The donut hole in the SS privatization debate...

it's the citizens that are now approx. 37-47 years of age. IOW, the end of the baby boomers. That's why Bush has said 'current' retirees won't have decreased benefits and why he is targeting the message to the 'young folks'.

So, here's the answer to for the responding to those 'young folks' that are going to be giving diddohead nods to Bush's overhaul arrows: Honor thy Father and Mother.

It's the fathers and mothers of Bush's targeted audience for this that are going to be affected most with regard to an overhaul in social security with what is being proposed...and it's the young folk of these mothers and fathers that will be struggling to support their immediate family AND mom and dad in their old age.

Regardless of honoring my parents, its just stupid to think that the social security 'crises' will actually be a problem. The only reason it may be in trouble is because the fiscal budget would be in trouble, but as it stands right now Social security is safe for the next 75 years (The standard future estimate period which the government looks ahead to solve problems). Why then would this administration look into a future that it has no idea of? More importantly many of the members of the administration may not even be alive to see. I'm 21 years old and I say when I'm 41 years old we will be in a better situation to fix this 'crisis' with a better budget, not reduced benifits.

I agree with everything you've posted. :)

It's the uninformed, pass the kool-aide, bottoms up young folks we need to address. Hell! Next thing you know, Bush will be starting a civil war on the issue if were not careful about it.

The Bush Administration has refused to include the Iraq war costs in its budgets because they said they didn't want to speculate on how much the war would cost, and this was only trying to predict one year into the future.

If it hurts them, they won't predict one year ahead.

If it helps them, they're willing to predict 40-50-60 or more years into the future.

It hit me last night that I will be in the mix for the change. It's been the story of my life, it seems. Whenever there's a big change in things coming down the pike, my age group was always the guinea pig for implementation. *sigh*

seen this guy's analysis. He went back 45 years and looked at how well Social Security did vs. the Dow. Here's what he came up with:

>snip
To his surprise, the Social Security investment won out: $261,372 versus $255,499, a difference of $5,873.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1227/p01s03-cogn.html