The State of the Union address

[Ghoulish Delight]

While I find it interesting that the grand a glorious plan that's been finally revealed is basically the exact same plan proposed under Clinton, except the individual does the investing instead of the government. Big whoop.

Does SS need to be fixed? Yep. Is it a crisis? Hell no. It needs a few tweeks. I mean geez, the plan as unveiled is hardly anything. Of course, the way it's presented is highly misleading. You aren't actually investing your money. You won't have access to the money that you "get" to invest. Instead, you get the interest...and ONLY the interest that is above and beyond what it would have made in the traditional system. Gee, golly, how generous, what an amazing incredible change to prevent this horific crisis.

Some numbers: Under the propsal, if you "invest" $1000 a year for 40 years an it earns 4%, you get...$21,100 when you retire. That's from an investment that would have grown to almost $100,000 at that interest rate. Now, keep in mind, that's how social security works. Under the old system, you paid in X ammount, and in the end, you got back the interest on that money as if it had earned about 3% a year. So you WOULD be getting more if you manage to invest it at 4% a year than you would have from traditional SS. BUT, Bush is selling this as a "nest egg" and as a "personal investment" when it's anything but. It's just a plan to invest Social Security dollars in sort of an open market (the government would actually still limit where you can invest the money) instead of locking it into using treasury bonds at a fixed rate. You still don't get to keep that invested money. Bush's rhetoric is, as usual, a bunch of crap.