First the by now familiar bamboozle:
Toomey has said he does not favor wholesale investment of the Social Security Trust Fund into the stock market. Rather, he favors allowing younger workers the option of taking a portion of their Social Security payroll tax and creating private - also known as personal - accounts and they could invest any way they wanted.This is what Toomey's old friends at the Club For Growth have called PRIVATIZATION.
Toomey, by the way, still denies that it is. Where's the ideological loyalty, man??
Anyway, a few days ago, I wrote about Toomey:
He never gets around to explaining how those who are retired now will still "get all the benefits they were promised" while reducing the funds flowing into the system. Those funds would be the "accumulated" savings of those "young workers" he talked about.Well, now I have an answer. It's at Citizen's Voice. In explaining his plan to allow young workers to divert money to private accounts (though that's not privatization, doncha know):
The downside, which Toomey acknowledges, is the government would have to borrow trillions of dollars to replace the money removed by the younger workers to help pay the benefits of present-day Social Security beneficiaries.So Toomey's in favor of increasing the national debt? In order to divert more money to Wall Street?
Over time, however, Toomey and advocates of his approach say, the private accounts would mean more money than traditional Social Security benefits and would reduce the amount private account-holders must take out of the Social Security Trust Fund.
Say it ain't so, Pat! Say it ain't so!
Privatization is what the City of Pgh did with the city's asphalt plant.They SOLD it!!When will you get it that it is "your money" that the gov't takes and puts into "their" fund.Taking some of your money back from them and using it for your own private account is merely restoring your control over your money!!
ReplyDeleteInteresting comparison, Rich, between an asphalt plant and the Social Security administration. Exactly what, pray tell, would the Social Security administration sell?
ReplyDeleteOr are you saying that private brokers administering stocks or funds is not taking a public service and making it a private one?
Interesting to see Toomey suggest that privatization (or "personalization") would yield higher returns for benefit recipients. I agree with Toomey in this instance, subject to a couple of caveats. I would think there should be some limitations on what stocks workers can invest their retirement money in (or maybe it should be set up as market funds), there should be some enforced diversification of funds and the number of times (and perhaps types) of making changes should be limited, to avoid eroding ones account with transaction fees.
What makes it interesting is that a few posts ago CM was complaining about how much money the unwashed masses get from Social Security. He also complained that he thinks he will not see his Social Security checks, presumably because of how much money greedy retirees are taking out of the system now. But here's Pat Toomey promising our yutes (sorry, youths) even more money, even as Wall Street licks its chops at the prospect of millions of new accounts.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteMaybe you didn't understand the term, privatization.And Ed, that wasn't a compariosn. It was anexample. what i do with my money for the most part is no ones business but mine. And you still don't get it, me giving my money to a brokerage company is not privatizing anything.you go on to say that workers decisions about where to put their money should be limited. By whom, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd. Timmy Geitner.Whatever happened to being responsible for yourself?