Anti-social (security)

One other point I forgot to make in my last post before Mad Anthony goes nighty-night. Bush touched on what is probably my second-favorite issue after security/terrorism, It's the one government program that burns me up the most - more than socialized medicine or pork barrel spending that gets most of West Virginia paved with concrete named after Robert Byrd. That program of course is Social Security. Bush gets it in a way that Kerry doesn't.

Bush has proposed a 2% savings account, so that people can actually take some of the money that they earn, and that the goverment takes by force from their paychecks and gives to other people, and let them keep it. Kerry is against it.

I don't remember Kerry's exact words, but he talked about how he "saved" social security in the 90's, and how he will step in and do that again if he needs to. He doesn't seem to grasp a simple fact - social security will eventually collapse. You can't have a system where you pay out more than you pay in and expect it to go on for any length of time. This is the buisness plan that dot.com's had, and there is a reason that the ones that practiced this kind of spending don't exist anymore. Social Security wasn't "saved" in the 90's - it's just that it's death was put off a little. The reason for that was less Kerry's brilliant work and more the booming economy/dot.com bubble that increased the amount of money going in.

Now, I don't think Bush's plan goes far enough - I would love to see Social Security scrapped altogether, but old people are a powerful voting block and that isn't going to happen anytime soon. However, at least Bush sees a problem and has a solution. Kerry doesn't seem to grasp that the question is "when will social security fail", not "will social security have problems".

I think if people my age thought more about social security, they would be angry - because most of us are intelligent enough to plan for our retirement, and aren't happy that a huge chunk of our hard-earned money goes to the government. Because half of the money that goes to social security is "employer's contribution" (in reality money that your employer would have paid you but instead paid the government), people don't see how much they are taxed. I also think that social security is unfair to people who die young, and never get back the money that the government took (Since African-American men have the shortest lifespans statistically, they lose out the most).

Social security is a system that was designed for a small number of people - it was designed when it was rare that people lived long enough to make it to retirement age. It was never intended as a retirement plan, and it will collapse at some point. It's basic economics. Bush on some level realizes that. Kerry doesn't.