Ninety-three days after President George W. Bush promised that he would release a complete, detailed plan for changing American workers’ Social Security benefits, he finally offered an incomplete portion his Social Security plan last night.
Here’s what President Bush went on national television to announce:
Under Bush’s plan, most Americans will suffer Social Security cuts. Millions upon millions of old people, families with a parent that dies, and people who are victims of devastating injuries and illness will have to make due with less. Bush calls this “progress”.
Bush also says its financially necessary to take money away from old people, widows, orphaned children and people with severe disabilities.
Why, oh why, is that financially necessary? Well, Bush has to find some way to pay for his plan to funnel money out of the Social Security Trust Fund and into the coffers of Wall Street financial firms – the same financial firms that cheated investors out of incomprehensible amounts of money in the Enron school of fraud and mutual fund manipulation scandals.
Bush also has to pay for his repeal of the law that asked children who received multi-million dollar inheritances from wealthy parents to contribute a small portion that money that they did not lift a finger to earn, and give to the public good.
So, in effect, Bush announced last night that he intends to tax your Social Security in order to set up special financial programs to benefit corrupt Wall Street investment firms and create special tax shelters for rich kids’ trust funds.
For the record, there is good reason to suspect that diverting money from the Social Security Trust Fund into the coffers of Wall Street firms will actually further reduce American workers’ Social Security benefits – on top of the reductions Bush proposes.
When he retired, a San Diego defense analyst calculated the increase of the money he had contributed to the Social Security Trust Fund, and compared it to the increase that money would have grown if invested in the Dow Jones index fund instead.
Social Security’s performance: $261,372
The Dow Jones performance: $248,166
This much is for sure: George W. Bush’s Social Security Scheme will get big amounts of money to some people, but those people do NOT include America’s working families.
JC, where’s all of your evidence boy? I see alot of fact twisting here so why don’t I just deal with the facts for you. Let’s look at a place where private accounts are already being used.
Let’s use Galveston Texas, where they are ALREADY doing what the president wants and compare SS to personal accounts…
If you get a 3.75 percent return, like they GUARANTEE in Galveston, on your money, and you’re a person working 37 years, making about $25,000 a year, you’d receive $1,250 a month from the alternate plan now available for workers Galveston — as opposed to $669 from Social Security.
If you’re an employee working for the same amount of time and earning $75,000, you’d receive $3,600 a month from the alternative plan they’ve got here, as opposed to $1,300 from Social Security.
Now the past 18 years, the AVERAGE return on these account in Galveston is 6 1/2 percent…So you do the math.
“Those who criticize Social Security privatization because of the stock market ups and downs or the lack of investment knowledge of many employees have not done their homework or they would be aware of what has been done in Galveston County.”
http://www.tppf.org/government/perspect/holbrook.html
Is this an attempt for democrats to hold onto something that worked wonderfully for years but now is outdated? Why is it so hard for both sides to work together to get something done that makes sense? I’ll tell you why, because one party is afraid the other party will get the credit for actually fixing something in this country.
Hoosier, you are a rude, rude man. Didn’t your mother teach you better? Get some manners.
If pointing out the REAL facts are rude? …then I’ll take that as a compliment. Thanks you. What’s rude about that? I didn’t attack anyone, just listed facts. If that is rude, with all do respect, you are too sensitve.
hoosier, that sounds more like a private pension for county workers than a alternative to s.s.
union members like myself and many others have good retirement plans, but, we don’thave to give up our s.s. benifits to get it.
are you telling me every citizen in that county will get this great deal or just the chosen few? my pension takes the group approach to investing, not the individual approach that bushnuts wants. you can get a lot more leverage with a thousand voices than you can on your own. you know how if you own a huge block of stock you can manipulate the market price? well, it takes some smarts, but you don’t have to be a genius to realize that most poor people will never generate enough funds to pull strings in the market. therefore their end sum will not be as rosy as geoge and the rest of the elite investors. if you say they guarantee returns and there is no need to watch individually each account, then that flies in the face of what george’s market plan has been spewing. he’s talking individual accounts. i don’t play the market, but, i know that if you do you better be watching it all the time. an indivdual system for a county or a pension plan for a union should not be a reason to eliminate s.s. for all the people less fortunate. i guess your going to do great under this plan though, aren’t you hoosier, so all is well.
George want the investments to go to conservative growth accounts. I don’t play the market either. If he were to allow you put money in gov’t bonds or even a savings account, that is still better than what we have. Your union saving plan is no different than the thousands of Knight-Ridder employees whose 401K is primarily with Vanguard…or Verizon employees whose money is somwhere else. Privitising SS would allow poor people to gain access to what YOU and I have already. Quit trying to turn things and think of it logically for a minute. A poor person would have real money when they retire instead of a few hundred dollars a month that they most certainly could not live on. Gavelston does this on a much smaller scale and yes they guarantee a small return. But the actual is double the guarantee.
My parents are doomed to collect the whopping 700-1300 a month when they retire. That will be a HUGE cut in income when they retire. But if they had had private accounts, that would have doubled. So people who are against looking at privatization have succeeded in keeping my parents poor.
Wait, wait. I thought Social Security was only a supplement, that it’s not supposed to be your entire retirement fund. What the hell am I doing saving up my money if I’m supposed to live on SS? Also, Hoosier, how do you explain that this whole privatization thing is immensely unpopular, even though George and the media did their best to 1984 it? What, the vast left wing conspiracy? Yeesh, if I’m part of a conspiracy, I’d like it to do better than this. I mean, we don’t even have a majority in one section of the government!
By the way, corporate stock options and retirement plans of that nature don’t always work so well. A friend of the family works for USAir, has done so for years, and lost hundreds of thousands of retirement dollars in the last few years that he had invested in their corporate stocks. It’s no wonder that no one trusts the stock market to take care of their money. It may be different, what Bush wants to put our money into, but the stock market’s been such a crapshoot for so many people that, quite frankly, screw that.
Also, what happened to the very easy plan of raising the cap on income that can be taxed for Social Security? Whoa, an easy way to make the system solvent for our forseeable future that makes wealthier people pay money! And, yes, anyone making over $100,000 is wealthy compared to, say, a single mother with a couple of kids and $30,000 a year.
http://www.harpers.org/SocialSecurity.html#20050411ltrescbubeqc
J. Clifford’s evidence? Well, he’s offered one link. But the long and the short of it is right here, Hoosier Texan. For Pete’s Sake, before you go ballistic why don’t you make a simple check yourself?
Who cares if you make more or less under Bush’s plan, it doesn’t really matter. Bush says that S.S. will be bankrupt in 30 years or so(I don’t care who really says it Bush is using that as his beginning premise)so to fix this problem we need to cut money out of it NOW so it will become bankrupt sooner….? Oh O.K. we’ll put about a trillion dollars into it so that anyone getting it already won’t lose out, of course this trillion dollars will come from where? Right Government IOU’s. Wait a minute, isn’t that why S.S. will be bankrupt because we can’t trust gov. IOU’s? Unhuh. Folks it’s all smoke and mirrors, WHAT IS THE PRES HIDING BEHIND THIS??? Bush has shown that when he wants to do something he manages to have another “Crisis” to cover what he really wants.
Sorry, you lose JM. It’s being done here and it’s successful no matter how else you try to frame it. It’s all in what your allowed to invest in. I could put all of my money in a simple savings account and come out better.
Stryder’s got a point: for something that won’t be a problem until I’m of retirement age, Bush is trying to pour a lot of money we just don’t have into it. How on earth can we pay for something that won’t really be a problem for a few decades when we can’t properly equipped soldiers dying for a lie over in the Middle East?
Hoosier Texan, you’re doing a good job of loading bullshit in front of a clear article, just because you don’t want anyone to see what ITimes is talking about.
The claims in this article have a solid basis. The details of the defense analyst’s findings have been documented in Harper’s magazine. Besides, it’s a principle that no sane investor would dispute that Wall Street is a gamble. Under Bush’s Social Security ideas, it’s an almost certain result that some people will lose Social Security benefits because they went with Bush’s privatization proposal to redirect funds to Wall Street.
It’s also not in dispute among rational, informed people that Bush’s plan of privatization would put huge amounts of money into the pockets of the same big Wall Street traders who helped Enron cheat investors and participated in the mutual fund fraud busted by Eliot Spitzer (Well done, Eliot!)
Now, the facts on the reductions to Social Security benefits are also indisputable. Two nights ago, Bush himself admitted that if people do what he suggests most American workers will not recieve the benefits that they have been promised. No one – NO ONE – gets an increase in benefits under Bush’s plan, as Bush Admin people acknowledge.
It’s also a matter of record – look it up through the Library of Congress records – that Bush and his Republican allies in Congress gave huge amounts of money in special breaks to the adult children who inherit multi-million dollar trust funds from their wealthy parents. That’s money those people didn’t work a single minute to earn, and it’s money that could have gone towards creating an absolutely permanent Social Security solvency. That is a 100% absolute fact.
Everything written in this article is based on carefully checked information that is readily available in a multiplicity of mainstream news sources. If you merely read the morning newspaper (a good newspaper that’s more than a quarter-inch thick), you will have already come across the facts referred to in this article.
It’s your problem, Hoosier Texan, that you’re not bothering to read credible news sources. Please don’t blame I Times for your ignorance.
Really, and my sources are crap just because you say so? A city is already PROVING it works, but that’s not good enough? Your logic is astonishing here. Your logic also dictates that you should not invest at all…no 401K for anyone here…no company stock options for anyone here…your logic is that you are hypocritical to make ANY investments because it only benefits the rich. Nevermind that you can get any benefit. Your logic is FLAWED…
Let me know when the sky stops falling so I can venture back outside please.
Alright, you know what, just stop it. You can’t say that something worked in small scale in one place, so it must work on a grand scale in a completely different place with completely different problems and finances. It’s a logical fallacy, and I’m getting sick of hearing about it. Communism works on a small enough scale, and we all saw how well the USSR turned out.
Well, I think communism would work on a large scale, just that the money available would have to be on a large scale, too. And… I don’t know of any countries that are even close to being ready for that, yet.
Hoosier Texan, what you’re writing is nonsense. You miss the point that when people invest money for retirement, it’s a very different system than what Social Security is for. First of all, private investment does not involve sucking money out of other people’s benefits. Bush’s plan for Social Security does. Secondly, Social Security is not about making an risky investment. It’s a program designed to provide a certain basic level of SECURITY, and for that reason, the risk level of what George W. Bush proposes is wildly inappropriate.
Even if the stock market performs well, which it is certain not to do for long lengths of time every now and then, the Social Security system gets wrecked by the money bled out of the program. Bush wants to help make up for that problem by reducing benefits – so, his proposal is to weaken Social Security, not to strengthen it.
Your inability to understand the principles of risk is underlying your strange claims. Everything in this article, as others have pointed out, is based upon commonly accepted facts.
There’s a common disclaimer that stock brokers use in their promotional material: Past performance is not a guarantee of future success. That’s the way that the stock market works, but it’s not the way that Social Security should work. Jar is right: For our nation to subject the lives of widows, ill people, and old people who have worked hard for decades of their lives to capriciousness of capitalist economic cycles would be barbaric.
Some people do well with the stock market. Many people lose their shirts. Social Security should be secure as it has been promised to us.
Now I’ll speak for myself: I’ve worked too damn hard for too damn long to put money into the Social Security Trust Fund to let some born-rich Republican snot come along and tell me that I can’t get what I’ve earned because he needs to siphon money out of the system into Wall Street.
Where did George W. Bush get the vast majority of his campaign contributions? You guessed it: Wall Street financial firms.
George W. Bush and his Republican followers are selling you and all other working Americans down the river, Hoosier Texan, and you’re giving him an oar to make the journey quicker. Don’t ask me to go along for your ride.
I have the ability to fund a 401K and IRA want does a SS account give me that I do’nt already have?
conservative growth accounts. is that a private account? most poor slobs couldn’t begin to tell you what that even means let alone manage it themselves. they would be better off with 700 bucks a month than risk it all with something they no littlle or nothing about. if they aren’t managing it themselves than it isn’t a private account. and that’s what the bushman keeps harping.
Yes, Randy, that’s a point that isn’t brought up very often. People wouldn’t have the right to manage their own “personal” accounts. That’s not personal at all. The Executive Branch would decide which corporations received “investments” of huge amounts of money ripped out of the Social Security Trust Fund. The President of the United States would have ultimate authority about how to reward corporations with free money courtesy of hard-working Americans.
If that’s not a recipe for corruption, I don’t know what is.
A very uninformed comment from Patricia. Hey, let’s do all we can to keep the poor down. Afterall, they are too dumb to make their own decisions! Good attitude all…I new the democratic party was changing, but my god! Wait, can’t say that here…My Gosh!
Uninformed? Pardon me, Hoosier Texan, but these are facts:
- individuals wouldn’t have control over the investments in their so-called “personal” accounts
- the executive branch would choose which sorts of companies could be invested in – controlling where the big money goes
These are the facts, and you can call me “uninformed” for saying so, but the facts are the facts, whether or not you like them.
Now, now, Patricia, maybe Hoosey was talking about the last part.
Maybe Hoosey has good reason to believe that he knows more about what you don’t know than you do.
Marx- very sweet boy, didn’t really understand human nature. Even he said that people would need to change in some fundamental way for communism to work properly. I personally think it’d do okay as long as you were on a small town type scale, where everyone knew everyone else and could keep an eye on each other.
Most people are fairly uninformed about the stock market, anyway, Hoosier, and I doubt very many people would have the time to do the research. Besides, isn’t Bush’s current plan all about sticking it to the middle class anyway? Fuck that. Do you know how much in SS taxes I’ve paid so far? And I’ve only been working off and on (school) for seven years! No wonder no one’s buying it.
Once again, Hoosier Texan has fled the table when the talk doesn’t go his way. He calls me “boy” and asks me where my “evidence” for well-established facts. Oh well, here’s another piece of evidence that backs up what I’m saying, to put with all the other ones, Hoosier. It’s from E.J. Dionne, who writes for the Washington Post:
Take all or most of the shortfall (that will come in one and half generations from now) erased from doing away with Bush’s tax giveaways to people earning over $350,000 and add that to a quarter to a half of the shortfall erased by keeping the traditional tax on rich kids who get millions of dollars from their rich parents, and there is no Social Security problem.
Bush is cutting my Social Security, which I’ve paid into for decades, so that rich kids and people making over $350,000 a year can get special tax breaks. It’s a fact.
Hoosier Texan’s use of the Galveston example is bogus, and cannot be seriously regarded as “evidence” of anything. Here’s why:
- The last 18 years have not been representative of the trajectory of the stock market in general. The boom of the 1990s, some of which has been lost but much of which remains, is an historical aberration. Like someone else said: Past results do not guarantee future performance.
- The use of an “average” as a statistic is decievingly blurry. The dramatic success of a small number of individuals can outweight the smaller loss of a larger number of participants. When we’re dealing with human lives, the “average” results are not sufficient. We need to analyze distribution to truly understand what’s going on. Republicans like to use “averages” because they mask the growing gap between wealthy Americans and working Americans. Take two people, one of which makes 10,000 dollars a year, and the other one of which makes 1,000,000 dollars a year, and on average, the two of them make 505,000 dollars. That number is, in terms of any practical policy decision making, junk – just like Hoosier Texan’s Galveston average.
- Social Security has consistently outperformed the stock market in tough economic times, which is precisely when people need Social Security the most. A proper analysis will include a comparison in times of economic recession and depression.
Jingo, you are not very smart are you. This isn’t about the stock market and 20 or 30% gains. We are talkiing about CONSERVATIVE growth accounts. You obviously do not know the difference. Helljust put my money in government bonds. What rich corporate exec. will make money off of that? Hell, my grandparents use to give me $25.00 bonds every Christmas and birthday. They double in value from what you buy them at and alot of mine tripled in ten years. YOU DON’T GET IT DO YOU?
What about the trillions of dollars this is going to cost, Hoosier? Huh? What about that? Having experienced the shear awfulness of debt you can’t really deal with, I don’t want to see my entire country go through that. Why, why, why do we need to risk every ounce of financial security just to solve a problem that won’t be a problem until _I’m_ ready to retire? Why can’t we just tax the freaking rich, who, really, should be freaking grateful that they have a chance to give back to a country that they got so much from?? Sorry, my socialism coming out again, but what happened to those kinds of wealthy people? Or even just moderately well-off? Yeesh, even robber barons like Carnegie gave back to his city.
Actually, I’ve got an MBA, and as far as I see it, jingo’s critique is pretty much right on the money. Am I stupid too, Hoosier? How odd it is that you come on here and whine about liberals “attacking” Republicans like you, and then go around and call liberals like jingo stupid.
I’ll repeat – jingo’s critique of Hoosier Texan’s Galveston claim is completely in line with every standard understanding of statistics and financial markets that I ever learned about while earning my business degree.
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