Bush gave a speech, any thoughts?

HE CAN TALK?!!!?!?!?!??!!!

lets get this out of the way...

"Democrats are liberal pussies"

"Republicans are ignorant bastards"

and move on to real discussion...

Fiscally, it seems to be the other way around these days.

ok, yes, now that the name calling is out of the way, I was just wondering if anyone had thoughts on the plan/better ideas/anything else. I honestly doubt I will get a SS check, so I'm all for the private investing to keep as much of my money away from the government as possible.

Ya, but if the market crashes, yer boned.

Social Security should be kept around, but retooled so it still works.

Even if the market crashes, I plan on have at least some of my money in t-bills or bonds. and honestly, i trust the market to give me a better return than the government. it is a risk, but one i will take.

REALLY?!?!?!

So how many congressmen/congresswomen did you see panhandling for change when the tech bubble burst? The government gives their own employees this retirement plan of investing and I doubt they were "boned" by it. Its not like the private accounts are daytrading accounts. They don't just give joe blow a check and say, "go make it bigger." The vast majority of the options are little to nearly no risk. Further to the point, when the market crashes, we're ALL boned.

An easy fix to the social security problem would be to just eliminate the $90,000 taxable salary cap for the payroll tax that funds social security.

Now I know that people will say "those people over $90K will be so rich that they wont draw nearly as much in benefits in proportion to how much they would be paying." But so what. Pay your taxes like everyone else. Besides, if i have to either feel sorry for some old guy on SS or someone making a whole lot of money who has to pay a little bit more on their taxes, I'd rather have to feel sorry for the rich guy.

They could also reinstate the inheritance tax and use that money to fund social security. Then they'd only be taking money from dead people.

They should privatize Social Security, and by privatize I mean tax me less so I can invest on my own. I don't need to be babysat.

i concur, I cant find a good reason NOT to instate privatization. If there is one, please enlighten me.

or we can just do what Allen Greenspan said and quit taking money out of SS to pay for other stuff...

That still won't fix the problem, just prolong its solvency. It will still go into the red in 2017 (when the government will begin to repay the money it borrowed from the program) and the bottom will still fall out 40 years or so later.

A non-privatized social security is the only system that makes sense. The system is not designed to give the rich a retirement plan. Its designed to give the poor people enough money to live off of once they can no longer work or decide that its enough to get by on that they can retire. If you are gonna just make privatized accounts, you might as well just reduce the ammount of money you pay into social security and simultaneously slash the benefits to match the ammount being paid into it. It seems stupid to pay money into social security and have them invest it in the stock market, when you could just invest it yourself.

In my opinion, privatized accounts are not about saving social security. it seems like they are just designed so that rich people can get more of their money back out of a system designed to help the poor. But I may just be misunderstanding what the plan is.

I agree. Make rich people pay and/or and raise the retirement age, make sense to me.



I agree. The system was designed to be a non-ownership system (anyone have grandparents who chose not to take social security money?, ask around I'm sure you'll find someone, and ask them why?), making it ownership now does make no sense, as sdodd said, "They should privatize Social Security, and by privatize I mean tax me less so I can invest on my own. I don't need to be babysat." I think of it as a collectively good system, atleast as a last resort for many people, What do other countries have? other than the food stamp/medicaid equivalents.