More on Social Security

For those who are interested, there's quite a good article over at The Nation by Dean Baker. He notes that the Republican plans for Privitizing minimize or ignore the administrative costs required to set up all these accounts. Somebody is going to pay for all those individual accounts and it's going to end up being us, one would assume. He also reiterates that the problem isn't nearly as immediate as Republicans would like us to believe.

Of course, the only reason anyone is even talking about cutting benefits and privatizing the program is that the right has managed to convince the public that Social Security is on its last legs. For more than two decades they have spread stories about the baby boomers bankrupting the system and multitrillion-dollar debts left to our children and grandchildren. In reality the program can pay all scheduled benefits long past the boomers' retirement. According to the Social Security trustees report, it can pay full benefits through the year 2042 with no changes whatsoever. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts the date at 2052. And even after those dates, Social Security will always be able to pay a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than what retirees receive today. Those scary multitrillion-dollar debts translate into a deficit equal to 0.7 percent of future income--presented in very precise form in the Social Security trustees report for those who care to look.

Well worth reading. The Republican party is relying on urgency to make their case right now, because they know there is a good chance they won't have the votes later. We'll see how well they do.