Auto industry veteran defends social security...

[shrdlu]

(RALPH DEEDS negotiated union contracts for GM, worked at the National Labor Relations Board and the Michigan Employment Security Board of Review.) His article appears in The Detroit Free Press.

<http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/edeeds23e_20050223.htm>

excerpt:

"With our industry under global siege, defined benefit pensions underfunded and disappearing, and personal savings declining, now is not the time to weaken the Social Security leg of the retirement security stool by subjecting it to the risks of private securities markets operated by investment bankers and mutual funds where serious conflicts of interest have been discovered in the past couple of years.


"Private savings and investment accounts, in addition to Social Security and employer pensions and increasing the national savings rate, are important. But nothing in Bush's privatization plan would do this. Greater participation in 401(k) plans and IRAs by low-income workers should be encouraged by offering immediate eligibility and automatic enrollment with better tax incentives for participation.


"President George W. Bush's proposed "reform" of Social Security springs from longstanding haters of FDR and the New Deal and from hopes of enhancing the appeal of the GOP to young voters. The proposals fail to recognize that Social Security, as originally conceived, has served us well and is as needed now as it was in 1935."

[BrklynLiberal]

1. good article. Thanks for posting.

[shrdlu]

2. If I don't bump it...

nobody else will.