Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to The only true fix for SS

thats hogwash.
Davin :. — (archived)

There is nothing fundamentally unworkable about SS, and your post exhibits no structural flaws here:

"A defined benefit plan has a structural imbalance between who carries the risk and who reaps the benefit. "

Thats not remotely useful information, Its just re-phrasing the trivial observation that those at the start of the pipeline pay for those at the end of the pipeline. You have not done anything then just restate the definition in an attempt at a hand-wave dismissal of the whole idea. Doesn't work, because SS has worked just fine for around 70 years, through multiple changes of demographics, that have resulted in previous adjustments to the system.

There is no perfect plan. SS and SS-like plans are vulnerable to changing demographics. Private/personal/privatized plans carry different vulnerabilities (of which I have listed a number in previous posts, and am not going to recite them here). Its difficult to say that the proposed reform really is a transfer to 'personalized' risk from 'nationalized' risk, because regardless of the flaws or failure of any proposed plan, nobody is seriously considering letting any seniors die on the street in abject pverty. The point is that no matter what, the ultimate liability holder is the american tax payer.

So this 'ownership' society slogan, at least on this count, leaves most intelligent people scratching their head at what its suipposed to mean.

And te notion that the Gov't is going to tell us how to invest, where to invest, what to invest in, and will probably hold the money in some sort of locked account... Well that puts the lie to the slogan again.

So in the end, this whole drive on the side of the right, dressed up in the auspices of the 'great ownership society' is a cute sounding noise without much substance.

What it actually is is a very risky re-structuring of a system that is not fundamentally flawed, will certainly result in bigger government because nobody is seriously suggesting to completely do away with the current plan and all of its beaurocracy, and [in its worse conception] threatens to 'nationalize' the stock market.

Davin L.

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