More manure
A left leaning friend of mine has been trying to educate me on the Social Security dilemma. OK. He's not left leaning. If he leaned any more left he'd fall over. His issue with progressive indexing is a social one. Currently Social Security is a universal program. Everyone pays in. Everyone gets benefits. Implementing progressive indexing would essentially turn it into a welfare program and likely breed resentment from the middle class who would once again get the shaft. (One of these days I'll have to tell you my quintessential story of the middle class getting screwed over.) OK. I get that. I'll even get on board with that. Progressive indexing is not a great idea.
I don't know what the solution is. I rather think there wouldn't be a problem if Congress hadn't spent all the excess money and left the well dry. Talk about the fox guarding the chickens. And people wonder why I don't trust the government with my money.
I still don't understand the resistance to the idea of creating real wealth for people. Left-wing progressive types don't seem to have fundamental issues with wealth. The Kennedys and the Heinz-Kerrys seem to fit in just fine with that crowd. They just seem to have a problem with other people acquiring wealth. Maybe because they lack the enlightened understanding of how to hoard it properly? It's not like anyone is going to get rich off Social Security.
I understand some of the reservations about a 401K type plan. I recently read about an idea that would simply convert some of the money put into Social Security in to treasury bills. Treasury bills are as safe as the IOUs that people are currently putting their faith in. The two big differences are: T-bills actually have market value and get a little better ROI than Social Security will provide, and Congress won't be able to spend that money on anything else since it would belong to individuals and not the government. That sounds like a good idea to me.
Of course, if Congress can't spend Social Security surpluses, they'll just find some other way to purloin my pocket book, so maybe the point is moot.