quaderni on Sat Jan 15th, 2005 at 16:52:07 PST

As one young person to another... we've been fed that line of BS for a long time.  We need to learn the facts about SS.  The fund is solvent until the 2050s.  At that point, minor tweaking in payroll taxes will be necessary to keep the fund solvent.  There is the myth of the declining taxpayer ratio, but the steepest declines were in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the ratio went down from pre-WWII levels of 16:1 to 3:1.  We're now staring at a possible decline from 3:1 to 2:1.  All that's required to maintain SS is responsible government financing and a balanced budget.  Clinton / Gore showed it was possible - in fact, they were running a surplus.  Gore said that we could use the surplus, now, this fucking instant, to safeguard the SS fund for mid-century.  Bush wanted to give it away as a tax break to the richest percentage of Americans who don't need SS anyway.  All that jabbering about 'lockboxes' and shit, right???  Well, now it seems rather fucking important. 

W. and the GOP are sick, pathetic, lying fucks and cannot be trusted on anything they saw about public policy.  They eat money and puke out shit and blood.

Bush wants us - younger Americans -  to cut our own throats.  They've shown their contempt for us by sending us into Iraq to make Dick fucking Cheney and his Halliburtan whores rich.  They now want to fuck us out of anything else in positive public services that our government provides.

Gee.  Do I sound angry or what?!?!

Georgernon on Wed Jan 12th, 2005 at 14:20:27 PST

I'm 24. Before Social Security, the elderly were either living in hovels and eating dog food OR living with - you guessed it - their children and grandchildren. I can't see how the privatization effort is supposed to "free" our generation and our meager wages. What'll really happen is that the crushing burden of all those suddenly impoverished old folks will fall on us as private individuals, the arena in which most of us are far less well-equipped to handle it. The GOP asshats have no concept of public goods.