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Lots of stuff being said about social security, not a lot of it making sense upon examination.
I started on this topic here
http://www.asylumnation.com/asylum/...3/index.html?s=
but I figure "For the Limeys" might be too obscure a reference for social security buffs.

Let's start with someone who is on wall street, who is probuisness/procapitialist, but also happens to be in the bond market which is volitile if you are keeping track of the issues in the Bushanomics thread
http://www.asylumnation.com/asylum/...6/index.html?s=

quote:

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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund, is criticizing President Bush's plan to privatize part of Social Security.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/04/mar...urity/index.htm
February 4, 2005: 8:13 AM EST

Gross, managing director at Pimco, called the argument about the solvency of Social Security "silly" and said it was an example of the president not focusing on more important issues, such as the budget deficit.

The president's argument for individual Social Security accounts is meant "to promote an agenda that has little to do with seniors and more to do with Bush, his ownership society, and ultimately his domestic legacy alongside the likes of Ronald Reagan and FDR," Gross wrote in comments posted on Pimco's Web site.

"Without a blockbuster of a program in his second term it is unlikely that Bush can go very far in the history books on the back of a paltry 3 or 4 percentage point tax cut for the rich," Gross wrote.

"Presto!" he continued. "We now have partial privatization of Social Security heading the agenda upon which the president intends to spend his well-advertised political capital."

But while the president says that will help fix Social Security, "the problem has more to do with demographics than the lack of ownership," Gross wrote.

Gross argued that it will take more than individual Social Security accounts to correct a projected shortfall and suggested the government should focus on cutting the budget deficit instead.

"Production can only come from employed workers and so the basic solution is to produce more workers, either through immigration or postponed retirement for the existing work force," he wrote.

"By reducing budget deficits now, and especially that portion of the deficit owed to foreign governments, we would be able to keep more of our domestic production within our borders and therefore available to senior citizens."

President Bush on Thursday kicked off a five-state tour to push his plan to overhaul Social Security, an issue highlighted in his State of the Union address.

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The Sun Sets in the West - Again!
Steve Lovelady
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001284.asp
February 03, 2005


We realize that this one falls under the category "CJR Daily Discovers Birds Can Fly!" -- but, hey, we are here to dispense brickbats and bouquets, and much as it pains us, it's bouquet time.

You'd think that on coverage of a complex economic issue such as Social Security overhaul, the Wall Street Journal would stand head and shoulders above, say, the New York Times or USA Today. And you'd be right. The Journal upped the ante this morning by tackling an obvious but seldom-explored angle: It reviewed (subscription required) the experiences of other nations that have partially privatized their own national pension plans.

The first thing we learn from the Journal story by Bob Davis and Matt Moffett is that this is not a new idea; Singapore embarked on the privatization of its equivalent of Social Security 50 years ago, and since then 20 nations have followed suit, including Britain, Sweden, Argentina and Chile.

The Journal takes us on a tour of seven of those nations and their wildly varying experiences with private accounts. A few highlights:

-- Sweden turned to private accounts in 1991 after projections showed the system in place would eventually require a payroll tax of a staggering 36 percent. The country chose to maximize choice, but over time Swedish workers fled from so much freedom. At the start, two-thirds of Swedes patched together their own private accounts from a vast array of choices. But many got clobbered by an errant stock market, and by 2003, only eight percent of young Swedes were choosing to design their own portfolios. The government "wanted people to take control of their retirement, but people don't seem to be interested," says Annika Sunden, a Swedish pension expert.

-- In Bolivia, which adopted private accounts eight years ago, crippling transition costs have led to a doubling of the government's budget deficit, and the system has not been able to pay promised benefits.

-- In Singapore, an extremely discretionary program allows workers to disperse their contributions among three accounts, an "ordinary" account, used for housing and education; a medical account for hospital costs, and a third account for old age and disabilities. As a result, fully ninety percent of Singapore citizens own their own homes -- but payroll taxes eat up 33 percent of paychecks. In addition, many of the elderly contributed so much of their withheld pay to housing and medical accounts that they find themselves with little money in their retirement accounts -- "asset-rich but cash-poor" at retirement.

-- In Britain, a social security overhaul in the late 1980s was so thoroughly botched that today "a lot of people look longingly at [America's] Social Security system," says Stephen Yeo, a pension consultant. Late last year, the Association of British Insurers mailed six million copies of a brochure with a photo of a smiling young woman on the cover -- and an advisory inside informing older people it had become "very unlikely" that the personal pensions they had chosen would match the modest payouts from a basic state pension.

-- In Chile, assets in private pension accounts amount to $54 billion, equal to almost two-thirds of annual gross domestic product. Plus, since the system was imposed "at the point of a bayonet" by dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 1981, investors have benefited from high interest rates and a robust stock market. From 1981 through 1995, funds returned an average of nearly 13 percent a year. But since then, annual returns have dwindled to about 6.5 percent, and investment management fees of as much as 20 percent have "taken some of the glitter" off the rose. Furthermore, despite the program's relative success, there's widespread evasion; only 60 percent of workers contribute, and many who do underreport wages to avoid taxes.

There's a certain irony, of course, in the fact that Journal readers -- a relatively sophisticated audience presumably in less need of financial guidance than Joe Sixpack -- are the ones who are served up the most thorough guide to the ins and outs of privatization.

But it has been ever thus. Years ago, Walter Reuther, then-head of the AFL-CIO, was heard wondering aloud why labor had never been able to produce a national newspaper nearly as comprehensive or as intelligent as the one that capital had produced.

We're still waiting.

Department of Full Disclosure: Long ago and far away, the author worked as a reporter and an editor at the Wall Street Journal.
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Anybody got a subscription to the Journal so they can post the link?
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB...ticle%2Dbody%29

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Social Security overhaul is long-standing conservative dream
Knight Ridder Newspapers
By Steven Thomma
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwas...ma/10820193.htm

WASHINGTON - The argument for dramatic change in Social Security is clear:

The promise of secure retirements is a "hoax." Taxes paid by workers are "wasted" by the government rather than prudently invested. And "the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all" because it contains nothing but government IOUs.

President Bush? No, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon and his party's platform in 1936.

Bush's proposal to overhaul Social Security wasn't born with the new forecasts of looming financial problems. It's the product of a conservative dream to undo the system that's as old as the program itself.

Conservatives started complaining that the system was a big-government boondoggle doomed to insolvency before the first check was sent out in January 1937. Their indictment has been part of conservative ideology ever since Barry Goldwater, whose doomed but defiant 1964 presidential campaign made him the father of the modern conservative movement, through Bush.

But it wasn't until relatively recently that conservatives saw a path to break the government's hold on Social Security. As envisioned in a 1983 master plan, the expansion of other private pension programs such as IRAs helped millions of Americans grow comfortable with the thought of making their own investments, and the bull markets of the `80s and `90s made those investments appear more lucrative than Social Security.

Still, the conservatives' goal throughout has been as much political as economic, as much about smaller government as bigger retirement checks. The only thing Bush has ruled out is the one thing that would grow the government system: higher taxes.

"Ever since the program was first created, conservatives understood it was a major expansion of the government," said Eric Patashnik, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "And they've never liked that expansion."

Landon, of course, went on to lose the 1936 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt, which reaffirmed the New Deal and set back the conservative cause severely. Just two years later, Roosevelt boasted that Social Security was already a "permanent" part of the political system.

Conservative opposition to Social Security all but disappeared from public debate for decades. Not until the 1960s did conservatives such as Goldwater and economist Milton Friedman open a new barrage of criticism.

"I wanted to make Social Security solvent, to improve it," Goldwater said. "The first thing wrong with Social Security is the fact that it is compulsory. Secondly, it is not actuarially sound: It promises more benefits to more people than the incomes collected will provide."

According to historian Michael Beschloss, Goldwater also said, "perhaps Social Security should be abolished."

Speaking for Goldwater in a 1964 televised speech that helped launch his own political career, Ronald Reagan endorsed the idea of turning retirement security over to the private sector.

"Can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen to do better on his own?" Reagan asked. "We are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program."

Goldwater, like Landon, lost in a landslide.

Elected president himself 16 years later, Reagan refused to call for any privatizing of Social Security. Instead, he signed a 1983 bailout that increased taxes and raised the retirement age to shore up the program.

That was when conservatives recognized their need for a long-term strategy keyed to the idea of offering people the benefits of making more money in private accounts, while making that option feel more mainstream and less risky.

"It's really after that that conservatives, particularly libertarians, began plotting for Social Security's eventual demise," Patashnik said. "They started laying the groundwork for the effort we see today by President Bush."

"A lot of conservatives thought Social Security was an unjustified invasion into the private sector," said Peter Ferrera, who wrote a detailed paper proposing private accounts that was published by a libertarian research center, the Cato Institute, in 1980.

"But they weren't getting anywhere because that was all negative politics," Ferrera said. "Personal accounts would work because that's positive politics. It's all positive and populist. That's the way something can be accomplished."

Influenced by Ferrera, Cato published a second paper in 1983 that served as a political manifesto for turning over at least some of Social Security to the private sector.

It recommended:

- Consistent criticism of Social Security to undermine confidence in it.

- Building a coalition of supporters for private accounts, including banks and other financial institutions that would benefit from them.

- Assuring "those already retired or nearing retirement that their benefits will be paid in full."

- Legislation making private savings plans such as individual retirement accounts more available and thus more familiar.

Making it easier for more Americans to set up accounts, authors Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis said, would make "it in practice a small-scale, private Social Security system that can supplement the federal system ... we will meet the next financial crisis in Social Security with a private alternative ready in the wings, an alternative with which the public is familiar and comfortable and one that has the backing of a powerful political force."

At another point, they said that expanding the IRA accounts "is purely political. Expanding the IRA system in this way would make it a private prototype of Social Security."

One thing they couldn't plan, but which benefited them greatly, was the bull market of the `80s and `90s. Soaring stock prices drew more people into the markets and made investing very attractive. In the 20 years after 1983, the percentage of eligible employees investing in private 401(k) retirement accounts soared from 38 percent to 75 percent, according to the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America.

Whether conservatives are on the verge of success at last in their quest remains to be seen. In 1936, they had no idea how long it might take. By 1983, they knew it would take time.

"We must be prepared for a long campaign," Butler and Germanis wrote. "It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible.

"But then, as Lenin well knew, to be a successful revolutionary, one must be patient and consistently plan for real reform."
--------------------------------------------------
A few tidbits on Social Security by the same authour here.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwas.../steven_thomma/

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527s Tied to Social Security Battle
http://www.publicintegrity.org/527/...?aid=11&sid=300
By Kevin Bogardus

In recent weeks, a half-dozen organizations have begun fundraising, television and print campaigns to promote or oppose President Bush's plans to revamp the Social Security system.
How these groups-some of which were among the most active 527s in the 2003-2004 election-intend to fund their campaigns is unclear. All told, 527s raised and spent $550 million during the two-year cycle, according to an updated Center for Public Integrity analysis of disclosure forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
One group-Progress for America, which raised $45 million in the 2004 election-is using its 527 committee to raise and spend money for the effort. Others told the Center they have no plans as yet to use their 527s or have begun campaigning on the issue through other channels, such as their 501(c)(4) non-profit affiliates. Such 501(c)(4) groups are "social welfare" organizations which can lobby, as long as the lobbying fulfills their tax-exempt function.
By definition, 527s, named after the section of the tax code for political organizations, cannot directly contribute or coordinate with federal candidates. Yet many groups were still able to promote their choice for the White House this past election through myriad ways, such as advertising, direct mail and voter mobilization efforts.

As outlined in his State of the Union address, President Bush considers reforming Social Security a priority for his ambitious second-term agenda. Bush's focus on private accounts has become a contentious point between both sides of the political spectrum.

In favor of private accounts

Progress for America, a pro-Bush group linked to the 527, the Progress for America Voter Fund, anticipates spending more than $10 million on Social Security reform. PFA has already broadcast a national television ad promoting private accounts on CNN and Fox in January and has planned to release more ads in the coming weeks.
The Club for Growth-which opened a 527 account and used those funds to support the president in the 2004 election as well as target Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in the Pennsylvania primary -has a budget of $10 million. The group has promised a long campaign as well; it posted a blog dedicated to Social Security reform and has broadcast television ads.
The Alliance for Worker Retirement Security-which was created to lobby the federal government on social security reform-is made up of more than 30 business trade associations and includes at least two 527 groups among its ranks: the Hispanic Business Roundtable and Black America's Political Action Committee.

Anti-private accounts

Campaign for America's Future, a labor-oriented group with a 527 account, has taken a lead role in a coalition of liberal groups, such as the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, and the Center for American Progress, to campaign against private accounts. On the day of Bush's State of the Union address, CAF helped organize press calls for spokespeople against private accounts.
The Alliance for Retired Americans, a non-profit group associated with the AFL-CIO and other unions, has voiced concern about Social Security reform on its Web site. The Alliance for Retired Americans Voter Mobilization Fund is the group's 527 arm.
"We are going to model our campaign against privatization of Social Security the same way we fought against the prescription drug bill," said Edward Coyle, the Alliance's executive director. Coyle said there are no plans to use their 527 in the campaign.
MoveOn.org, which opposed George W. Bush during the 2004 election, has begun broadcasting a national television spot as well as placing a full page ad in The New York Times last week against private accounts. Tom Matzzie, MoveOn's Washington Director, says they will use the group's 501(c)(4) in the campaign instead of its 527, the MoveOn.org Voter Fund. Another branch of the group, MoveOn PAC, plans to remain active for the 2006 mid-term elections by building a ground campaign in every Congressional district to oppose Bush's policies, according to its Web site.

Stay tuned: the Center for Public Integrity will continue to track 527s active in the Social Security debate.

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*Yawn*

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i heard that in bush's new budget, we're diverting money from a social security surplus due to the baby boomers to other things like national security. -- is this true?

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quote:

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Originally posted by zim
i heard that in bush's new budget, we're diverting money from a social security surplus due to the baby boomers to other things like national security. -- is this true?

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btw, speaking of Medicare, and sort of on topic in that I don't think Bush has made a single estimate of costs or benefits in the history of him tackling budgetary issues that wasn't somewhere between wildly optimistic and staggeringly dishonest.

Remember the Medicare thing? Republicans were a bit wary, but believed the administration when they told them it would cost 400 billion dollars? And then a few months later that the higher cost "true" estimate was withheld from Congress, and that it would actually cost 534 billion dollars?

Yeah, they were both wrong.

724 billion to 1.2 trillion.

Zoink!

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It is unbelievable that he retains any credibility with Congress, particularly the republican element. It is almost as if they are a bunch of political whores prepared to swallow anything so long as it gets them re-elected, by promising to give everything and that we'll have to pay nothing.

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Amusing as hell to hear criticism of the perscription drug benefit from people like Feinstein, whose objection at the time was that it was a half-measure that didn't provide ENOUGH coverage.

I mean, yeah, it's a ludicrous budgetary fiasco that its advocates should be ashamed of, that's a given. But I don't think that the people who forced the issue onto the table and who tried to use it as a wedge issue in the campaign ought to be making noises now about fiscal prudence.

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Yes. It is the Democrats' fault, obviously.

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With their congressional majority, and all.

Point is, I don't give a shit about the dems. I'm worried about the dissolution of fiscal conservatism in US government.

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Indeed, but it's a bit late for that. People who actually advocate fiscal responsibility lose elections. That's well established.

Dems fault? Yeah, at least as much as that of Republicans. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that that entitlement program is even PROPOSED if the Democrats aren't screaming their heads off about the heartless Republicans who won't buy grandpa's pills.

Does this absolve the Republicans for caving in? No way in hell. They should be whipped, broken, and driven across the land. But surely, Paint, you're not immune to the hypocrisy of people complaining about the size of an entitlement when their position at the time was that we needed a BIGGER one.

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Paint's point is surely about the horrible miscosting of the program by the administration?

Last edited by Smug Git on 02-10-2005 at 05:21 PM

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In general, the 'look at the godamned dems' pseudo-defense is a distraction from the real issue, which is the enormous fuckup that the GOP has become. Like I (and, at least, paint) were saying before the election, conservatives should vote democrat to save the GOP. 'At least we're not them' isn't good enough and, to be honest, they currently appear worse. Tax rising is a lesser evil than enormous budget deficits, if we really can't cut spending. Of course, we can cut spending, but Bush can't steal the dems' big-spending-socialist-government clothes and at the same time cut taxes, it is dishonesty of the highest order. At least, he can't do it unless his support are retarded.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
. . . Bush can't steal the dems' big-spending-socialist-government clothes and at the same time cut taxes, it is dishonesty of the highest order. At least, he can't do it unless his support are retarded.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
In general, the 'look at the godamned dems' pseudo-defense is a distraction from the real issue. At least we're not them' isn't good enough and, to be honest, they currently appear worse.

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