First, let me say that I have no faith that Bush can put together a single proposal that doesn't harm most Americans and serve to funnel money and power to his reactionary cronies. I do wonder, however, at the reflexive, violent reaction of most liberals (and certainly kossacks) against any proposed reform of social security. There was a good description in the NYT a while back of the system installed in Chile in the early 1980s. I can think of a myriad of ways that this kind of legislation could be corrupted and turned into a way to shaft the middle class and funnel billions in fees to a few financial companies. However, is it really so bad, in principle, to create a system of forced savings instead of giant taxation and government subsidy?
Of course there would need to be all kinds of safeguards in the event of giant market downturns, and a lower limit to what people are expected to live on. Could this limit not just be set at what people currently receive? And couldn't it in the end save us all lots of money, and let us all retire better, if our payroll tax went into our own tax free savings accounts/investments where interest could accrue?
The arguments against it seem to boil down to:
- Don't fix what's not broken
- Don't let Bush do anything because he's incapable of fairness, honesty, or competence.
I'm very sympathetic to the last argument, but say we gain control of the senate in '06 (by some miracle). Would everyone still oppose this kind of plan if the Democrats essentially had veto power in the Senate? If the system was set up such that the government still guaranteed that noone would have to live with less than what's currently given out, where do we lose? I'm of course assuming that a responsible government wouldn't undertake this during a very expensive war or while trying to bankrupt the country with unnecessary tax cuts. But again, say the Democrats controlled half of congress and could insist on paying for as much of the transition cost as possible through repeal of Bush's tax cuts, maybe some new taxes, or whatever.