I keep adding to this as associated with sources.
I intend this to be a program of innoculation: get ready for the Rovian media blitz.
19 REASONS WHY PRESIDENT BUSH'S PLAN FOR SOCIAL SECURITY IS A BAD IDEA AND IN FACT IS MISLEADING : (WAYS TO INNOCULATE YOURSELF AGAINST THE ONCOMING MEDIA BLITZ):
1. WHO WANTS THE CHANGE? Wall Street wants privatization in order reap a windfall profit. Everyone else should be very suspicious. If the stock market goes down, your benefits go down.
2. WHO IN BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION IS DRIVING THE MATTER? Karl Rove, Bush's right hand man: He is attempting to convince the public that Social Security is 'heading for an iceberg." )
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6791950)
3. WHY WOULD KARL ROVE WANT TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY? Rove sees it as : “one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times,....“We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course,” the e-mail said. “That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the precondition to authentic reform.....government and toward giving greater power and responsibility to individuals,” said Wehner, the director of White House Strategic Initiatives. " Who is this Wehner? : Peter Wehner, the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove. Thus, Rove is attempting to continue the line of 'getting government out of your lives' which is a recipe to allow corporations unbridled power and individuals no retirement through Social Security.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6791954. WHAT WOULD ACTUALLY TAKE PLACE RE: THIS PRIVATIZATION EFFORTS PER BUSH/ ROMER/ THE REPUBLICANS? : "Revamping the system to allow investment accounts would not shore up the future finances and would make the financial picture worse. The administration is considering borrowing $1 trillion to $2 trillion to continue paying benefits to current retirees while tax revenue is diverted into personal accounts, called transition costs, Wehner's e mail said (this e mail was verified by the White House). Separately, to address the future financial shortfall, the administration is looking at plans to cut future promised benefits, by 46 percent in some cases, with investments expected to make up the difference."
5. WHO ELSE UNDERLINES THAT THIS IS WHAT WOULD ACTUALLY OCCUR? : " The real impact of President Bush's Social Security privatization scheme: massive cuts in promised benefits. The White House is expected to propose a new system of calculating Social Security benefits called "price indexing." The technical change would mean "cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades" – with even deeper cuts in the future. For example, if the "price indexing" change is made, "a retiree in 2075 would receive 54 percent of the benefits now promised." David C. John, a Social Security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation called the proposal "very much like sticking your hand in a wasp nest.": American Progress Action Fund" <
[email protected]6. WHAT ARE SOME POINTS THAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT TO HEAR FROM BUSH AND THE REPUBLICANS? Talk about: PRICE INDEXING?: The current method of calculating Social Security benefits is adjusted to reflect the standard of living when a person retires. That means when your benefits are calculated based on your average earnings, the salary you made 25 years ago is adjusted upwards to reflect the overall rise in wages (wage growth) since that time. The "price indexing" plan, expected to be proposed by Bush, would make that adjustment based on the rise of consumer prices – essentially the inflation rate. Since wages rise much faster than inflation, that means your newly adjusted salary will be lower. The end result is far lower benefits for every new generation of retirees. If this system had been in place since Social Security's inception, people today would be retiring with a benefit tied to the living standard of the 1930s, when 40 percent of households lacked indoor plumbing.
7. WHAT ELSE CAN WE EXPECT TO COME OUT WAY RE: THIS PUSH FOR PRIVATIZATION? : You will hear talk about how it will be cheaper in the long-run to privatize at least part of Social Security. Specifically, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan claims, "The cost is $10 trillion if we do nothing. So what you're talking about would be a significant savings over those costs." There are two problems with this argument. First, the $10 trillion figure grossly distorts the modest long-range deficit of the Social Security program by projecting that shortfall over eternity. (There is no shortfall at all until 2052. Projections beyond 2052, obviously, are extremely unreliable.) Second, and more fundamentally, "borrowing $2 trillion to fund individual accounts does nothing to reduce Social Security's long-term deficit." Under the Bush plan the long-term deficit is reduced through deep benefit cuts.
8. WHAT ARE SOME OTHER MATTERS ASSOCIATED WITH RETIREMENT SAVINGS THAT WILL BE BOUGHT UP? The Thrift Savings Plan: what is it land what might be the downsides of such a model, which could be part of the Rovian onslaught?
the Thrift Savings Plan could serve as a possible model for personal investment accounts in Social Security.
Numerous readers said the two programs are unrelated and that the TSP, which relies on federal payroll systems for its basic operation, cannot be replicated on a scale as large as Social Security. Others said a column about the plan failed to stress that the TSP is a voluntary savings program that supplements Social Security, a tax-based program. Cavanaugh's paper (The paper, "Feasibility of Social Security Individual Accounts," was published by the AARP Public Policy Institute. AARP is opposing Bush's plan), for example, says that personal accounts in Social Security will cost more to manage than those in the TSP, in part because the TSP can rely on hundreds of federal agencies to administer payroll deductions and provide retirement planning and other services.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61607-2005Jan9.html?referrer=emai l
9. SO THE THRIFT SAVINGS PLAN APPEARS TO WORK FOR LARGER PERSONAL INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS, YES? The paper also points out that TSP operates on a progressive fee system (usually 60 cents per $1,000 account balance) so that holders of the higher account balances absorb part of the cost of maintaining smaller accounts. Such a fee system would not work in Social Security because too many accounts would be small, the paper contends. Social Security relies on the government to absorb inflation and market risks, while the TSP shifts those risks to individual investors, Cavanaugh writes. "Attempts to combine these two fundamentally different programs are like mating a bear with a bee -- somebody is going to get hurt," he concludes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61607-2005Jan9.html?referrer=emai l
10. WHY DOES WALL STREET WANT THE CHANGE? In the background, beyond private accounts, are various proposals to cut guaranteed Social Security
benefits in the future.
11. BUT WE WILL NEVER HAVE ANOTHER DEPRESSION AS IN 1929: wrong: In 1973-74, the stock
market lost 48 percent of its value. The stock market is a very dangerous place to put money
12. WHO DOES NOT WANT THE CHANGE? AARP, the nation's largest seniors organization, is coming out
strongly against President Bush's plan to allow private individual accounts
within Social Security.
13. HOW MUCH WOULD IT COST TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY? transitioning to private accounts could cost $2 trillion. See above information also.
14. WHERE WOULD THAT MONEY COME FROM? our taxes will have to be increased to make Bush's proposed plan work.
15. HOW EFFICIENT IS THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM NOW? More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. The Social Security System is legally separate from the
16. THEY TELL US THAT SOCIAL SECURITY IS BROKE OR GOING BROKE?: With all the clamoring about Social Security, a simple fact has been obscured: the Social Security budget is currently running a surplus;
[email protected]17. OTHER COUNTRIES MUST HAVE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MAYBE THOSE ARE BETTER? wrong: Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. A privatized system will take money from your Social Security check.
18. SHOULD YOU BE WORRIED THAT YOU WILL NOT HAVE SOCIAL SECURITY? Nothing is going to change, in terms of benefits, for people near your retirement age.
19. WHO TAXED SOCIAL SECURITY TO BEGIN WITH? Ronald Reagan, a Republican, began the taxation on Social Security in 1983.
There is no Social Security crisis, just as there were no weapons of mass destruction. Social Security has provided a lifeline to millions of Americans with
millions of checks, and in more than 60 years has never missed a payment—and this track record can continue. Social Security is basically a sound system
that can meet 100 percent of its obligations for the next 39 years, and with responsible changes it can continue to do so indefinitely
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