like off a flier picked up off the floor of the subway. Any solo-prac in podunkville two-years out of law school who has negotiated two chicken-shit-supply contracts for Bob's Grain and Feed would do a better job.

Thank you, I feel marginally better.

[Insert Light Bulb Graphic Here!]
 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines

Dem leaders looking to make an anti-abortion Hoosier the party chief.

Yo, happy new year to you too.

Say(income up 35% this year)_hello(increase in Republican dominance in national politics)_for(student loans... gone)_me

Social Security Trust Fund Poll
 

Channelling Snow, "Debt, what debt? We don't need no stinking debt!"

The younger Bush is doing his best to give him a run for him money, Papa wasn't bad either.

Too much choice
 

You have a mortgage? If so, shouldn't you sell your house and rent so that you don't have so much debt?

Too much choice
 

Maybe it would, except that (1) the government distorts my incentives with the mortgage deduction, and (2) borrowing lets me leverage my assets and capture the (recently recockulous here in California) increases in home values all for myself.

Scarry, but Interesting
 

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...orld-headlines

[Russia and China to hold joint military exercises]

Too much choice
 

Be fair. Depending on who wants to make the specific adjustments under discussion, both Repubs and Dems have been scare-mongering SS for decades. Each side takes its turn arguing that the system is just fine, or that the scare is, at least, overblown. Fact is, old farts scare easily, and they vote massively, so you can make virtually any systemic change you want if you can tie it in somehow to "saving SS." This isn't about saving SS - it's simply a way to make government less meaningful.

Having said that, I'm curious what new system is going to replace the safety net of SS for the twenty percent who lose their whole discretionary portion. We're obviously not going to let them starve, so are we simply making the investment portion risk-free?

Too much choice
 

Although it hasn't been addressed openly, yes. In order to get any sort of a majority you would have to guarantee some minimum level of return, or at least preservation of capital.

That 20 percent in effect will form an insurance pool. The hope will be that there will be enough people doing well and receiving reduced benefits (another thing they won't speak about publicly yet, mandatory reduction of benefits for the budding Warren Buffets among us) that it will more than offset the folks who tank and have to be bailed out.

Too much choice
 

Seems to me a slight rise in the max-wage number coupled with liberalization of 401k rules would fix things up very nicely, without screwing with the one governmental program that seems to have worked for so long. Anything new is going to have a ton of those pesky unintended consequences. (Or, as someone I admire phrased it, those things that we don't know yet that we don't know.)

Too much choice
 

I'm not too good with the lingo on this topic, but by "max wage number" I am assuming you mean the wage cutoff in each year after which you don't pay into SS. If that's the case I have two comments:

First, I would completely agree with this, and in fact tried to say something similar to to my somewhat inebriated father-in-law over the weekend. He wasn't having it; apparently the president's "SS is broke" mantra has taken hold with the older residents of southwest Florida, go figure. But I am undaunted.

Second, does anyone know of a site that crunches some numbers on what kind of savings could be achieved for increasing this number? And, more to the point, what is the reason for having this cutoff in the first place? If people aren't going to listen to the sage advice of the BRCs of the world when they support a means test for the benefits, I fail to see the logic behind a reverse means test on the cost.

Too much choice
 

The max benefit is capped, so the "logic," so sayeth my father in law, is that your payments are capped, too. It is the false logic of the "I paid into the system so I am entitled to get benefits because it is my money" sham much of the public believes.

Actually, technically it isn't quite a false logic since, the way the law works now, your benefits are calculated based on the total income on which you've paid taxes; if the income on which you paid was uncapped the benefits would increase proportionally (and an even higher proportion of this welfare boondoggle would go to those with the most dosh). But it is still false logic in that it is idiotic to suppose that you could change one element of the law but not the other.

popular media becoming more fair?
 

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...p/people_moore

So Yahoo runs a story about how drug companies are warning employees to look out for the man closest to Ty on the deep thinking spectrum, and in attached photos finally show the true Mikey.

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...nds_lon806.jpg

Apparently the photo came from a story which quoted an oceanographer named Michael Moore, sloppy editing and all I guess.

Too much choice
 

Absolutely right . . . the support for privatization of SS accounts is at least as ideologically driven as Club suggests the opposition to be.

That's why many supporters of privatization are willing to "suspend their cognitive functions" (as Ty put it) to support the concept without even discussing in a meaningful way whether it is truly neccessary. how much it will cost, and how we'll pay for it. They just like the idea, 'cause individual choices and market forces are always better than any government program, don't you know.

Don't ask the President. I hear that's up to Congress.

S_A_M

Too much choice
 

Yes, the unknown unknowns.

Why in the world do you still admire him? I can only see it based on intellect and chutzpah, because (it seems to me) the performance has been rather poor.

(Plus -- Having his condolence letters to the families of the dead signed by mechanical pen? Talk about a tin ear!)

S_A_M

edited to change "deaf" to "tin"