"P.Fritz" wrote in message
...

"Peter Aitken" wrote in message
om...
"Dave Hall" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:42:42 -0500, DSK wrote:

Dave Hall wrote:
So there is a fee involved. As long as the fee is much less than
interest earned, where's the problem?


The problem is that the gov't not the individual decides who gets the
profit.

But I gues that's "choice" in your book.

As long as they pick the funds and firms who represent the best return
for investment, I have no problem.

Dave


It seems that everyone is overlooking an obvious solution that seems to
me to have many advantages. The whole (supposed) motivation for partially
privatizing SS is the higher returns that the market will provide.

No, that is a partial reason. The other is returning the money to those
that earned it, not keeping it and doling it out as a welfare entitlement.

SS retirement benefits are not an entitlement, it is something you earn by
paying into the system while you are working. Strike 1.

The why not have the SSA start redeeming the billions in treasury notes it
holds and use the cash, as well as part of current income, to invest
broadly across then entire stock market? This would in effect be a huge
index fund and would be vwey cheap and efficient to manage. The higher
returns would go into the general SS pot and be available to pay benefits
in the future.

Until the pols inside the beltway decide that company 'x' is not being PC
enough, and sell all the guvmint holding in said company.


That's easily prevented - it's a really silly argument. Strike 2.

Advantages:

- Innumerable studies have shown that index investing gets a better
return than the majority of individually managed accounts, even those
funds that are managed by so-called pros. Thus most SS participants would
be better off than if they had individual accounts that they managed
themselves.

Horse****. Most people would be better off if the were allowed to
maintain pocession of the money they earn, rather than allowing the
guvmint to redistribute it through a SS system.


Most evidence suggests otherwise. Do you have any evidence to back up your
claim? I didn;t think so. Strike 3.


- Untold billions of dollars that would otherwise be paid to financial
firms for managing the individual accounts will stay within the SS
system, further enhancing returns.

Are you that clueless.


If you do not understand a perfectly valid argument, it is *you* who are
clueless, not me. Strike 4.


- No individual will be faced with an impoverished retirement because of
bad investment decisions or just plain bad luck.

Big daddy guvmint is the solution to all your problems?


No, I never claimed that, so why do you bring it up? Straw man, of course.
Strike 5.


- By redeeming some of the SS treasury bonds and not buying new ones it
will pressure the government (the non-SS part of it) to be more
responsible financially, to pay more attention to the budget deficit, and
restrain unfair tax cuts and unneeded spending.

Free hint for the clueless......the only way to 'redeem' those bonds is by
raising other taxes, running a larger deficit, or priting more money.

That is exactly my point, which you did not seem to understand. Strike 6.



But of course the Bush administration does not really want to "save" SS
(hence my "supposed") above. They want to do away with it altogether.

Which is a good thing.

Why? It has been one of the most popular and successful federal programs
ever. Strike 7.



This (partial privatization) is the first step, just like the medicare
prescription benefit was the first step in getting rid of that government
program (by incewasing the program cost wile shifting more of the tax
burden to the middle class they hope to eventually built a lot of ppular
opposition). Bush himself is probably not smart enough to see what's
happening, nor are 99.9% of his supporters, but his neocon handlers know
exactly what they are doing.

You are obviously not smart enough to do anything except swallow the
liebrals talking points, hook line and sinker.


Lacking facts and logic you pull out the "liberal" epithet. How clever. You
managed to object to 8 separate points I made without a single fact or
logical argument to back up your opinion. Wow, 8 strikes out of 8.

--
Peter Aitken

Remove the crap from my email address before using.