Sometimes their sources are complete BS.  Sometimes they misinterpret their own sources.  For real, a lot of people anywhere seem to not know what they really believe.  My parents are that way, and a large percentage of posts I see online involving politics are that way.  When evidence is provided that proves a point on the opposing side has validity, it is shot down vehemently.  They start acting as if they have all the qualifications to say that your evidence doesn't count.

To be fair... most people with basic statistical training should be able to shoot down 90% of the proof either side brings to an arguement.

It doesn't take a genius to spot obvious methodology errors.

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.

Err ?

You obvisouly don't know much about how Western Europe  ( France for example) or Japan system works......

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.

After the financial meltdown, look at who gets bailed out.  If the government bailed out people, they would of gone directly to people and got their mortgages stabilized.  But they didn't.  The Fed and U.S government decide to "stabilize" banks and give them bailout money and no interest loans, to make sure Wall Street was saved.  And then you have Santelli go on CNBC and rant against subsidizing "losers" when the idea of bailing out the people with the loans, and that rant became a rallying cry that birthed the GOP-cored Tea Party (contrast with Ron Paul tea partyers afterwards).  Tea Party principle is you have the losers die off, in order to provide a feedback to markets so bad things don't happen. 

http://www.theonion.com/video/paul-ryan-spending-final-day-of-campaign-reminding,30256

That's exactly how Japan and France works.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120811003538.htm

"The nation's kosei nenkin public pension program for corporate employees logged a surplus of 2.91 trillion yen in the balance of payments for fiscal 2011, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Friday.

The market value-based balance swung into the black from the previous year's red thanks to investment gains on a stock market recovery from the slump in the aftermath of the March 2011 disaster, ministry officials said."

France's Pension Reserve Fund works the exact same way.  Most countries take their surplus pension funds and invest them in the stock market and in bonds and hire successful investors to run their pension funds for them.

If you wanta  big source.

http://www.oecd.org/insurance/privatepensions/40194872.pdf

Neither country's system is privatized which was your big point.

And being french and having worked there I have a much better idea how the french system works..

You get guaranteed a certain percentage of your salary in retirement in france based on how many years you worked.

There is a retirement age ( much younger than in the US, around 63.5 I think now).

If you work the number of years required ( around 40) you get roughly 70% of your salary when you retire ( salary being determined on an average of what you made the last 5 or 10 years you were working).

No matter how good or bad the stock market does you get the same amount so the stock  market has no impact.........

The fund you mention for France is some recent fund that was set up to help cover the deficit in pension payment that is forecasted to happen later in this century.

Uness the pension fund goes bakrupt... in which case you lose your money.

Putting the money in the private sector... run by experts... aka privatising it.  Is the only thing that makes any common sense.

The American plan of "IOU's" was just an awful idea. 

That is my main point.

That pension fund you keeps mentionning isn't what pays for social security benefits.

The money in this recently created fund barely covers the expense of french social security in 1 year..

It was created to help covers these costs when they run over in 10 years and the principal source of funding of that fund is actually the selling of wireless spectrum to cellphone networks.....

If the amount of money that comes in every year doesn't cover the amount going out the french government will do as it has done in the past which is one of two things :

- raise retirement age which is currently 62-63 ( far lower than in the US for example)

- increase retirement contributions through taxes.

There isn't the wild disagreement on this topic in France that there is in the US. There is some disagreement but neither side is seriously promoting moving toward a private system....

And once again the big difference between the french system and any US system is that you know in advance how much you will get in retirement in france, it is a fixed percentage of the income you had when you were working....