Social Security in the campaign

Topics: Campaign2008
31 Oct 2008

From: Ervan Darnell

Biden:


>Can you imagine -- can you imagine if, in fact, Social Security had been in the stock market? Can you imagine now the last couple months, if Bush and McCain had succeeded in privatizing Social Security?
>
>Well, folks, here's what Barack and I believe: We believe there should be no privatization of Social Security. [1]


That alone is a reason to vote against them. FDR set two huge time bombs ticking for us, Fannie Mae, and Social Security. The first one just blew up (and Republicans are blamed for it, shame it couldn't have waited until March, 2009 so the blame would have been properly laid). How bad will the second one be?

My main point here is that social security should be tied to the market (or at least the GDP). Social Security recipients should have a benefit defined in SPDRs instead of $'s (for future retirees). I was thinking more about this after my last post on stability. My retirement just collapsed, why should government retirees get immunity from economic conditions? Second, they should have some interest in seeing the economy perform well (like those of saving for ourselves do)? But, it's even worse than that. Social Security doesn't guarantee stability, indeed it's paid out of current income, it merely destabilizes others more by increasing their tax rate in a recession, when they are already down (or perhaps by borrowing, which is but a hidden tax on capital needed to grow the economy out of a recession). That is not a great proof of stable government thinking versus unstable markets, this is government authority imposing its own bad ideas on the free part the economy, ma
king that yet worse, and then claiming credit for it.

[1] 10/29/08 Newshour, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec08/campaignwrap_10-29.html

====================================================
Ervan Darnell, http://www.kelvinist.com
"An election is nothing more than the advanced
auction of stolen goods." --- Ambrose Bierce

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