How many Athiests and Religious people here agree that we need

[InvisibleBallots]

to save Social Security from the Republicans trying to privatize it? I was always led to believe that Social Security is the crowning achievment of the Democratic party and FDR's New Deal. Social Security works well, it's on solid footing for another 75 years, and as long as we keep the Republicans from stealing the money, it will continue to be the cornerstone of our social safety net.

Will this be an issue in 2006? Will the Democrats try to stop the Republicans, and run on a strong pro-Social platform, against the GOP anti-social agenda?

[Lucky Luciano]

1. I am ignorant about the social security debate

IS the theory that SS under b*sh's plan will go to your own private trading account? You can invest in bonds or stocks or whatever you want instead of the government doing it??? IS the bad part that since the gov't will not get the money people who need to get paid today from those dollars will not get paid OR we will have to issue a couple more trillion dolalrs of debt?

Help me out here because I would like to manage my own SS funds with my own trading account, but not at the expense of others of course.

[Political_Junkie]

3. You got it!

that's it in a nutshell!

[InvisibleBallots]

4. what kind of trading account do you mean precisely?

You mean an account at an investment firm, where you can choose among a handful of mutual funds? Or do you mean an e-trade account, where you will be buying selling individual stocks? How would either of those replace the insurance aspect of Social Security?

Is there anything preventing you from playing the market now?

[Lucky Luciano]

8. Well basically the SP500 averages about 12% per year

and has never lost over any 5 year period....that is good...Then, when you get within 5 or 10 years of retirement, you can diversify into bonds so that you can avoid shorter term risks associated with being close to reitrement. Individual stocks would be too risky and most people do not understand the markets.

That sounds great to me.......except what people had confirmed about my other suspicions:

The people expecting to get paid today will either get fucked or we will go into a couple trillion more dollars worth of debt. These are both utterly unacceptable.

[InvisibleBallots]

10. so you mean have a financial manager manage retirement fund

You don't actually mean people managing their own funds, but instead having financial manager managing people funds. People will get paid out according to individual performance of their funds, the managers will take a percentage off the top. Those who choose bad financial advisors or make ill timed moves - what happens to the insurance part of social security? How can individual employees of financial firms manage our money better than the "government"?

[Lucky Luciano]

13. no.

You still manage, but to control risk you should probably be restricted to certain types of funds....I would consider the SP500 to be less of a risk than the risk of insolvency for the government SS Fund 25 or 50 years from now, so the security you speak of may not have ever been there in the first place. There would be commissions for transactions of course and the fund managers always take a cut (that is why they have funds), but overall I don't see a need for financial advisors. Basically, and I am making this up as I go along because I do not know how they want to implememnt this plan, but this is what I would consider good: there should be only a few options based on risk and it should be indexes of blue chips and/or bonds etc. In the long run this never loses. If financial advisors are involved, then they are getting paid instead of government employees - same thing - either way people are getting paid to manage your money.


With that said, the other negatives involved make the above moot.

[InvisibleBallots]

16. so will Congress legislate the list of funds?

We can't actually "trust people to manage their own money" since most people don't know enough about the market to be buying individual stocks or bonds. But we can "trust people to manage their own money" if we restrict their control of "their own money" to certain types of funds, perhaps an SP500.

"there should be only a few options based on risk and it should be indexes of blue chips and/or bonds etc. In the long run this never loses."

So this argument is not really that people should manage their own money, but that we'll all be better off if we pay a cut to fund managers and let them invest our social security in the stock market (and bonds of course) - in individual accounts, or course, not as a group. Right?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. To do what Bush wants

will entail borrowing money from the existing SS fund, or increase the national debt. There is no guarantee that the people managing their own funds will actually see any of them. Could be that the people managing the private funds will wind up making big bucks. Personally, I've always taken to heart what my great grandmother said (she dropped a bundle in the Crash of '29)"Don't trust the stock market or anyone connected with it."

[Liberty Belle]

15. Here's the lowdown...

The WAll Street Journal reported a while back that Bush's plan would divert $3 trillion out of the SS fund. Who benefits? Not seniors. Not any of us. Two groups:

1. Stock brokerage firms--lots of commissions from all those folks investing their retirement funds in the stock market, which amounts to gambling with our futures. What happens if the market crashes?

2. Financial institutions--Privatizing Social Security, even partially, means that 20% of the SS fund will be needed to administer the privatized portion, similar to how medical insurance administration/overhead chews up a big chunk of the pie. To put that in perspective, right now only 1% of SS money go for administering the fund. The big financial institutions will make windfall profits administering all that money.

Of course, Bush's biggest campaign donors are stockbrokerage firms in 2004, followed by banks.

Even Bush's own cabinet people have admitted that this will force big cuts in Social security benefits; many other experts believe the ultimate goal is destruction of SS altogether, a program the neocons view as socialist.

FYI, before Social Security, 50% of US seniors lived in poverty. Today it is 10%. Shrub wants to roll back the clock. Gramps and Granny better get used to eating Alpo again.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Social Security needs to be saved

I don't know of anyone on this board who thinks that Social Security should be destroyed. I don't see that belief, or lack thereof, has anything to do with this, so don't understand that part of the subject line.

[BiggJawn]

6. Why does this have to be couched in terms of "Atheist v. Christian"?

Isn't it really a social issue, not a religous one?

I can think of 3 reasons NOT to tie your SS to the Market...IPL, Imclone, and Enron...

"Go on, take the money and run...Go on, take the money and run (HOOOOOOO-YEAH!)..."

[regnaD kciN]

9. Because, over the past week or so...

...everything here has been turned into a "if you're Christian, you're the source of all evil" thread.

:puke:

[Lucky Luciano]

11. IMCLone is not doing too badly - not great,

but the scandal of the past did not kill them - that was just insider trading - they have since gotten some favorable reviews from the FDA for their cancer drug. While its 52 wk range is 33-87 and they are around 42, it is a biotech and it is understood to be extremely risky.

Enron, WCOM are entirely different matters of course. This is why you are supposeed to be diverse. SP500 index funds are great for retirement programs.

[BiggJawn]

12. Yeah, if Martha had just held fast....

Ironic, isn't it?

[datasuspect]

7. well, the atheist/religion threads seem to get a lot of posters n/t

[HockeyMom]

14. Lesson

My grandfather did quite well and invested lots of money in the stock market. My grandmother, on the other hand, didn't even trust BANKS. She pilfered away money, gold coins, jewelry, in metal boxes under the floorboards. When the stock market crashed in 1929, grandfather "lost his shirt", literally. EVERYTHING. Yet, they were able to live out their lives from those boxes under the floor boards. True story. Let it be a lesson.

[Lucky Luciano]

17. He probably lost everything because he

was leveraged to the gills with borrowed money...back then you could make investments in stocks with 10% down!!! Crazy!! He hada really nasty margin call that busted him. Now we have FDIC too so your grandma's worries are not a big problem either.

Now they require 50% margin accounts.....If you do not borrow money to invest, the market is the best place to be as long as we do not get nuked and you are going to be in the market for at least 5 more years....In any five year period the market has ALWAYS gone up. Once you get closer to retirement, you should gradually move from stocks to bonds so short term corrections do not hurt your savings.

[boi1946]

18. OK, I'm new around here

but framing a question like that is a sure way to start a flaming fight. It seems to me that that's what's been happening around here a lot for the last few days.
Being atheist or religious has nothing to do with whether or not we need social security. We could be sky-blue-pink Hottentots and need social security.
And I am wondering about the motives of people who start threads like this. It only serves to divide us at a time we should be united.

[UdoKier]

19. I agree, but dirty pool using the athiets/religious thing...

...to lure people in.

:evilgrin:

[UdoKier]

20. dupe. ignore

.

[KnowerOfLogic]

21. Get ready for another Dem roll-over. And you're right, it needs to be sav

The repuke plan will not only end social security, but it will bankrupt the country further, and younger workers will have to pay into their own accounts, *and* pay off the debt incurred during the transition.

[quaker bill]

22. The problem in a nutshell

First, the only way to create "private accounts" and continue to pay benefits is to borrow money +/- 2 trillion dollars.

Second, lack of diversification. People who have their own private accounts, (401K's) are already in stocks and bonds. As any prospectus will tell you, such investments have a downside risk. A self-insured annuity such as social security provides diversification to reduce the overall risk in your retirement plan. Bottom line, if the market falls, both your own plan and your social security benefit will fall at the same time.

Third, market manipulation. Under the plan, a fixed amount of the GDP will be invested into the stock market every month, rain or shine. Taken individually this can be called "dollar cost averaging" and can actually have benefits. Done on this scale, it removes an important free market mechanism from stock price dynamics. Currently, if companies are not managed well, or the prices in the market seem inflated, people stop buying. This controls prices and ties market performance, at least occasionally, to price/earnings ratios or generally good corporate governance. under this plan, a substantial chunk of money will be looking for a home in the market every month. It will have to go somewhere regardless of the investment climate. This defeats an important price control mechanism in a free market.

Fourth, Market manipulation. Think the ENRON side of the equation here. A large pile of taxpayers money is looking for a home in the market every month. As a corporate director, why not gin up the books so a good portion of it comes your way?

Fifth, the Gray Whale syndrome. The plans offered limit options for asset reallocation. Why? If for no other reason, the last thing they want is for say 50 million people to be able to pull all of their retirement money out of Walmart shares in a week. This would give far too much power over corporations to the workers. It will never be allowed to happen. Secondly as a Gray Whale is a very large animal that cannot move quickly (reallocation limits) or get out of the water (market) entirely, it is easy to harpoon.

Sixth, winners and losers. The republicans have no problem at all with winners and losers. Some will choose well and in certain environments, benefit from "private accounts". Others will choose poorly and do far worse. The bottom line is that the benefits of social security will become less dependable and some will end up far poorer as a result. In that we generally are not the type of people to let the unfortunate starve in the streets, we will end up financing some other mechanism to care for those who do not do as well. Further, the plan will by its' very nature expand income disparity at retirement. Compound interest is a lovely thing, in the rosy scenario, where everyone does about equally well interest wise, the differential between the size of the contribution based on income scale will be vastly expanded by the final results. In short, the best case is that the rich do far better than the poor simply because they contribute more and earlier.

Finally, the They don't trust you syndrome. Republicans do not trust you with your own money. Anyone can open a stock and bond trading account tomorrow. If the repugs trusted you with your money, they would give it to you, to invest as you choose.

The point of social security is "security". It is a self-funded annuity intended to provide a basic level of security if your other retirement plans do not work out. It will no longer function in this manner under the republican proposal.