Social Security?

We are aware of your condition Rama Lama.

Ive always said that, if the CAP were removed from Social Security witholding, the problem would be fixed.

A large part of AMericans make over the cutoff and I, for one, would volunteer to have the SS payment taken from the salary part of my earnings.

First of all the funds would have been mandated to involve relatively low risk investments This would not have included the sort of sub-prime mortgage financial instruments that have contributed the widespread problems.

Yeah, I looked for evidence of this, and yaknow what? I couldn't find any evidence that they would have been 'mandated' to be in low-risk investments. It certainly wasn't presented that way at the time, and why would it have been? Social Security already was a low-risk investment. Why bother putting the money in a separate account to get the same rate of return as before?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Yeah, I looked for evidence of this, and yaknow what? I couldn't find any evidence that they would have been 'mandated' to be in low-risk investments. It certainly wasn't presented that way at the time, and why would it have been? Social Security already was a low-risk investment. Why bother putting the money in a separate account to get the same rate of return as before?

And where is your evidence that low-risk investments wouldn't have been mandated? The discussion on the possibilty of privatizing SS never got far enough to have any serious discussion of the nuts/bolts of how it would work.

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President George W. Bush called for a transition to a combination of a government funded program and personal accounts ("individual accounts" or "private accounts") through partial privatization of the system. The personal accounts could be invested in various managed investment funds similar to the government employees' Thrift Savings Plan, in which the investor can choose between Treasury Bills, Corporate bonds and a stock market fund. Since the Report of the 1994-1996 Advisory Council on Social Security, the Social Security program has been the subject of widespread debate. After President Bush highlighted the issue in his 2005 State of the Union Address, the debate became especially intense.

Since when does presenting a proposal = serious discussion?

In case you are unaware the NORMAL process is for someone to make a proposal to gauge interest. The various parties with an interest make a baisc go/no go decision and IF they decide to go with it they have a discussion on exactly how it will be implemented. As I recall it was your side of the fence that decided to sit on a "no way in hell!" position and the whole thing died. The discussion on how it would be implemented never happened.

What is false here is your strawman argument.

Okay Conservatives,

Who amongst you will have the guts to come into this thread and admit that if SS funds had been allowed to be privatized - er, 'private accounts,' sorry, almost used the real name for your plan - a huge amount of that money would now be gone. Vanished. Much of it would have been invested in the same sort of securities that have brought the market crashing down over the course of this year. What would the effects have been, upon the elderly and others? I can't see anything positive coming out of it.

Quote:

Okay Conservatives,

Who amongst you will have the guts to come into this thread and admit that if SS funds had been allowed to be privatized - er, 'private accounts,' sorry, almost used the real name for your plan - a huge amount of that money would now be gone. Vanished. Much of it would have been invested in the same sort of securities that have brought the market crashing down over the course of this year. What would the effects have been, upon the elderly and others? I can't see anything positive coming out of it.

I was under the impression that the money doesn't really exist at this time anyway (at least not much of it, in real liquid cash). It's just an "expectation" of money which will be collected from the currently working, to pay those who are currently retired.

Also, the whole system is projected to become inviable before 20 years anyway isn't it?

I'm not implying that privatization is the proper solution because I don't know what the proper solution is. All I know is that I don't ever expect to collect social security. I've heard that the math on the social security problem makes the mortgage crisis and our energy problems seem like chicken scratch.

Yeah, right. Bush was proposing to allow people to put their money in the types of accounts which would have been damaged. There was a serious discussion in both the national media and in Congress about his plan. His plan failed, resoundingly, after it became clear that the public rejected Bush's plan.

If you define 'serious discussion' to mean 'whatever Fishin wants it to mean,' then of course, you are right. The rest of us define it a little differently. This was a major policy proposal and was discussed endlessly for months. I'd say that counts as a serious discussion.

Can you answer this question: what's the point of privatizing SS, if you aren't allowed control of where your money goes? And why would people put their money in a private account, if not to go for the higher rate of return - which leads to more risk?

At the end of the day, you admit that Bush was proposing what I wrote. Correct? It's fair to say that this was his plan. You are just spinning away from it, and also failing to acknowledge that it is currently McCain's plan as well. I salute the attempt, however.

I never said it wasn't Bush's proposal. But that's exactly what it was - a proposal. Your claim here that everyone would have lost their retirement savings based on what Bush proposed doesn't have any match with reality. The spin here is your's. As usual, if you can't prove your points with logical reasoning you resort to fear.