I’m still trying to research this whole Social Security thing, but everything so far leads me to believe that it’s bunk. Is this really the most pressing issue right now? During my investigations, I’ve become at least marginally knowledgeable about a system I’ve been paying into for almost 20 years. For instance, I didn’t realize that you don’t pay on wages over $85k. I’ve seen a lot of claims that there isn’t really a crisis. The taxes for Social Security were raised in the early 80’s which created a huge trust fund to deal with the impending glut of aging Baby Boomers. The problem isn’t that we didn’t plan, it’s that we’ve run huge deficits because of the war in Iraq and the tax cuts and we’re trying to borrow against Social Security to fund those deficits. I’m all for controlling my own money, but I’m skeptical that I’ll get very many choices or any at all. I’m also skeptical that a system that was set up as a safety net for everyone should become speculative with the potential for losing that safety net for some.
There’s two editorials in the NY Times today. One from Krugman and another general editoral that explain the position against the Bush administration’s plans. Krugman has several other articles over the past year pointing to other countries who’ve tried similar plans to privatizing social security with mixed results and calling out that will have to be paid from the fund for broker/administrative fees if we start using mutual funds or the like. Josh Marshall also had a good post this week. Finally, there’s this cartoon from This Modern World.