SOCIAL SECURITY: Problems AND Solutions. Good read!

On Edit I changed the subject line to hopefully attract more attention. This is the article you need to show the BushCo detractors. It explains the problems, but even more, it offers solutions to fix them. I thought we'd be more interested...this is the stuff we've been griping about, and that the republicans are saying we aren't doing. But here it is...the republicans just need to pick up a newspaper every now and then, instead of just purchasing the publishers and merging them.

Push-Button Picks Just Too Simple
Dan Haar

May 10 2005

The Social Security private accounts tour passed through Hartford Monday with some down-home remarks from Treasury Secretary John W. Snow that called to mind H. Ross Perot, who sounded open-minded, but wasn't.

Snow was in town pushing President Bush's scheme to move much of the Social Security trust fund into private accounts, where you and I can watch our retirement accounts grow and wither and maybe grow back again.

The private accounts would cost an estimated $2 trillion to set up, and they would do nothing on their own to fill the Social Security shortfall. These are not points of debate.

Still, Snow said, "I challenge all of our critics to say, if you think you've got a better idea, what is it?"

He added, echoing Perot without the irony of anatomy, "We're all ears."

Well, there is a better idea - but sadly, the administration is all fists in fighting it back. That's because private accounts are not on the list of features the Bush folks are willing to do without.

The idea behind the private accounts is that workers could choose to invest their money in stocks, not just the long-term bonds the trust fund uses today. Over time, on average, company shares earn higher returns than bonds. Social Security could meet its obligations without raising payroll taxes, and poof! We wipe out much of our $11 trillion deficit.

If tapping into the stock markets would work in private accounts, why can't it work for the trust fund as a whole? Why can't the fund simply set a target of stock ownership - say, 25 percent - and gradually ramp up to that target, without giving Aunt Martha fits over the state of her personal account?

The financial results would be identical to Bush's plan.

<snip>

Original at Hartford Courant

I read it this morning...

Wow. Crickets on this one. I didn't expect THAT response!

I have one question about the theory of Social Security running out of money.
If there will be fewer workers to support the retiring baby boomers, who are we educating today? We keep having to build more and more schools to alleviate overcrowding. If we have had close to zero population growth, then why are our schools bursting at the seams?

I live in one of the fastest growing counties in the nation with one of the top rated school systems, so I am wondering if there are regions where the school attendance is dwindling to such a degree that they are consolidating and closing schools.

Is there any region losing population?

We can't necessarily base projections on birth rates because we are importing a lot of our current and future workers. Most of our current imported workers are younger than the babyboomers. Is immigration being factored into the computations. or are we computing totally on birth rate?