Can we have a victory as a minority on SS?

[greenohio]

What would people consider a victory on SS? Would halting all action do it? Or would stopping the existence of private accounts? If private accounts were created OUTSIDE of SS like Gore's plan of SS+, would that be a victory? If they raised the cap on earnings? Is there any way to win anything on this?

[Osamasux]

1. Stopping private accounts as a replacement and

not changing the formula for future benefits from being based on wage increases to being based on cost of living. (Benefit reduction projected as high as 40% for those currently entering the workforce.)

[greenohio]

2. What if they do that but

raise the cap in order to pay for both the shortfall and Extra accounts like in Gore's SS+?

[Osamasux]

3. I think we'd still have a victory.

My sights are lower these days.

[papau]

10. Even better - a "compromise" where add-on private accounts via payroll

deuction getting 401k treatment is passed!

The GOP "win"

More funded savings means more growth in the future

and the rest of us get

no 2 trillion "transition cost"

SS is unchanged

[greenohio]

13. That address shrubs accounts.

But I don't see how it addresses the projected shortfalls?

[RaleighNCDUer]

23. In fifteen years, SS will begin paying out more than it is taking in.

The trust fund, however, is funded through 2052. What is the big expense? The boomers. I don't know about the rest of them, but I certainly don't expect to see 2052. As the boomers die off, the imbalance will redress itself, moving the insolvency date back to 'indefinite'.

Meanwhile, improved health standards keeps younger workers at the job more effectively, with less lost revenue due to illness, thus increasing the funding going in.

Factor in the real rate of growth for the trust fund, at about 3% instead of the very conservative projection of 1.5%, and there is no insolvency.

There is no crisis.

[papau]

26. Well said - :-)

but I still like the wage cap increase if that will calm the GOP down.

:-)

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. And I like the elimination of the wage cap, and having investment

income taxed as well, but that would just piss the GOP off.

[papau]

32. LOL :-)

:-)

[Zynx]

54. The average economic growth rate is actually four percent since the

Depression and revnues are based off the even higher nominal growth rate of 6-7%.

[tsuki]

41. I have tried to look this up. I am confused. What is the "transition

costs?" Where will that one to two trillion go?

[Jim Lane]

64. Why the "transition cost"

Contrary to a common misunderstanding, the money collected in Social Security payroll taxes isn't sequestered in some kind of "lockbox" where it sits, earning interest, until it's needed to find the retirement of the person who paid the tax. Instead, current payroll tax receipts are used to fund current benefits payouts. If you're working now, the payroll tax collected from you and from your employer is the source of the money for paying my mother her monthly benefit.

Right now, annual taxes are somewhat ahead of annual expenses (by about $150 billion last year, which, given the size of the program, counts as only "somewhat"). As baby boomers retire, annual expenses will catch up with and then exceed annual revenues. Sometime around 2019, the current cash flow will be negative, forcing the system to dip into the accumulated past surpluses, which currently total about $1.5 trillion (thus allowing for years and years of dipping).

Now we come to transition costs. If current workers were given a privatization option, they could choose to divert part of their annual Social Security tax payment into an individual account. Any money thus diverted wouldn't be going into the general Social Security fund and wouldn't be available to pay my Mom... uh, that is, to pay current retirees. The current-accounts balance would move into deficit that much more quickly. Eventually, the system would stabilize, in that the workers who chose in 2005 to create individual accounts would, upon retiring, receive smaller benefits from the overall Social Security fund because they'd be receiving some additional benefits from their individual accounts. Thus, under a privatized scheme, each worker would pay less into the general SS fund and would receive less back. Regardless of whether the individual workers would be better off, the system as a whole would have lower income and lower expenses, so it could still be in approximate balance.

The difficulty is that, for the next few decades, the effect of lower Social Security tax receipts would be felt in full, while the countervailing effect of lower benefit payout expenses would be kicking in only gradually, as workers with individual accounts retired. The transition cost (various estimated at $1 trillion to $2 trillion) is the money the government would have to come up with in the interim to continue to pay the retirement benefits owed to current retirees and to people who retire in the near future.

In sum, the case for saying that there's a Social Security "crisis" is that at some point the system shows a deficit. The privatization "solution" is to bring on the deficit much more quickly and make it much bigger. A complete scam.

[eallen]

4. "This administration is not trustworthy of this kind of reform."

The devil of social security reform is in the details. The great fear for anything pushed by this administration is that, regardless of how it is sold, the details will be written by business and will screw the average citizen. I would love to see the Democratic Caucus in Congress united behind three ideas. (a) This administration is not trustworthy of reforming social security. (b) The long-term demographic problems are not a crisis, and are easily resolved with a more trustworthy administration. (c) Therefore, we will oppose any social security reform during the next four years.

[greenohio]

6. Do you think blocking all reform options

will help us politically? Or do you think the repukes will hit us in the head with it during the mid terms?

[eallen]

20. "We saved social security... From the Republicans!"

Yours is a hard question. I don't have a good answer to it. That's what makes politics difficult.

[greenohio]

21. It assumes a small risk.

Blocking will play well with our base. I don't know how the rest of the country will buy it, particularly the 20 somethings.

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. Did supporting the prescription bill help us, politically?

Don't give an inch. They make all the gains, and we get nothing.

[greenohio]

39. There are some who opposed

the Patriot Act who said they got spanked by the voters because of it. I don't know if that is true or not.

[Coastie for Truth]

5. We have to make the case - Karl Rove style

we have to appeal to Americans who "shower after work" and hunt and eat red meat and go to Church.

The faculty and PhD products of Stony Brook and Berkeley are already on our side.

We have to talk the talk and walk the walk of folks who live in Red States, and shower after work, and drive pick up trucks. And we Progressives have not done a good job on that.

We gotta take Paul Krugman's articles -- and break them down into something you can talk about over a Bud.

[greenohio]

9. What case should we make?

No change is needed?
Raise the cap?
Change the indexing in the formula to calc benefits?
Absolutely no accounts?
Accounts in the nature that Gore proposed with SS+?

[Coastie for Truth]

34. Attack Attack Attack

Like Bush's thugs did to Scott Ritter and Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neal, and like the Swifties for Truth did.

Attack - Attack - Attack.

Point up every lie, half truth, and inconsistency in the Bush Social Security Piratization.

Show who the "Winners" will be and the "Losers"

Show the absence of factoring in Disability and Survivors -- and how it distorts Bush's phony numbers.

Paul Krugman has started. The AARP has started. Al Franken has started. But we have to be a merciless and blood thirsty and Ken Mellman and John O'Neil.

[DaedelusNemo]

56. My vote right now : eliminate wage tax and with the money from that...

either cut all SS tax rates 30%, or, if everyone really wants to support private retirement investment more than they want the tax cut, use it to perhaps match funds for those accounts up to some amount, or by some decreasing rate as the total stacks up. Real ownership, not filtered through and controlled by the government.

[Osamasux]

37. Bush puts one of his arguments on this so plainly.

"They try to frighten Seniors about their checks. Seniors will get their checks."

Hits the two key words "Seniors" and "checks" twice in thirteen words.

I am not talking about the content of his message, but the style. We need that plain, boiled down, no fluff message.

[Coastie for Truth]

50. E.J. Dionne and George Lakoff

...both make the same argument. And I think that they are right.

Listen to Ed Schultz -- same thing.

I am a meat eatin', gun tottin', Leftie Ed Schultz Ed Head.

[Osamasux]

52. Yeah, I've been trying to take the Lakoff training.

My state's DFA is going to be offering it. I have been hearing good things about it. If I can't make the sessions, I'll at least get some of the books. Here's a link to the Rockridge Institute, the progressive think tank he belongs to. (It's about time we had a good one.)

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org

[JohnnyRingo]

7. I think the fight to prevent SS theft will require some republican

resistance to Buxh's plans.
I think we'll see that happen, because some legislators are counting on seniors' votes to maintain their position in office, and screwing with their SS in ANY way will not be viewed as popular.
Remember, 75 year old recipients don't care about how much will be left in 2040, and they don't want to hear anything that may change their benefits.

Hopefully the dems will stick together on this, so that only a few republican votes will be required.

It should be interesting to hear Jeb, when he's forced to take a stance, though he won't be a part of the legislation.

[greenohio]

8. Is blocking all legislation a victory...

or is there some form of changes (rasing the caps or what not) that you would support?

[papau]

11. see post 10 above

and add raising the wage cap to help "solve" the out year problem, along with allowing the trust fund to invest in equity index funds rather than gov bonds..

[DaedelusNemo]

57. Can you elaborate on equity index funds?

What are those? Is it like a "Dow Jones" fund or some such? What if you end up retiring during a recession?

I've suggested that the right to invest various portions of the fund money be auctioned off to anyone who can reliably guarantee some return greater than what we already get from the bonds. Whatever they make over and above the return they promised is their fee. It essentially pays them a portion of the return in exchange for assuming all the risk. Punpirate was telling me it sounded like a "performance bond"; i'm not familiar with the lingo.

[Yupster]

62. There are many equity index funds

The most common ones are based on the S+P 500, but they can be based on any equity index. Threre can be a NASDAQ 100, or even a foreign stock index fund. The old company I worked for offered five of them. I'm a stockbroker.

[Yupster]

61. Disagree Papau

I don't think the trust fund should invest in stocks at all.

I'd prefer cd's and insurance company fixed accounts. I agree though that the money should be taken from the government's greedy fingers and put somewhere else where it can sit and grow.

Of course it's all kind of academic at this point anyway because there isn't any money in the trust fund to put in cd's or stock funds. It's spent by the general budget the second it comes in, and it really has to be since there's a federal defecit of about four trillion dollars a minute right now.

[DaedelusNemo]

63. Are those both ways of eliminating risk?

I'm not familiar with the details of financial instruments.

[JohnnyRingo]

17. Personally I follow the old "lock box" policy.

No privatization, corporatization, or borrowing from the fund.
All would leave SS susceptible to theft by those that have longed for 60 years to end "entitlements" to people that don't work or save for their own retirement.

My position is to fund it, pay it out as originally planned, and prevent seniors of the future from eating cat food or living being forced into "adoption" by their children.

(self included...I don't want to live eventually under my kids roof, they owe me bigtime from their upbringing) hahahah

[Alisa]

12. God I hope so - this really scares me -

because if * gets his hands on it he'll blow the $ rapidly.

This is yet another try to keep America afloat, using cash flow.

The re-mortgaging and pulling out of house equity to keep cash moving in the US is largely done.

[tokenlib]

14. Only if enough republicans get cold feet....

We need to scare the moderate republicans with the reality that they will be blamed for benefit cuts--not the democrats. They will pay the price when the American people wake up. Which leads us to the real problem. For the threat to work--we must do all we can to wake the public up.

If benefits get cut, if Wall Street gets their windfall, we lose. If we stop the reform in its tracks we win. A real solution--involving raising revenue by removing the cap and other such ideas may have to wait until the republican dictatorship ends. I just do not believe we can work with these people in the repuke leadership.

[Osamasux]

36. Even Wall Street is balking

Snow had to go there to sell it this week. I hadn't thought of this before, but individual accounts would be made of millions of small accounts. Financial Services companies don't make money off of those, they make it off the big clients. Small is all overhead and little revenue. One of the new scenarios is all accounts under $5,000 be managed by the government, not investment managers.

[sadiesworld]

15. A victory would look like this:

The dems stand united in saying that ANY changes to SS are unacceptable until a plan to pay the IOUs is implemented.

[StephanieMarie]

16. NPR says yes

I heard this morning saying that many repugs won't vote for it unless enough Dem's do to give them political cover.

[tsuki]

42. I don't think we will be fighting the Repubs as much as the Dems

who long to be part of the "club."

[mikehiggins]

18. Resist ANY change coming from the Repukes

Hang EVERYTHING around their necks and POUND every single one of them in 2006. This is the watershed issue that will split the Bush White House from the GOPuke majority in the House and Senate and the Dems have to show NO QUARTER.

This SocSec attack is Chimps equivalent of Dad's "no more taxes" blunder and everyone should rise to the attack. Everything about these proposals are wrong and should be hammered at every point.

Maybe THIS time more than one Congresscritter with have the simple BALLS to stand up and call them out on their LIES.

There is NO need to change SocSec except possibly to remove the cap on earnings subject to the FICA. The REPukes want to ignore the effect these changes will have on survivors and disabled recipients.

What ELSE do we need? This is Bushs donnybrook and we have to staple it to the asses of every GOPuke elected official across the country.

That will be the victory.

[w4rma]

19. Yes. (nt)

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. Stopping their plans cold.

There is no compromising with these people. To them, compromise means 'we get a little less that we were shooting for, and you get to shut up'. Every time we compromise, and give them a little, we get nothing in return. The end result -- all the gains are theirs.

Shut them down. It's the only option.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[papau]

27. You have discovered that for those that make more than the average, SS

is a redistribution system.

sort of

But the insurance side - survivor, and disability - don't exist in a private account world

so maybe not an overpayment that is quite as large as you calculated.

In any case the top end is not getting the same ratio of payment to payout that the bottom end is getting.

And screwing the bottom end will indeed take them from social security dollars to welfare begging dollars, while giving thetop end a few extra points in their "rate of return"

but I'm a Dem - so I worry more about the low paid than I do about the high paid (LOL - I am a high paid Dem - indded I suspect this hurts me more than it hurts you - as my folks would say before T got spanked!)

:toast:

:-)

[RaleighNCDUer]

33. OTOH, if the accout was in the wrong stocks, you could have lost

70% of it over the past few years. Not to mention that if you had been forced to quit working because of accident or chronic illness when you were 25, there would have been nothing going in. But SS would have started paying you right off the bat.

SS is not a retirement plan. If you want to invest your money, above SS, that's your business. SS is a plan that protects the entire economy, the whole populace. Those on disability are covered by other payees. Just as current retirees are covered by current payers. My SS payments are not for my retirement -- they are supporting a system that covers the US economic health.

[wicket]

35. "would have grown to at least $750,000 over more than 45 years"

Not in the stock market performance of the Bush economy.

[JI7]

28. we need to bring some Republicans on our side

just as Reagan did when he was President by bringing Democrats, especially from the more conservative areas on his side.

[CWebster]

29. If not , it's gonna be a defeat for us all. nt

[BurtWorm]

30. You'd have to have all Democrats on board and then pressure

the "moderate" Repubs like Collins, Snowe, Chafee, Specter amd keep chipping away at the Repub majority. The Repubs, I believe, succeeded in stopping Dem initiatives taking such a tack.

[autorank]

38. YES -- make the case; filibuster; put a hold on the legislation

They're already gearing up to make the case against these changes. They'll give * a sop in the form of some minor change that will do nothing. Ford's quick retreat sends a huge message. He was brought into line, I'm sure, by someone who said "Knock this shit off." Anyone else who deviates from the position will be punished. It's already started from last session and Democrats who sided with major * initiatives. They're being grilled about senior status on committees in clear violation of seniority, a major move by the House leadership.

Second, after the case is made, * won't accept the face-saving offer and will try to ram this down America's throat. That's when the filibuster starts and all the other parliamentary tactics. Frist is a neophyte on procedures. Byrd and Reid are masters of the arcane rules of the Senate. All they need is to give enough cover for Republicans to let this be stopped by a technicality.

Finally, any Senator can place "a hold" on any appointment or legislation and can do so anonymously. I suspect that if it can be done for this bill (I'm not positive) it will be done and the Senator will do so very publicly.

This is the real deal, the smack down in the Senate, the horror of the House. Let the games begin. We win!

[DaedelusNemo]

43. What's the 'facesaving offer'?

My vote would be cap removal combined with either 30% SS tax cut or that money used to encourage (real) private retirement plans.

[autorank]

51. Something that would benefit the system that * could sign on to.

Excellent ideas. * likes to jump on things, e.g., Homeland Security Dept., when they're about to happen. The face-saving idea would be to let him take a little credit for doing the right thing after he had to back down in public on his 'crisis' plans. The cap coming off is a good idea. Whatever makes things sound. I like the 30% cut + cap removal. If that works, who in their right mind would complain? Oh, sorry, * would. It would be a crisis. haha.

[eridani]

40. You're forgetting pressure on Repug congresscritters

If they hear from their constituents enough, they won't dare back Bush. Remember, minimum wage initiatives passed handily in red states last year.

[DaedelusNemo]

45. How about minimum wage increase as solution to SS shortfall? ; ) /nt

[Osamasux]

53. That is a big part of the winning strategy.

Grass roots activity to get the people agitated about it. Maybe AARP will atone for their prescription drug bill fiasco and join in? Our reps can talk it all up in the media, but that won't get it done. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks.

[NuttyFluffers]

44. real victory, no. moral victory, yes.

outside of filibuster we have nothing. and the filibuster is incredibly flimsy at this moment. it's really that bad. so there's nothing left to lose by standing by the moral victory. stand by it hard and fast and castigate anyone who even remotely sells out on this issue.

also repeat to all who will listen the facts of social security. most people are *deeply* ignorant. heck, raise your voice in a restaurant, let the facts you cite carry over across to other tables. post a flyer about these citable facts and tape 'em up on a pole or bulletin board. just spread the word.

... and cross your fingers the democrats and some sane republicans grow a spine and unite against this stupidity. there's no reason to kick-start our economic collapse like argentina, not by hurting the weakest among us. economic boycott against those who work against our better interest... no prob with that.

[DaedelusNemo]

46. Eliminating cap would result in a 30% SS surplus

What would you do with it? Cut SS taxes by 30%? Use it to encourage retirement accounts, say by matching funds up to a certain amount, or by a decreasing amount as the total stacks up? (Put the help where it's needed.)

[ribrepin]

55. Yep, eliminate the cap and raise the amount people can put in their 401K's

No reason the rich should pay less % than the working stiff.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

48. I smell BS

Is C's child poor? Was C's child a minor when C died? Didn't C receive ANYTHING in terms of inheritance from C?

And more importantly: did all of this really happen?

Search by Author is your friend, folks.

[Green Thumb]

49. No we can't have a victory

The BFEE is going to take it away. And there is nothing we can do about it. The freepers have taken over this country and it is only going to get worse from here because we keep nominating people that are repuke lite. We have got to take a hard turn to the left in order to differentiate from them if we are ever going to get anywhere.

[DaedelusNemo]

59. Hard turn to the left

I think a 30% cut on payroll taxes based on reducing its regressive nature - and in the bargain, stopping Bush's plan to cut benefits and add to the deficit and centralize the economy - is pretty good for the working man.

SS is very, very popular. This could be Bush's Waterloo if the dems get off their duffs.

[theboss]

58. Treat it the same way Repubs treated Hillarycare

Just kill any "reform." Nothing happens; it never even comes to a vote. There are probably enough Republicans terrified of the issue to keep it in committee forever.

Status quo is the goal here. Kennedy got cute on No Child Left Behind and look what happened. This is not an issue to play around with.

[JetCityLiberal]

60. "we"

ha ha ha !!!

Thank you for the laugh...."we"...yeah right...

Who is "we" to YOU greenohio?

Explain.

JetCityLiberal