social insecurity
when Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced social security as a part of his new deal legislation during the great depression, it was designed to be a source of comfort and, you guessed it, security for Americans in their retirement by providing a steady flow of cash benefits for citizens after their 65th birthday.
back in the '30s, there was a 3:1 ratio of three people working to supply the social security funds to the one retired person reaping the benefits of his old age.
times change.
due mainly to longer life expectancy, that ratio will soon reverse so that just one member of the working class will be present for every three retirees.
president bush has taken it upon himself, like he should, to plan for the future and amend social security now before it starts paying out more money than it takes in (wait, it already does this).
one easy cop-out for the president would be to cut benefits, but seriously, is that a solution?
instead, he has outlined his intentions of allowing Americans to invest 1/3 of their social security benefits into the stock market and governement bonds.
one study conducted by a yale economist showed that 80% of those who would invest that money in the stock market would earn money.
how about the other 20%? is bush going to play the numbers and just forget this good-sized minority of losers? will the stock market earnings even be significant enough for the winners to cover the spread?
here are the obvious solutions that bush has somehow overlooked:
1) increase the retirement age to 70 or 75. with that longer life expectancy, people should be expected to work later into life.
2) increase the maximum limit of a person's salary that can be taxed for social security. right now, any earnings above $90,000 are not subject to social security's 6.2% rate. the wealthy can bear to give up the same percentage of their paychecks as the poverty stricken.
us teenagers have to be aware of these problems now because we are the generation that will be most greatly affected by changes happening now under the bush "administration." don't let bush privatize social security and jeopardize the dependability of this service -- vote nader '08.
This entry was posted
on 5.03.2005 at 7:12 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
» Post a Comment