I am more than a decade away from being eligible for Social Security. I will never receive any benefits in spite of having paid into the system for more than 30 years. I know that. I don’t like that. In fact, it really pisses me off.
Remember Al Gore’s “lock box” for SS? It is a sham, and has been since the mid-60s when Congress decided to place all federal revenue into the same pot for accounting purposes. You see, that way the deficit didn’t look nearly so big. The “balanced budget” of the ’90s was also a sham. It didn’t exist. That is because the receipts for Social Security showed a surplus, and this surplus balanced the true spending deficit of Congress’s budget.
Now Alan Greenspan has said what everyone in Washington already knew, but wouldn’t admit. Benefits must go down, or SS taxes must go up. Of course, people are screaming and fainting.
In the ’70s, I was sure that no politician would ever be willing to do what needed to be done to fix the economic health of our government. It required someone to be bold, and take the heat for several years as the plan worked its magic. Politicians never looked beyond their current term.
Ronald Reagan proved me wrong. He took that risk. And the first few years were tough on a lot of people. But it led to what eventually became known as a balanced budget, in spite of big increases in Defense spending. He survived to be reelected.
Another “opportunity to excel” has arisen. The question is, will Bush be willing to take that challenge head-on. It is obvious that neither Kerry nor Edwards has the stomach for it. Everything they propose would only make the situation worse. This will be hard for Bush to do. He has it in him, but there are so many other issues on his plate. Yes, some people will get hurt. No matter what, some people will get hurt. But the question that comes to me is how we make this hurt for only as short a time as necessary?
It won’t be fair. Well, if the “rich” get hurt, liberals will view it as fair. I have to say, though, that some form of needs-based determination will have to be part of the equation. I think that has to be tied into a complete elimination of the retirement aspect of Social Security in the future. It is not what the program was intended to be originally, and we need to scale the system back to its original intent. There must be a hard cut-off date, say 2040, when nobody receives “retirement” funds from SS. A graduated scale of benefits for contributors from this point on must be part of that. Witholding must decrease from current levels to zero by that time for everyone now paying in. Payouts must begin to decrease annually from now until then.
Someone will say, “What will people do for retirement?” Well, they could take that 7% of their income, and employers could match it (as they now do with SS) in a retirement plan of some kind. The plan must be transportable. Of course, politicians will insist that the government running it would be the best way to make it portable. And they’re right. But it would be the worst way to run it. The return would certainly be smaller–about the same as the current system, which probably yields a negative return for someone like me.
The last thing that strikes me about this is wondering what Alan Greenspan has against the Bush family. His dislike of Bush 41 was well-known, and some of the things he did on economic policy at the time seemed designed to cause problems. Is he doing the same thing now?