Post-Election Reflections

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.