Sunday, November 28, 2004
Bush the Fram Man to the Youth of America:
"Pay Me Now, or Pay Me Later!"
To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, "There's a Young Republican Sucker graduating college every minute."0 comments
Here's a candidate for one of the stupid-er statements (among many) to come out of the Bush White House in the last four years:
"The president does support personal accounts, which need not add overall to the cost of the program, but could in the short run require additional borrowing to finance the transition. I believe there's a strong case that this approach not only makes sense as a matter of savings policy, but is also fiscally prudent."—Joshua B. Bolten, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget about overhauling the system.
How exactly did "savings policy" and "borrowing" end up in the same quote?
If you buy that crap, you'll deserve everything you get.
Bush's Social Security Plan Is Said to Require Vast Borrowing
OK, let's see if I have this right...
Young adults would now avoid putting their current, hard-earned $$ into a Social Security Fund and paying for those geezers living high on the hog.
They would turn their $$ over to economists who engineered or, worse, were helplessly overrun by the financial disaster of 2001 to 2003, which wiped out 40% - 70% of people's stock and mutual fund holdings—most of which ironically were also earmarked for people's retirement.
Then unfortunately, as these now-Young Adults attain retirement age, the crushing burden of paying off the debt that was incurred in the years following the Turn of the Century will have destroyed Wall Street's ability to generate growth or income—with a dollar that is a mere shadow of what it was a generation before.
Plus at that point, while their individual retirement account barely coasts on fumes, there'd no longer be a viable safety net from the federal government, along the lines of what the old Social Security program used to provide.
So, in all likelihood when they retire, it's certain today's twentysomethings will not be constrained to eating the cat's food, something their parents and older siblings were reduced to.
They'll be eating the cat.
posted by Gotham 11:38 AM
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