More bullshit on Social Security

the wapo continues to shovel...

If the Democrats engage on Social Security, they may find themselves discussing some form of personal retirement accounts. This should not be confused with "privatization": Personal accounts that are added to the Social Security system are different from ones that are funded with money carved out from existing payroll revenue. Creating such add-on accounts could boost national savings, allow workers to build nest eggs and cushion them from the benefit cuts that are inevitably part of a reform. As they respond to the administration's overtures, Democrats should not foreclose this option.

i will let atrios speak for me...

Look, people who advocate adding "personal accounts" to Social Security are just stupid people. Really, just morons. There's no reason to do it. There's no reason to take any part of Social Security contributions and put them in a little fund account with my name on it. If you think some Social Security contributions should be invested in the stock market (I don't) to raise returns overall, then it can be stuck into an index fund or managed by a fund manager or whatever. I still think that's a bad idea, but there's a rationale for it. There's no rationale for dividing that up into millions of individual accounts. There's no rationale for letting individuals "control their own money" by letting them choose across some finite number of managed funds. Social Security is a lovely program which works just fine and really needs no changes other than extraordinarily nonurgent tweaks to the tax formula at some point. And, no, there's no need for modest benefit cuts. There's no need for means testing it. There's no need for any of these things The Serious People like Bob Kerrey want to do. There's no need to strike a "grand bargain" which combines some stupid things with some smart things because there's no need to do so. Leave it alone.

There is no problem with the Social Security system. People who continue to argue that there is - and that the problem can be "solved" with the magic private accounts fairy - either have broken brains or are attempting to push an agenda for ideological reasons or for personal enrichment for themselves and their kind.

note to wapo: fuhgeddaboudit...

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