But what do does any of this have to do with Linux ?
At 11:11 PM 7/9/2005 -0700, you wrote:
On Saturday 09 July 2005 08:36 pm, Gabriel Sechan wrote: > From: Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >If you are being serious, a 401K is *nothing* like Social Security. > > > >I pay Social Security in order to pay for the Social Security for the > > older generation in my family. > > > >I do not expect it to be there for me. That's the primary reason why I > >*oppose* Social Security accounts. I do not want them able to play games > >with the Social Security of my parents. > > > >For myself, I'd rather they tackle the whole healthcare mess. Control my > >healthcare costs and I can put the saved money in my own IRA or 401K, > > thank you very much. > > You miss the point of SS. Its not a retirement fund- its retirement > insurance. Its a 100% garuntee, short of the government collapsing (in > which case you have bigger issues). You will get back $x when you're in > your old age. You will be able to afford food and housing. Its a promise > we make as a society that we will not let you die in the streets at night > from lack of bare essentials. Agreed. I suppose Todd would not care though ;( > It is not meant to be a complete solution. Its meant to be a minimal > solution. If you want to live comfortably or in luxury, you need to have > additional savings. SS is more like keeping a part of your savings in > government bonds- even if you lose your shirt on the rest of it, you can't > lose that part. Correct. > Thats why I don't support SS accounts- its counter to the purpose of SS. > With SS as stock accounts, you can lose the money and not have the cash in > x years when you need it. Its just going to cause us to raise taxes even > higher to account for the lost money (and lets be realistic- most people > lose money in the market). So instead of maybe raising taxes a small > amount in 50 years to cover SS, we'll have to raise it a large amount and > pay out additional money to keep our eldery clothed, fed, and sheltered. No. We can just let the incompetent amongst us, which also includes a fair number of creative people set upon by various of life's difficulties die in the street. Hopefully they will have the decency to find some crummy part of town in some lousy part of the country and not do it in our faces. Just crawl under a rock somewhere and die out of sight and out of mind ;( But before people rush off in panic about the coming SS disaster, which has habit of being predicted every decade I suggest they should try to become familiar with the facts. To see the source of these facts please review: 1)<quote> The annual cost of Social Security benefits represents 4.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) today and is projected to rise to 6.4 percent of GDP in 2079. The projected 75-year actuarial deficit in the combined Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Funds is 1.92 percent of taxable payroll, up slightly from 1.89 percent in last year's report. The program continues to fail our long-range test of close actuarial balance by a wide margin. Projected OASDI tax income will begin to fall short of outlays in 2017 and will be sufficient to finance only 74 percent of scheduled annual benefits by 2041, when the combined OASDI trust fund is projected to be exhausted. Social Security could be brought into actuarial balance over the next 75 years in various ways, including an immediate increase of 15 percent in the amount of payroll taxes or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent (or some combination of the two). To the extent that changes are delayed or phased in gradually, greater adjustments in scheduled benefits and revenues would be required. Ensuring that the system is solvent on a sustainable basis over the next 75 years and beyond would also require larger changes. </quote> http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html Wildly differerent interpretations of these facts are readily found. 2) Here is one take, essentially, "SS is not broken, but needs a little tweaking." <quote> This year's trustees report shows that Social Security is sound and its future is getting brighter. Even the trustees' less optimistic projections show the program will pay full benefits for 39 years, and will have funds for two-thirds of benefits in 2075 without any changes being made. Thus, drastic steps, such as risky privatization proposals, are unwarranted, beneficial to only the luckiest few, and harmful to the majority of America's retirees. </quote> http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib177 3) And here is the opposite point of view, "The sky is falling." <quote> Social Security faces an enormous future deficit: Between today and 2075, the inflation-adjusted shortfall is projected to reach a staggering $20 trillion. Although the problem with the current system is due in part to changes in demographics, the root of the problem lies in the fact that the Social Security system itself is poorly designed... These workers could enjoy substantially greater levels of retirement income if they were allowed to place the bulk of their payroll taxes in professionally managed individual retirement accounts, which historically have had significantly higher rates of return. </quote> http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/BG1194.cfm How do we reconcile the facts as stated by the SS Trustees report and the accounts 2) and 3). Simple really. The SS trust is bringing in less right now than goes out. Now, at this moment in time, the total amount paid in significantly exceeds the total amount that has been paid out. If nothing is done and the present system is allowed to simply run its course then by 2041 the total amount paid out will become equal to the total amount paid out. Relatively small percentage changes in the system will bring it back into "actuarial balance" i.e. the year to year amount paid in equals the amount paid out. So how does the author of 3) get his alarmist $20 trillion? Easy just run an exponential out to 2075. DUH. Of course the numbers are big. We are a huge and prosperous nation. The nation with the most financial wealth that history has ever produced. But the tweaks needed are a few percent here and few percent there. Now as the issue being raised by the right. They state: <quote> These workers could enjoy substantially greater levels of retirement income if they were allowed to place the bulk of their payroll taxes in professionally managed individual retirement accounts, which historically have had significantly higher rates of return. </quote> And who guarantees those returns? Why the government you say. Who else is going to guarantee a minimum return? Who else can? I defy you to find any other organization, outside of the Catholic church, if you are a priest, that will offer the population of the entire nation such a minimum guarantee. But so the fox says to the chickens, "Oh its OK to let the government guarantee our 'professionally' managed IRAs." Now these 'professional' managers have it made. It is an open invitation to the greediest among us to take in huge amounts of cash on a promise and loot these funds. Oh, pardon me, a 'few' of them would just have poor judgment and make a 'few' bad investments. So money would be 'lost'. Damn I hate that use of the word 'lost'. Except for the government printing it, money is not 'lost' is conserved. All of the 'lost' money went somewhere. The other side of the transaction 'made' money ... This would be a Savings and Loan party all over again but probably far larger and with far worse impacts. Count me on the side of the "tweak it a bit" crowd. Life is far more precarious than most of us thought when we were young and immortal. A net that keeps old people from being told to go die in the streets is one social invention that we can and must afford. Finally, there is a real problem though and that is exactly as Andrew has pointed out. The healthcare system is broken badly. It makes the problems with Social Security seem trivial in comparison. boblq -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
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