Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

March 25, 2005

The Real Reason Bush Wants to Overhaul Social Security

The reason the Bush Administration wants to overhaul Social Security has nothing to do with the survival of the program. Witness how they ignore Medicare while it teeters on the brink of insolvency. They want Medicare to fail. And they want Social Security to fail. This is more of the "starve the beast" tactic. Thanks to Josh for the link.
There's already talk of raising the $90,000 income cap on which Social Security taxes now are collected to restore fake "solvency" to the program. Nothing like a massive tax increase on the entrepreneurial class to "fix" things, eh?

They want to free the rich from paying for the solvency of Social Security. Why shouldn't people with $90,000 income pay a little more to help those who don't make enough to create a viable pension? Let them starve? The food shelves are empty quite often these days. Charitable giving is down. The Churches and private sector can't pick up the difference.
The only real way to fix Social Security is, over the long haul, to convert this socialist wealth-redistribution scheme into a free-market, wealth-creation program. And the best place to start is with the modest private accounts the Bush administration proposes.

This is about greed. The rich don't want to pay for the privilege of getting richer on the backs of the workers. They use catch words that raise people's ire like "socialism" to cover their real intent.
Even factoring normal market ups and downs, private accounts will -- conservatively invested and over the long term -- provide workers of every socioeconomic class with a better, and inheritable, retirement income.

What Bush doesn't want you to know is that a whole lot of people who rely on Social Security today will have NOTHING in the future, because they can't afford to self-pay for their pension. The private accounts will bring down Social Security decades earlier.


Complete Article
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Social Security: No more demagoguery
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney visits La Roche College today as part of the administration's Social Security reform sales tour. We trust he'll cut to the chase as he usually does.
Social Security is broken. The actuarial tables have caught up with a pyramid scheme that is not sustainable. The I.O.U.s that fill the "trust fund" that isn't will have to be "called" within 20 years. They'll be "covered" by spending cuts, more borrowing or higher taxes.
Care to guess what government's preferred "solution" will be?
There's already talk of raising the $90,000 income cap on which Social Security taxes now are collected to restore fake "solvency" to the program. Nothing like a massive tax increase on the entrepreneurial class to "fix" things, eh?
The only real way to fix Social Security is, over the long haul, to convert this socialist wealth-redistribution scheme into a free-market, wealth-creation program. And the best place to start is with the modest private accounts the Bush administration proposes.
Even factoring normal market ups and downs, private accounts will -- conservatively invested and over the long term -- provide workers of every socioeconomic class with a better, and inheritable, retirement income.
Social Security reform has been demagogued to death by those of every political persuasion. Enough. It's time to act. Preservation of the republic as the Founders intended is at stake.
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