Bernie Ward: "It's about ENDING Social Security, not REFORMING it."

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Workers invest 4% of wages, BUT gov't keeps and administers the money.

Right now SS recipients get a guaranteed 3% return.

Under the Bush plan, to get a THREE PERCENT return, you need a SIX PERCENT return, because the government takes HALF for administering the account.

It's considered a "government loan" that you need to pay back with interest before you retire, but it's a risk, so you could lose it anyway.

Bernie said that this will all be spelled out in tomorrow's Washington Post.

[Sirveri]

1. I wish he would mention the administrative costs of SS.

They're less than 1% if I remember correctly. There goes Big Government bush once again! YAY! I love being able to say that to freepers. Hey look, there goes big government Bush, promoting yet another bloated government bureaucracy. Oh you still love him and this is a good beuraucracy? Hypocrits.

[LaPera]

2. Bernie is absolutely correct.

Letting the republicans have even one penny of Social Security open to the investment companies, the republicans will finally have their foot in the door, to destroy Social Security through the courts in years to come. All the republicans really want is their foot in the door, to destroy SS as they have vowed to do for 70 years!

All of us should be aware that when Social Security passed during the Great Depression in 1935, not one Republican voted for it.

All the republicans want is to just get their foot in the door, and then they know, they will be able to destroy Social Security as the years go by…bit by bit.

We can’t allow any changes…Social Security is not in a crisis, only a made one up by these same republicans who have always despised it, and we are suppose to trust them to “fix” what’s not broken?

If one wants to invest, they can invest in a 401K anytime they like.

[Robin Hood]

3. So, if my money only makes 1.5%, Will I owe uncle sam 1.5%?

It all sounds like a shell game. Bernie is right, This is the beginning of the end for social security. I hope that you will all enjoy stepping over old or dead people. I'm sure that even then, people will continue to blame the victim.

The other day I dreamt of living in Europe. Nowhere specific, Just wondering what the perspective is like in a country that still has roaming journalists hungry for a story.

[PROUDNWLIBERAL]

4. Uncle Bernie

Love Uncle Bernie. He's on KGO in San Francisco. Bernie is on the air M-F 10:00pm to 1:00am PST. He's online just do a google search.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Here is the article from the WP

Participants Would Forfeit Part of Accounts' Profits

Under the White House Social Security plan, workers who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into individual accounts would ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system.

The mechanism, detailed by a senior administration official before President Bush's State of the Union address, would hold down the cost of Bush's plan to introduce personal accounts to the Social Security system. But it could come as a surprise to lawmakers and voters who have thought of these accounts as akin to an individual retirement account or a 401(k) that they could use fully upon retirement.

"You'll be able to pass along the money that accumulates in your personal account, if you wish, to your children . . . or grandchildren," Bush said last night. "And best of all, the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away."

The plan is more complicated. Under the proposal, workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent.

That money would augment a guaranteed Social Security benefit that would be reduced by a still-undetermined amount from the currently promised benefit.

In effect, the accounts would work more like a loan from the government, to be paid back upon retirement at an inflation-adjusted 3 percent interest rate -- the interest the money would have earned if it had been invested in Treasury bonds, said Peter R. Orszag, a Social Security analyst at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House economist.
<snip>

more........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59136-2005Feb2?language=printer

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. Thanks for that, and a kick for the morning folks

:kick: