The Wrong Stuff

[Nicodema]

Republicans say their privatization plan will encourage people to save. Not by a long shot.

http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=9229

[Jeannieb43]

Every country which has tried privatizing its own type of seniors' retirement income program, has seen that program go bankrupt. Chile and England are two leading examples. Chile bankrupted their whole national budget by trying it; England has a surplus so only the retirement program went bankrupt, not the whole country.

But for Bush to try to foist this plan over on the whole population is just another example of his ineptness. The general public has no idea how to invest in the stock market. People's money will be lost, and when they retire they'll find themselves cast adrift, with no income at all.

[Dr. Shane]

We are talking about 4% of our social security. Look at how much you are paying in each week. Only 4% of that would be invested and only at your request.

[Dr. Shane]

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Because each dollar diverted into a private account and therefore saved is a dollar that's already needed to pay benefits to people who are retired today.

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That is not true.

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for every dollar saved in a private account by an individual, the government is going to need to borrow $1 from the foreign central banks

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That is projection and by no means conclusive. Furthermore it is based on a false premise.

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they'd react to their growing private accounts by putting less money away in their 401(k) plans, IRAs, and other savings vehicles.

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Again, projecture and by no means conclusive. Although if this did happen it would stimulate the economy.

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But just as privatizing Social Security would make the program's cash crunch worse rather than better, it would make the broader lack of future stuff worse by pushing our already too low savings rate even lower.

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Notice how he states this as if it were fact. But it isn't. It is the worst case scenerio. It is projecture and if the system did start to trend toward this end Congress could always reverse what they had done.

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Nothing, according to the GOP's true believers, is more important than making taxes on the rich as low as possible.

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Now there is a red flag screaming "I am biased, I am biased!!!"

[Nicodema]

Shane, if you are going to contend you need to back up your contentions. Merely PROCLAIMING something "false" and "conjecture" etc. does not make it so. Offer the counter-argument or what you perceive to be the truth of the matter. Without that, your statements are unproven at best and utterly vacuous at worst.

Examples (from your post):

"That is not true." (then what is? offer it!)

"That is projection and by no means conclusive. Furthermore it is based on a false premise." (if you have information to the contrary, offer that information with solid sources where it can be verified. Proclaming something projection and inconclusive does not make it thus.)

"Again, projecture and by no means conclusive. Although if this did happen it would stimulate the economy." (I think you mean "conjecture"? Anyway you still need to bring information that SHOWS it to be such, instead of just declaring it to be.)

"Notice how he states this as if it were fact. But it isn't. It is the worst case scenerio. It is projecture and if the system did start to trend toward this end Congress could always reverse what they had done." (This is a little more substantial, but again, you have offered no PROOF or even EVIDENCE that it is "not fact" and only "worst case scenario". You are simply declaring things with no verification, no independent reputable backup for your assertions.)

"Now there is a red flag screaming "I am biased, I am biased!!!" (Only if it's not demonstrably true -- can you show me a majority of GOP believers who want to actually raise the tax burden on the nation's wealthiest? If not, don't scream "bias" to avoid unpleasant reality. And even if it is a bias, it does not negate the entirety of the article. Truth is also a bias, is it not? It is "biased" against lies. And honesty is biased against duplicity, as a just measure is against thievery.

[Dr. Shane]

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if you are going to contend you need to back up your contentions.

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Even when they are obvious? We can speak in fact about the past. But we can only make educated guesses about the future.

Now about taxes, Sister Nico, do you know how much I paid in income taxes last year? This is embarassing. I paid $850 for the entire year and made about $46,500. The rich are carrying this country. The rich are paying for all the services the rest of us use. So if the President is going to cut taxes to stimulate the economy the ones that will get the biggest cuts are the ones that pay the most. How can anyone making $50,000 a year and paying $1,000 income taxes complain the rich got too big of a tax cut? When you are only paying $1,000 how much can one expect their taxes to get cut?

[Ron Lambert]

Isn't it funny how most of the people who claim that the public is too stupid to know how to invest in the stock market and shouldn't be trusted with management of even a small portion of their social security account (all of it, remember, deducted from their own money that THEY EARNED), belong to the political party that calls itself "the party of the people"?

The obviously knee-jerk reaction of the out-of-power party to anything the president proposes is so overwhelming that it is now even trying to deny that the present Social Security Ponzi scheme is in trouble, and that it can't go on like it is forever without going bankrupt. This despite the fact that notable leaders of the same party have sounded the very same warnings in the past that the president is sounding.

Personally, I doubt that President Bush will succeed in implementing meaningful, effective reform in Social Security, because Congress has become too addicted to using the surplus still being generated (for the time being) to finance other general budgetary items. Any private investment would cut in to the amount Congress can misappropriate for use in the general budget. As time goes on, and the surplus diminishes and finally vanishes and turns into a deficit, Congress is going to have a harder and harder time financing the general budget. They should impose budgetary restraint on themselves now, and not take any money from the Social Security fund. But such sane foresight seems humanly impossible of prevailing at present.

But I do give President Bush credit for trying.

[Jeannieb43]

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Isn't it funny how most of the people who claim that the public is too stupid to know how to invest in the stock market and shouldn't be trusted with management of even a small portion of their social security account (all of it, remember, deducted from their own money that THEY EARNED), belong to the political party that calls itself "the party of the people"?

The obviously knee-jerk reaction of the out-of-power party

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There's some generalizing going on here.

It may surprise you to know that at least one person on this board who opposes privatizing Social Security is a lifelong Republican. Worked the precincts for Goldwater in '64 (maybe long before your time).

[Dr. Shane]

If Bush fails, which he may well do, future generations will view his efforts as heroic when the crisis sets in.