Reply #14: Gore had it right - keep funding at 6% and an additional 2% to private acc [View All]

[elsiesummers]

And an additional 2% forced saving to private accounts. This way, SS would remain fully funded and hopefully solvent, or only in need of smaller benefit cuts.

The idea that they are supposed to project and have any gov't plan figured out past 2070 is insane - they can't even project a budget out for four years accurately, let alone ten. They have no idea how future birth rates or immigration will affect SS.

Cutting into the current 6% contribution is a deliberate way to reform (=dismantle) Social Security - which is an insurance program and not a savings plan - it's really a tax cut with no real plan for future retirees.

The most obvious way to solve any problems with social security would be to tax all earned income, including the 300Kplus CEO salaries, at 6% - but they won't do that - not shrub's constituency. But, Lindsey Graham's plan was worst of all - taxing the 90K to 160K - further reducing upward mobility without targetting the highest earners.

They wouldn't need 1 Trillion plus plan change revenue except that Bush is doing absolutely anything he can (think of his IRA lifetime accounts) to support/reflate the stock market.

That is what I think the Soc Sec plan is really about - keeping an ever increasing amount of money flowing into the stock market because it's a giant pyramid scheme.

Both partys have been guilty of this (things like IRA "improvements" and dividend tax cuts are aimed at boosting the stock market).

Leaves us all in a pickle - you don't want to be left out of the pyramid scheme (the stock market - can't afford to), but you don't want to be the last one on board while those in the know bail, either.