Friday, December 17, 2004

But George is such a truthful guy!

Krugman - Buying Into Failure - says "So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works, and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that, when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the elderly from poverty. "
Yeah, well, that's what the Americans voted for. The 59 million who voted for George Bush knew exactly what they were voting for, because he told them what he would do.
The other stupid thing about this "personal accounts" idea is that in about 15 years, people will start clamouring to be allowed to withdraw "their" funds for things like house down-payments and college tuitions and health care expenses and paying off debts. So not only will today's so-called young workers in the US be retiring in 2055 with vastly reduced government pensions, their "accounts" will be so depleted that they won't have any personal pensions either.
Oh well, there's always Edward G Robinson's Solyent Green solution, I guess.

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