Brian McKay
Social Security is a government plan where those who work put aside a part of their paycheck to help the previous generations who aren’t able to earn a living to support them. The plan is essentially a social contract; by paying for our elders, the favor will be returned when the next generation pays for us.
This plan has been successful since its inception, but there are concerns that the program won’t be able to sustain itself much longer. President Bush claims that by the year 2042, “the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt.” Earnings have decreased, cost of living has increased, people are living longer to receive benefits longer, and the boom in population has left even more recipients waiting for their monthly checks
In his latest State of the Union address, Bush proposed a privatization of Social Security, where a portion of your income would instead be put into a private account where it is invested in the stock market to produce higher gains. It sounds like a solid plan, but it is ripe with fallacy.
Investing in the stock market is, and always has been, a risk. There is no guarantee that your stock value will increase and make you money; in fact, all the major stock market indexes are far below what they used to be five years ago. In addition, the potential of companies going under and leaving you penniless always exists.
Bush claims that by using these private accounts, “the money in the account is yours, and the government can never take it away.” This simply isn’t true. Under the plan, you won’t be allowed to touch the money while you’re still working. You don’t get to even choose where your money is invested; the government will manage it for you-and for a small fee that will be automatically deducted. Even when you retire, the government will control part of your “private” investment so you can’t spend enough of your investment to put yourself below the poverty line.
The cost to start this project is immense, too. The administration estimates that it will have to borrow $754 billion through 2015 to get the accounts up and running, and much more after that. However, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal organization that opposes Bush’s proposal, projected that number to be even higher, saying that it would require $4.5 trillion to finance the first 20 years of the accounts.
In short, Bush’s new system is riddled with flaws and is definitely not the best plan for our future. Other solutions have been proposed that the Bush administration has largely ignored. There are even ways to stabilize our current Social Security system, by either reducing the payments or increasing the tax input.
Liezl Laurel
The new Social Security plan: is it a good thing or a bad thing?
I say it is a good thing. Eventually, our current Social Security plan will go bankrupt, leaving our elderly population without financial aid to help them as they continue their retirement. Apparently, the population is booming and we are receiving more money than putting back the money into our social security funds. And people are living longer, too many problems and the current plan is insufficient. This new plan proposed by President Bush states that the money taken out of our paychecks for taxes would go straight to a private investment for our retirement. So basically, instead of sending our money to a fund that will go to our older generation it will go towards our future funds of retirement.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea, being able to have a nice cushion of support for retirement. For once I actually believe that President Bush had a good idea. Plus the money for our retirement comes from our own money, so we don’t have to worry about hidden agendas from younger generations. We will always know it’s there. And we shouldn’t worry about the new plan going bankrupt because as long as we work we will always have enough money for ourselves in the future. However, if we go through with the plan now, many senior citizens may not benefit, due to the sudden change-they might not get enough support.
But we shouldn’t look at what could happen now. It’s all about the long run. The plan may not work for certain people now, but one day in the not-too-distant future, it will work. Why think about what could happen now when you could think about the future of the citizens of the United States? If we stick to the same old plan, then we could just wait for it to go bankrupt, right? Wrong.
That will end up causing more problems, like the elderly not being able to get the sufficient funds they need, and eventually, neither will us. The new plan hopes to prevent that. The plan will provide for us in the long run. As long as we work, we can provide for ourselves in the future. It is the same thing we are doing now, only a better version.