“This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain’s efforts to become the next president of the United States…During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made — TWICE.” I may have been slacking of late, but others have been keeping up the good fight. By way of Supercres, HuffPo columnist Max Bergmann lists ten campaign-derailing gaffes by John McCain, from last week alone. (So that’s not counting Czechoslovakia, McCain’s switch on Afghanistan, or the unfortunate “ape rape” revelations.) I must say, he really is an astoundingly bad candidate.
Here’s my thing, though– it’s sad news for American politics that McCain is still polling at 40-48% despite such obvious incompetence/dishonesty. It means that party lines > everything else. Whether that’ll change by November is anyone’s guess, but I’m looking forward to the debates.
OK, “a disgrace” may be stretching it, and definitely needs to be unpacked as a statement, but in what way is Social Security not messed up? Are any of you planning on it for retirement? I hope not, because from what I’ve seen on my Social Security statement, it will probably just about cover my monthly beer and Netflix budget in 2045. The problem is the loophole that allows Social Security to tax way beyond its projected needs, and dump that money into government securities (ie, bonds). The money that pays for the bonds is then free to be spent by the government at large, and fuels massive deficit spending, deficit because the government technically owes that money back to SS. The problem is that this has become such an established source of funds for government spending that to change it now in any meaningful way is almost impossible without majorly disrupting other federal programs. I don’t mind paying for old people’s retirement so much, but for starters we could force the government to be more honest about where that FICA money goes. I think that we also honestly need to look at ways for individuals to manage their own SS money, and it doesn’t have to mean the end of SS as we know it. If we have an “opt-in” style system, where if you do nothing you still get the old system, I think we could chip away at the surplus money that SS is currently using to “buy bonds” (ie, kick back to the government). If we start with giving workers back a small percentage of their FICA which _must_ be invested in a retirement fund, and increase that percentage gradually year by year, it will force the government to stop depending so much on FICA money and reduce the government’s debt to SS. If the government needs more money, it can then raise regular taxes. This will lead to more honest taxation, and a better retirement program. The American worker needs to pay less to or get more from Social Security.
You have beer. You have Netflix. What else, pray tell, would you need?
I’m sympathetic to your basic argument, and would be ok with tinkering with Social Security in some fashion so long as it’s not privatized, per se. (The minute you let people use their own FICA money as they see fit, the “Security” part of Social Security falls away.)
McCain’s comment, as the link makes clear, is that Social Security is an absolute disgrace not for the estimable reasons you outlined but because it’s a pay-as-you-go system. I dunno…it’s seemed to work reasonably well over the past seventy years.