By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Kasz216 on 06 November 2012
Edit Thread
richardhutnik said:
Kasz216 said:

I'm less worried about borrowing from China then I am borrowing from ourselves.

Intergovernmental debt is a bigger deal and generally ignored. (Hence why Clinton was able to "balance" the deficit, yet still raise the hell out of the deficit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its_still_an_empty_lockbox/2011/03/17/ABPpoym_story.html?nav=emailpage

is a good article on it.


Essentially, the US will likely get it's act together on what it owes other people... but likely screw over those who invest in social security, medicare etc.   It's own people.

Hence why private social security is actually a GOOD idea. 

Because I know if i put my money somwhere privately, that the US government can't steal it to spend it on defense or other welfare programs or whatever...

and in this case it really is stealing since they are spending money that is supposed to be used for social security on other things, replacing them with IOUs.

Unless you end up having people put money besides Wall Street, privatization of Social Security becomes a bailout program for Wall Street.  If Wall Street again goes bat loco and hedges like idiots and takes down everyone's pensions and retirement savings as a result, there will end up being a mass cryout by the public to save Wall Street. 


Fair enough... but if there is.. the end result is that we are exactly where we are anyway.   People could always just have the government bail THEM out instead of Wallstreet and give them the benefits they would of got under Social Security.

While the best result is... this is not a problem anymore.

 

Alternativly we could be like every single other country in the world and privtise social security (and medicare funding etc) and put it in the hands of investors.

 

Which is actually the method I prefer most... however nobody is suggesting such a thing.   Nobody has since Al Gore... who kinda suggested it maybe?  I think he just wanted to dump actual cash into a reserve though, which didn't make sense to me.