Social Security yet again!

[PLATO]

Originally posted by GePap


What deficit?

The anticipated one. Not reffering to the current situation.

[DanS]

Krugman is torching a strawman, as always. The proposed system will be nothing like the British system.

Many Britons were sold badly designed retirement plans on false pretenses. Companies guilty of "mis-selling" were eventually forced to pay about $20 billion in compensation. Fraud aside, the fees paid to financial managers have been a major problem: "Reductions in yield resulting from providers' charges," the Pensions Commission says, "can absorb 20-30 percent of an individual's pension savings."

The system contemplated will have extremely low annual management fees (on the order of 0.1% of the principle per annum) and will be based on index funds -- i.e., your returns will follow the returns of the overall market. The only way your account could go bust if is the entire market dissolved.

Government workers have this system (called the Thrift Savings Plan) and it has been proven to be very good. Here are the funds available...

– Government Securities Investment (G) Fund
– Fixed Income Index Investment (F) Fund
– Common Stock Index Investment (C) Fund
– Small Capitalization Stock Index Investment (S) Fund
– International Stock Index Investment (I) Fund

[GePap]

Source for that claim?

[DanS]

See, for example, the Social Security Administration's FAQ about Social Security's future...

http://www.ssa.gov/qa.htm

Q: What is a voluntary personal retirement account?

A. There are many possible ways to structure personal accounts. Several proposals recommend that a personal savings account plan for Social Security be modeled after the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan. This very popular plan for federal employees and members of Congress allows a choice of five highly diversified, low-cost mutual funds. In the Thrift Savings Plan, no direct investments in individual stocks are allowed.

Trust me. This is the proposal. There are no others being seriously contemplated.

[GePap]

from same site:

How big is the future problem?

Social Security is not sustainable over the long term at present benefit and tax rates without large infusions of additional revenue. There will be a massive and growing shortfall over the 75-year period.

Social Security's Chief Actuary projects that in present-value dollars the total net Social Security cash flow for years 2004 through 2078 is projected to be nearly -$5.2 trillion. When the trust fund balances of $1.5 trillion at the beginning of 2004 are added to this value, we get a financial shortfall (or unfunded obligation) for the 75-year period of $3.7 trillion. This unfunded obligation indicates that if an additional $3.7 trillion had been added to the trust fund at the beginning of 2004, the program would have had adequate financing to meet the projected cost of benefits scheduled in current law over the next 75

For the 75 year period! Of 3.7 Trillion! As was stated before, that is about 50 billion a year! OMG! That is utterly unsustainable! At If current defense spending went forward, in the next 75 years we will spend 30 trillion on military spending......

Damn, this administration is absurd.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

A) The UNRISD can hardly be considered a friend of free marketeers

B) Likewise the same can be said for CENDA.

Given that these are the credentials of this man one strongly wonders whether his biases are more than clouding his article.


C) I love how you made sure not to reference the bottom part of the paper that speaks to a mixed private-public system which I believe is the intent of the US.

namely

The savings in the AFP system—duly reformed to impose serious competition and lower costs—may conform to a good, complementary, second tier in a Chilean pension system that in the end will be recognized not as a private one, but a mixed public-private one.

Now I really need to go and wash up. I feel dirty after looking at a Lyndon Larouche web site. uggg..

[DanS]

Once that $3.7 trillion is put into future dollars instead of current dollars, the number skyrockets.

But in any event, you don't actually think that we could come up with an extra $3.7 trillion this year, do you?

[GePap]

How does your first part, that this guy is biased, square with him writing what he does at the end??

Thought, if you note, he states that this mixed system would remain a secondary one to the fullu public pension system.

Make sure to wash your brain while you shower, there seem to be some spiderwebs up there.

[GePap]

Originally posted by DanS
Once that $3.7 trillion is put into future dollars instead of current dollars, the number skyrockets.

So does the price of gum., you point??

But in any event, you don't actually think that we could come up with an extra $3.7 trillion this year, do you?

Why the **** would we have to come up with 3.7 trillion this year, if 50 billion a year would keep the system up?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap
Thought, if you note, he states that this mixed system would remain a secondary one to the fullu public pension system.

Much akin to the proposed plan by Bush and according to the DanS figures with builtin caps of mangement fees.

No plan has been posited yet that I am aware of that calls for complete privatization or even majority portion privatization.

Now get your panties unbunched and move on.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by DanS
Once that $3.7 trillion is put into future dollars instead of current dollars, the number skyrockets.

Wouldn't current contributions be subject to the same math?

[GePap]

And then why all the talk about "letting people chose"?

You Ogie are one of these "reasonable" republicans that has constantly underestimated the insanity of our current rulers.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by GePap


And then why all the talk about "letting people chose"?

You Ogie are one of these "reasonable" republicans that has constantly underestimated the insanity of our current rulers.

Because people like choices. Why are you so authoritarian that you deny them that?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


Because people like choices. Why are you so authoritarian that you deny them that?

Because making sure everyone gets a basic minimum of funds is the most important part of a pension system. We don't give people a "choice" of fire departments, or police departments, or militaries. You authoritarian scum

[Sava]

I'd like a "choice" when it comes to a lot of things... like I want a different president, congress, supreme court... hell, I think we should give people choices in every aspect of society! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!