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Getting it Right on Social Security
By NCPSSM | January 13, 2009
There are a number of great articles and opinion pieces today on Social Security “reform” and the so-called “grand bargain” anti-entitlement crusaders are hoping to elicit from the Obama administration as they consider short-term stimulus legislation.
First, economist Dean Baker with the Center for Economic and Policy Research puts the whole issue in perspective wonderfully in this piece in the Guardian:
“The classic definition of ‘chutzpah’ is the kid who kills both of his parents and then begs for mercy because he is an orphan. The Wall Street crew are out to top this. After wrecking the economy with their convoluted finances, and tapping the US Treasury for trillions in bail-out bucks, they now want to cut Social Security and Medicare because we don’t have the money.”
“The attacks are made even worse by the fact that the attackers, people like Robert Rubin and Peter Peterson, promoted policies that led to this collapse and personally profited to the tune of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, after pushing the economy into a severe recession and destroying the life’s savings of tens of millions of working families, the Wall Street crew now wants to take away their Social Security and Medicare. This can almost make killing your parents look like a petty offence.”
At Angry Bear, Bruce Webb says he’s not worried the Obama administration will take the anti-entitlement bait:
“I don’t think we have much to worry about to begin with. But even if the Obama team takes a look at Social Security and even if they end up tinkering with it, we still don’t need to worry. Because there is a big difference between Social Security ‘Transformers’ and Social Security ‘Fixers’. Obama is a Fixer.”
The Washington Post also provides a very interesting analysis of retirement savings during this economic meltdown and what privatization would have meant for Social Security beneficiaries. Allan Sloan describes, “How it Could Have Been Worse”:
“It’s fine for you to take market and timing risks if your basic retirement needs are already being met with your own sources of income. It’s another thing to have to take those risks with your eating money, which is what Social Security represents for perhaps two-thirds of retirement beneficiaries.”
“Someday, Social Security privatization will come back into vogue. When that happens, I’ve got two words that will remind you why it’s a bad idea: Remember 2008.”
Unfortunately, many retirees won’t have any choice but to remember 2008.
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 19th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Maybe,I think we should get the congress off the special retirment program they voted for their self, and we the tax payer pays for, and put them on Social Security, and they have to pay their own.
You can bet if they are on the same program we the tax payers are on, they would find an answer real fast.
And that goes for Medicare too, if they had to deal with medicare, you can bet they would be all over the insurance companies and medical groups.
January 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
my wifes and my prescriptions cost 1200.00 per month. In three months i,m in the doughnut hole. Between my co-pay and my yearly premiums, I am paying over half the cost of the medicine. I,ve had two heart attacts in the last two yrs. Last one in dec.2008. I haven,t had one prescription for heart medicine. I can,t afford it. I tried to dissenrow from the aarp drug plan. they said they got the forms two late,so i have to geep paying out of my social security check. The GOV. and aarp isn,t going to dictate when i can stop this insurence Thanks for listening j temelcoff