Social Security

throwing good money after bad

Ok I feel the need to begin a discussion on social security.

Why are democrats so against privatizing it?

If the only reason is to maintain government control over that aspect of our lives then I continue to be for privatization.

Heres my take: Right now Social Security is slowly, but inevitably, failing. In the third debate between Kerry and Bush this question was raised and Kerry's repsonse was that they would fix it now and then down the road when it became a problem again we would put together a commision to fix it again. This smacks to me of insanity. It would make infinitely more sense to revamp the system in such a way that it would be self sustaining.

Hence privatization. Now the major argument against this that I've heard is the deficit that would be created by the "hole" between what was being paid in and what is now going to private investments. I've heard various numbers all the way up to a Trillion dollars. You only need simple arithmetic and common sense to figure out that, regardless of the actual number, there will be a hole. My position is "so what".

No matter how you spin it change can be painful. Look at de-segregation, Affirmative action, Suffrage, etc.. There are ALWAYS people from some walk of life that are going to be against the change, whatever the change of that era is. The fact is that all of these changes, including affirmative action (although I believe its usefullness has ended), needed to occur. So does this change in privatizing social security.

The existing system doesn't work. It's original conception may have been sound, but it obviously didn't account for A) the baby boomers retiring in huge numbers and

women becoming educated and choosing to have less children. These two situations have created an ever widening upside down pyramid of which the shrinking bottom is paying for the growing top. It only follows logically that this situation will fail. I've heard a million times about the social security "trust" in which taxes pulled for social security are placed in this mythical lock box that is only supposed to be opened to pay out to retirees. I hate to burst anyones bubble, but there is not now, nor has there ever been, a lock box. Social Security taxes go into and are paid out from the general fund just like everything else.

Privatizing it will cause a deficit. Fine. Lets deal with the deficit and convert the system over to something that will be sound and stable. I hate taxes, I hate tax increases. I'd rather eat a tax increase for a decade to have a solvent social security than to continue paying my taxes into a failing system that will eventually result in my taxes being rasied permenantly anyway to try to sustain it. We always have deficits, War deficits, social program deficits, GDP deficits. It's always something. Since we have to deal with them anyway it only makes good sense to me to apply those deficits in such a way as to make something work WELL.

Thoughts anyone?

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