Peter, Meet Paul . . . Hey, My Wallet’s Missing!
Social Security Reform has meant creating self-funded investment accounts since Reagan, but at last, we have a President with the moxie to push ahead on the plan. Of course, it’s going to cost billions, even trillions of dollars the country doesn’t have - now or over the next 10 years or more – but why worry? Bush will be out by then, and he doesn’t need Social Security to retire. For most people, there is a general understanding that the program must be reformed, but no real idea how it should be done, and I certainly fall into that category. Private accounts may indeed be the only way forward; after all, we need to increase the rate of personal savings (or so the conventional wisdom has it), and we cannot rely on corporate pension funds and 401(k) accounts and the like, since a vast number of people don’t have access to these or the financial leeway to take advantage of other tax loopholes. As an expatriate citizen, one of many millions, I’m also concerned that I don’t presently pay into the Social Security system and may be ineligible to take advantage of its benefits when my turn comes, at least at any meaningful level. I recognize that the longer we wait to do anything, the worse the problem will grown, sort of like having appendicitis – if we wait, it may burst, and leave us with a mess not even radical surgery can fix. I remain, however, firmly opposed to the idea of taxing me into the stock market, which is what the Bush plan, in addition to the trillions of dollars necessary to kick start it, requires. This may, over twenty years, if we’re lucky, provide investment income sufficient to fund retirement, but it will definitely benefit a corporate elite who are already in possession of too much public money already, money they use to fund lavish personal lifestyles. Government serves the people, but more and more, government acts at the behest of industrial executives, and we’re left holding the bag, screwed royally from both ends.