The Department of the Treasury soldiers on in the battle to privatize Social Security. I thought they were done, but they have now released Issue Brief No. 5 Social Security Reform: Strategies for Progressive Benefit Adjustments.
The essential assumption of these "Issue Briefs" is that there is it is already abundantly clear to all that Social Security must be, at least, partially privatized. The only issue left is exactly how we go about doing this. This "Issue Brief" deals with the ticklish subject of how do we cut benefits. Even though it would not be nearly enough to eliminate Social Security's long term financing problems even under current law, the "Issue Brief" advocates adjustments in inflation indexing to reduce benefits payments in future years. However, even this painful adjustment would be nowhere near enough money to finance even the most modest effort to divert Social Security taxes into private accounts.
The essential assumption of these "Issue Briefs" is that there is it is already abundantly clear to all that Social Security must be, at least, partially privatized. The only issue left is exactly how we go about doing this. This "Issue Brief" deals with the ticklish subject of how do we cut benefits. Even though it would not be nearly enough to eliminate Social Security's long term financing problems even under current law, the "Issue Brief" advocates adjustments in inflation indexing to reduce benefits payments in future years. However, even this painful adjustment would be nowhere near enough money to finance even the most modest effort to divert Social Security taxes into private accounts.
GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
ReplyDeleteRemember when Bush appointed the blue-ribbon committee to recommend how to save Social Security retirement benefits? The commission was charged with one limitation - they could only consider how to private Social Security, and could not adjust the tax rate, the capped rate, or tax non-wage income. The fix was in, as it were.