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Social Security 'Reform': Neither Social nor Secure
- Blind Faith in the Marketplace Would Destroy a Resounding Government Success -
The Roanoke Times
January 06, 2005
Lest we, as a society, forget the lessons of the recent past, people would do well to read Harold Meyerson's column, posted Wednesday on washingtonpost.com: "The 'Other America' may be coming back."
The administration reportedly wants to change the formula for figuring Social Security benefits - inflation-proof income, guaranteed for life, that is the bedrock of most people's financial security in old age - in a way that would drastically reduce them.
But, proponents of the change calmly assure, the reduced benefit would be replaced by the riches to be reaped from private investment accounts, set up with the money siphoned away from the Social Security system.
Simple,eh? Unfortunately, the Congressional Budget Office analysis of likely privatization legislation found that total retirement income - from private accounts and government benefits - would be less than under the current system.
While some people undoubtedly would come out winners, making more on investment accounts than they would have received from their government checks, some just as surely would be losers. And their safety net would be gone.
Bush proposes to end both the "social" compact and the "security" aspect of Social Security.
For a glimpse of the predictable consequences, see the Meyerson column, which draws on Michael Harrington's "The Other America," a 1962 book that helped transform society in a broadly beneficial way.
But, the pitchmen for privatization will protest, the country just cannot afford its Social Security system.
Wrong. Its financing is fixable. There is no need to destroy Social Security to "save" it.
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