I'm not too familiar with Social Security. We have something I think is like it, the Canada Pension Plan, but as far as I know, that thing is rolling in the black, and won't run out of funds, like, ever. But while I was down in the US, it made the paper just about every day. Some people painted the proposed changes as frightening, others saw them as necessary. Personally the proposals to go to private accounts seem odd to me - if the system is user funded, with one generation doing the paying for the prior's funding... would not going to private accounts now exacerbate the problem by pulling today's funding of current beneficiaries?
But aside from the merits of either side's argument, I notice that everyone on all sides seems agreed on this point - they say that the program won't leave the black for a decade, and at current rates, will not be unsustainable until sometime halfway through the century. Now, obviously they'll have to fix it if they can predict it will go broke. But how can something such a long way off be a crisis?
Am I wrong in kind of seeing it like the henchman in Austin Powers hollering "Nooo!!" as a steamroller approaches him slowly from a hundred metres away? :-) Someone please explain to me why this issue has become so prevalent. :-)
Monday, February 14, 2005
Can someone explain to me the Social Security "crisis"?
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Well, first of all the interpretation all depends on who you listen. The liberals generally tend to see it as less of an urgent problem. Whatever the case may be they are very much against privatizing. Nevertheless, they agree that Social Security is quite a burden on the budget.
The conservatives are interested in cutting down on social programs, and hope to accomplish that goal by making S.S. at least semi-privatized - and the best time to do it is apparently now, when they are in power, because fifty years from now who knows what's going to happen.
Apparently Social Security is indeed not going to run out until it's my generation's time to retire - so it's not really urgent, as in emergency. But by the time my generation retires and there's no money to support them, it'll be too late and will did become an emergency.
Obviously the whole thing is greatly blown out of proportions by politicians from both sides. If I were there, I wouldn't be making radical changes just yet, but would begin by placing restrictions on who gets Social Security payments - but in a flexible way, and then ease it into becoming semi-privatized. I don't think people ready to have it completely privatized yet, because the idea of Social Security has grown to be such a huge part of Amerian mentality. However, if we wean ourselves off it slowly, the adjustment is going to be much less traumatic, and the psychology will be less dependent on the idea of support from the government, so if the worst comes to worst, and my generation has no social net of that kind, at least we're used to the idea by then, and our predecessors (the one's who are worried now) won't have to be panicking quite as much.
But apparently both the left and the right are more interested in pushing their agenda through than in doing what's in everyone's best interest. Republicans insist on changing the whole system right now in one big step, whereas the Democrats don't want to do anything at all. Obviously, both are wrong, given the limitations of the system.
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