rssThe 60 Plus Association, Proud Supporters of Social Security Privatization
Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 5:28 pm
- 5 Comments
One important fact about the 60 Plus Association’s move into the health care debate is that from 1995 through really the end of the Bush administration, its big cause was support for Social Security privatization. It did a lot of blocking and tackling when President Bush pushed for privatization in 2005, and it kept on message long after he dropped the campaign. Below, for example, is footage from a small 2007 event where 60 Plus Associate President Jim Martin made the privatization pitch to a like-minded crowd of students and reporters. A key excerpt:
“President Bush did what no previous has ever done in my forty-some years in this town,” said Martin. “He boldly called for reform of this system that has served seniors well, but now, according to a majority of citizens, it’s in need of an overhaul.”
Later, Martin put the organization’s campaign in more historical context. “Some 24 countries — back in 1995, the first year that we stuck our toe in the water, touching the third rail to see if we were gonna be electrocuted or not — 24 countries around the globe had started moving toward this personalized system,” he said. “Now about 40 countries a dozen years later. So I think it is the wave of the future.”
Here’s more video from the event, where Ryan Ellis, the sharp-tongued Director of Policy at Americans for Tax Reform (he jokes that an easy question from the audience is proof that it’s “softball season”), makes the pitch for private accounts.
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5 Comments
Pingback posted November 12, 2009 @ 5:39 pm
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Comment posted November 12, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
I'm over 65. I draw Social Security benefits. I think you are nuts! I also know you won't go away and that's not all bad – even Right Wing Whackadoodle GOPhers should have something to do after retirement. But, rest assured, I will work very hard against the privatization of Social Security because it doesn't make sense, regardless of how many others are doing it.
For rock-ribbed, rugged individualistc Republicans, you sound like frat boy joiners!
June Marks
Comment posted November 13, 2009 @ 2:03 am
These vultures are circling a nice big pool of money they can't wait to get their nasty blood funnels into. They are sucking money out of it now, and then claim it's not sustainable. I guess they think we'll forget.
This NYT artilcle from 2004
“Since 1983, American workers have been paying more into Social Security than it has paid out in benefits, about $1.8 trillion more so far. This year Americans will pay about 50 percent more in Social Security taxes than the government will pay out in benefits.
Those taxes were imposed at the urging of Mr. Greenspan, who was chairman of a bipartisan commission that in 1983 said that one way to make sure Social Security remains solvent once the baby boomers reached retirement age was to tax them in advance.
On Mr. Greenspan's recommendation Social Security was converted from a pay-as-you-go system to one in which taxes are collected in advance. After Congress adopted the plan, Mr. Greenspan rose to become chairman of the Federal Reserve.
This year someone making $50,000 will pay $6,200 in Social Security taxes, half deducted from their paycheck and half paid by their employer. That total is about $2,000 more than the government needs in order to pay benefits to retirees, widows, orphans and the disabled, government budget documents show.
So what has happened to that $1.8 trillion?
The advance payments have all been spent.
Congress did not lock away the Social Security surplus, as many Americans believe. Instead, it borrowed the surplus, replacing the cash with Treasury notes, and spent the loan proceeds paying the ordinary expenses of running the federal government.”….
There's more, I urge everyone to read the rest.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/weekinreview/…
Comment posted November 13, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
…“24 countries around the globe had started moving toward this personalized system,” he said. “Now about 40 countries a dozen years later. So I think it is the wave of the future.”
Where are these countries? How well are they doing? The first I know of to do this was Pinochet's Chile, a brutal little dictatorship. The second was the UK under Thatcher, in a system so unpopular and ineffective that hundreds of thousands have been fleeing it every year in the past few years. Argentina, which privatized its pension system in the 1990s under pressure from the IMF, is looking to abandon it for a public system. Pension system privatization seems to be more a failed experiment of the past than any sort of “wave of the future”…
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