Great idea. Let's raise marginal tax rates on workers by 12.4%. This is no big deal and only four times as much as John Kerry lost an election proposing.

Only half of your SS contribution is deducted from your check. The other half is "paid" by your employer, though it still comes out of your hide.

How about three different words: Raise Retirement Age?

I don't care how you diddle tax rates and trust funds. If our economy has only two workers per retiree, it will choke and die.

Raise the Cap

Raise the age

Cut the benefit.

All of which would work. Why is this administration hell bent on changing the whole system. This administration already has shown that it will create a crisis in order to move on it's goal. But what is the real goal here?

A four word sentence that could save SSI;

Stop taking the Money. (the $150,000,000 they took out of the fund)

---

---------------------------
''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

The administration is not trying to change the whole system, just providing an option for private accounts for part of younger workers taxes. It is really a modest proposal. Federal government employees have this now and it works great. Ditto for the Congressmen, the college professors and probably all of the talking heads that tell you it would be the end of the world if it were instituted.

Mix that in with some combination of your first three answers, and you have an excellent plan.

The real goal has been stated over and over again. It is to create an ownership society. It is very simple, and also very profound.

          Private accounts for young peoples taxes, haven't we had similar things before; IRA'a, RothIRA's, tax differed anuities. If the gov wants to promote retirement accounts, I think it's a great idea, but you can't justify using a plan of the three items above and then diverting part of the SSI contribution. It's like running a defficite economic system and granting tax cuts.

Oh yeah, that's what we are doing right now. I get it. We'll just keep borrowing the money.

---

---------------------------
''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Well, I think you can do the three items you suggest and set up the private accounts. The whole idea of SS is to force people to save for their retirement. If it goes to the government, it doesn't get saved. We have proven that over the years.

I wouldn't support the private accounts without some combination of your three solutions. If the structural deficit were fixed through your three solutions, I think the market would be delighted and financing the so called "transition costs" would not be a problem.

I agree that the drunken sailor spending under Bush has made everything more difficult. Still, the SS proposals stand or fall on their own merits.

          We'll see. Something will have to be done with SSI but I don't think that this plan (individual investing) is in any way the answer.

---

---------------------------
''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Win the lottery.

---

customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

How bout four?

Not counting on it.

I'm 30 and I realized a long time ago that I shouldn't count on Social Security to be there when I'm old enough.

I'm paying in to support the generations before me who got us this far, but I'm not hanging my hat on retiring comfortably on Uncle Sam.

---

"Nobody gets out of here alive."

Sell illicit drugs in goverment stores , and tax it . Watch the bucks roll in. No shortages there.

What pisses me off is that we raised the payroll tax rates in the 80s to solve this very problem.

Has everybody forgotten that this problem was supposed to have been fixed already?

Where's the moral outrage?

How about 'cut me out' as in, take me off the grid. stop taking ss out of my paycheck and I'll sign away any future right to ss benefits. gladly. right now.

I really wish we had the choice.

WHAT THE F**K

When I was a cop, I didn't pay SS. Instead, I paid into a state system for public service employees (cops, firefighters, etc). This system was flourishing and I actually had a respectable return on my money.

Options are good. The American stock market is the greatest wealth producing device in the history of the world. Why shouldn't it be used to the benefit of the greatest number of people?

I'm no great President Bush supporter, but on this issue I am on board 100%.

---

*****
"In case of flood climb to safety"

Let SSA invest. Instead of private accounts, why can't the Social Security Administration just setup a stock market index fund to invest a portion of everyone's social security?

I also agree with Raising the Cap.

Not sure about Raise the Age or Cutting the benefit.

Do you actually want government officials controlling large stakes in our country's biggest corporations? No chance.

I am a big believer in private accounts, not public accounts.

I call it the "SOE" solution:

Tax Somebody Else

I don't see how having a index fund to match the SP 500, Dow Jones, Wilshire, or whatever would control corporations.

Sure, the government is going to own maybe even a majority stock holder in America's corporations and just sit on the side line. Like that is going to happen.

Look at the abuses that are surfacing now in Calpers (sp?). The idea is less government control, not more.

If the money just plops into an S&P fund, why would you want the government to own it rather than individuals? The whole idea of the plan is to create an ownership society. The likely improved investment returns are nice, but not enough to justify the upheaval by themselves.

Most people don't know the correct definition of fascism. The main part of the definition is the merging of government and corporate interests so as to be unable to know where one ends and the other begins.

Oooohh, I've got another one

M.I.P.

Make Iraq Pay

It's brilliant!