SOCIAL SECURITY SUMMARY
Charles Krauthammer writes an accurate summary of the Social Security problem and says in a few hundred words what I tried to say in a long series of posts here.
Do yourself a favor and read - NO, STUDY - his points so you can make an intelligent decision when you vote.
He feels my frustration:
Do yourself a favor and read - NO, STUDY - his points so you can make an intelligent decision when you vote.
He feels my frustration:
- "As I have been writing for years with stupefying redundancy -- and obvious lack of success -- this idea [Social Security trust fund, et al] is a hoax. There is not trust fund. The past Social Security surpluses were spent the year they were created. The idea that in 2017, when the surpluses disappear, we will be able to go to a box in West Virginia to retrieve the money we need to make up the shortfall (between what Social Security takes in and what it pays out that year) is a deception. There is no money there. It will have to be borrowed or garnered from new taxes."
You owe it to yourself to understand this perspective. It is real!
posted by Jim | 8:48 AM
2 Comments:
I found this recent comment from Warren Buffet of interest (from a Lou Dobbs show transcript found here):
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DOBBS: Are you surprised when you focus on the two deficits we just talked about, the trade deficit, and the budget deficit? The budget deficit is 3.6 percent of our GDP. The trade deficit is reaching just almost 6 percent of GDP. And the president is talking about reforming Social Security. Does that surprise you?
BUFFETT: Well, it's an interesting idea that a deficit of $100 billion a year, something, 20 years out, seems to terrify the administration. But the $400 plus billion dollars deficit currently does nothing but draw yawns. I mean the idea that this terrible specter room looms over us 20 years out which is a small fraction of the deficit we happily run now seems kind of interesting to me.
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(I agree with Buffet that I'm unclear on why a future deficit is a crisis but today's deficit is not).
Read the interview. Long on criticism and short on fixes
Lou Dobbs set up the response on the deficit and Social Security - I doubt Buffet would have mentioned it. His words of the admisistration "terrified" over SS and "yawning" over the deficit shows his bias. Odd for a guy who owes his billions to the free market economy to criticize the administration in this manner, but he is often a little off the wall.
The reason for going after SS instead of the "deficit" is that you can get your hands around it and fix a very important problem - try that on other segments of our spending. As difficult as the changes in SS are, they are a lot easier than going to Congress and asking for billions of dollars in spending cuts (impossible!! - I hope you agree).
His SS fixes are Bush's - except for raising the taxable base, which Bush opposes - and I believe appropriately - as a tax increase that will slow down the economy and exacerbate the other problems Buffet and Dobbs talk about. "Means Testing" is what Bush proposed last week, and the Dems had a hissy fit!
I think we should solve the SS solvency problem for the future and force our representatives to stop spending money at the same time. I do not see them as mutually exclusive.
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