Post-Election Reflections

How much is a trillion dollars? With 148 million in the workforce, to generate a trillion dollars in tax revenue, it takes only 45 cents per day per employee over a 75 year period (200 work days per year).

Even a $10 trillion Social Security shortfall over 75 years is no more than a pack of cigarettes a day.

Karl Borden provides what is essentially an acid test for any privatization plan. Compare to any plan that Bush produces. This will tell you whether he is really a Republican or a pussy.

Excerpt From the Cato Institute Web site:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/ssps/ssp1.html

Principles for Reform

The only effective means of addressing our Social Security problem is to reduce other government expenditures and develop a new national retirement system based on the financial principles that should apply to any sound retirement program. Those principles may be summarized as follows:

• The system must build a reservoir of financial assets that represents claims against real assets used in the private sector to produce wealth.

• The system must tie individual account balances to retirement benefits so that each retiree's pension is financed by a store of wealth accumulated by that individual's productive contribution to the economy during his or her working lifetime.

• The system must provide individual participants with property rights to the value of their own contributions.

• The system must minimize restrictions on individual participants' making individual decisions regarding the allocation of the capital reservoir to wealth-producing opportunities.

• The system must leave the decision about which financial securities to hold dispersed throughout the economic system in order to maximize the efficiency of market pricing mechanisms.

If it's private accounts you want, open an IRA. It's what they're for - private, personal, Individual Retirement Accounts (now called "Arrangements"). They already exist. They're easy to open, own and manage. We don't need no stinkin' private accounts. We already got 'em. The problem is you're limited as to how much you can put in - far less than you will supposedly be "allowed" to set aside from your half of Social Security.

Why not take the lid off the amount you can contribute to your IRA - both the traditional (pre-tax earnings) and the Roth (after-tax earnings)? That would solve 99% of retirees' needs to save for retirement. They have all of the benefits of Bush's private accounts - and none of the downsides - like you aren't forced to invest in nothing but Social Security bonds - the secret Bush plan to rip off America that I posted yesterday.

But watch out - the next con that's coming? They're going to tax your tax deductible IRA. This will happen by 2010. You read it here first.

Any politician reading this: just remember - there are 70 million baby boomers who vote. You piss them off and your ass is out of Washington - guaranteed. Get your political shit together and maybe they will keep you in office. Screw them and they will screw you for sure. Now go ahead and put your Social Security plan together.

Here is the secret Bush plan that you will not read about anywhere else: what kind of investments do you think you will be "allowed" to invest in with your "personal" govt. owned and controlled "private" account?

Ultimately, only one: social security bonds. Instead of selling these bonds to the Chinese, the Japenese and the Saudis, we're going to sell them to ourselves.

At the end of the day, this is nothing more than a plan to suck up the social security dollars and resell them to clueless boomlet Gen X and Gen Y suckers.

You will pay your tax, "keep" half in your account. The govt will go on spending the social security surplus AND borrow against it at the same time (like taking out a new mortgage every month to pay for each month's mortgage payment and taking that money and getting drunk). Then, you will have the privilege of "investing" in social security bonds that will not pay off until you retire. You will earn really low rates lower than inflation. You will get screwed three times - a con, a bad investment, and you will have to pay taxes on your retirement earnings.

Oh, and it's all funded with a deficit.

George Bush is to money what Clinton was to sex.