If I keep doing this, we might as well call me the Rude Pundit echo blog, but damn if that guy doesn’t just keep saying what I’m thinking. If I was a paranoid person, I might be inclined to get some tin foil.
And just so I don’t devolve into Rude Pundit v2.0, I did some reading up on all of this Social Security nonsense. Here’s the e-mail I sent to a few friends:
I’ve done some reading on the Social Security issue. Here’s a few links:
If that table on Atrios is right (and I’ll admit I’m going go have to re-read some of this so that I actually understand it), we don’t see any reduction in benefits because of the “crisis”. However, if we implement Bush’s plan, which is supposed to currently follow the Graham Plan fairly closely, we’ll see an 18-27% decrease in benefits.
You can see from the same table that people younger than us start losing benefits because of the “crisis” (those born in 2000 get $19,900 instead of $26,400), but it’s still better than where they’ll be if the Graham Plan is implemented (they’ll get $13,092).
Of course, just like Bush’s numbers, this is all an “educated guess”.
You can follow it from Atrios, but here’s the full analysis of the Graham Plan:
It’d take you or an entire afternoon to try and understand all of the implications in these plans and, as you pointed out, no average person is going to take the time to do it. They’re just going to listen to the talking points and go with Bush because “he’s a good, moral man” and because Social Security is in a “crisis”.
As for this plan giving you more control over your own money, it’s bullshit. You’ll be limited to a very small number of investment options chosen for you by the government. If you are, in fact, lucky enough to make the optimistic returns that they’re projecting, when you retire, your money will be placed into an annuity by the government so that you’ll get payments from it. This is to avoid you deciding to spend all of “your money” in the first few years of retirement and ending up destitute for the rest of your life.
And none of the talk I hear from Bush addresses what happens to the current disability and survivor benefits in all of this.
I keep asking myself what Bush gains by pushing this so hard. He’s not up for re-election. All I can come up with is that he’s been indoctrinated into the conservative viewpoint that social security itself is inherently bad. Of course, he thinks that, he was born into a privileged family.
On top of that, this puts millions of dollars to which Wall Street traditionally had no access into their hands to collect fees and whatever else they’ll get for administering the funds. Once again, the rich get richer and we get screwed. Yay.
EDIT 1:31pm CST: After all that, Jesse does a pretty good job of explaining it succinctly.