Tonya and PQBON's WebLog
The miasma was thick during the 1990s, when stock values were soaring and it seemed for a while that even a clerk might do better with a mutual fund than a supposedly meager Social Security check. Then President Bush sought in 2005 to capitalize on the myths—and told a few whoppers of his own—with his politically disastrous proposal to change Social Security from a system of government-guaranteed payments to one in which individuals finance their retirements mostly through private investments.
Through it all, too many Democrats quaked with worry over being politically outfoxed by conservatives. They feared Republicans somehow would find a way to rob them of FDR’s mantle. As they sought to stop Bush’s plan, House Democrats privately pressed Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic minority leader, to come up with a “plan” to “save” Social Security as a way of countering the president. She refused.
That’s partly why Clinton can now speak truth to nonsense.
Social Security can pay full benefits until 2041, according to the latest report by the plan’s trustees. By then, the baby boomers will have begun dying off. The oldest among them would be 96; the youngest, 77. Even after that, the system would be able to pay benefits which, in real terms, are larger than they are today, according to economist Mark Weisbrot, who co-authored the 1999 book, “Social Security: The Phony Crisis.”
With the system sufficiently financed to fund more than three decades of benefits, there’s no near-term “crisis” to address. And even if Congress were to come up with legislation that would close Social Security’s long-range deficit, “the changes needed are less than what we did in the ‘50s, ‘60s, the ‘70s and the ‘80s,” Weisbrot says. “That’s the end of the story, as far as I’m concerned.”
I've long not believed the republican lie that the SS system was intractable and was going to fail any day now. It just didn't add up. It is great to hear a politician say it out loud.
I also love the point that SS was changed in the ‘50s, ‘60s, the ‘70s and the ‘80s. It shows that SS has always been moving target. Changes can and should be made to address short coming in the program, both when it needs to be updated financially for solvency and when it needs to be fixed to allow people to afford living off it.
I think the housing bubble and late '90s stock bubble has proven that if we did away with SS and just let everyone save on their own retirement the average American would be broke when they retire. Many retirement funds lost billions of dollars when the internet bubble burst taking the stack market with it. Financial companies have proven they can't be trusted by giving home loans to people who didn't know they could afford it, because the financial companies sales people swore that they could and swore it would be easy.
I'm not saying you shouldn't save for retirement. I'm saying that SS is an important part of the social contract in this country. In this country we don't expect people to work until the day they die...
Posted by pqbon at October 23, 2007 2:30 PM