2008.09.30
Market Crash and Social Security
Does anyone remember that Bush and the Republicans were the ones that wanted to scrap Social Security and invest all that money in the stock market? After it had one of the worst drops in history, am I the only one immensely relieved they never succeeded with their plan?
Does anyone recall if McCain was for or against privatizing Social Security? That would be interesting to know…
5 Comments Categorized: grrr
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5 Responses to “Market Crash and Social Security”
- synnove says (October 1st, 2008 at 04:15:04 )
To find how Mccain voted Check out ‘thomas.loc.gov’ – which is the Library of Congress web site. Every bit of paper / debate / vote etc is available to be read. You can actually read the decisions from the Supreme Court and the actual bills on the floors of congress…not just the tid bits the media passes out. By the way, the stock market is still up over 250% from 2000.
- Zapski says (October 1st, 2008 at 08:24:12 )
So are living expenses. ;-)
My retirement plan involves an overcoat, a mysterious 2 liter bottle, many bad smells, urine stains, and eventually being found dead in a gutter by some neighborhood kids.
- Zapski says (October 1st, 2008 at 08:56:17 )
Oh, and by the way – when the stock market crashed on the 29th, it was in fact lower than when President Bush took office in 2001. 10,587.59 on January 19, 2001 compared to 10,365.45 at its close on September 29, 2008.
The bounce was nice though, and we did recover a great deal of that. How long do you think it’ll last?
Regardless, the stock market isn’t a good indicator of how well the economy is doing. Things like job growth and unemployment are much better indicators. As well as inflation rates, wage growth, trade balance and so on. For a good look at how well we’re really doing, I recommend looking at the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s nice summary.
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/2000-2008:-are-you-better-off/
- Nob Hill Ken says (October 1st, 2008 at 12:33:43 )
I wouldn’t be too quick to contrast Social Security favorably with securities-based retirement plans…yes, stock markets can crash, but they correct, and over time, if you invest wisely (or even sort of wisely), your investment is almost certain to grow substantially. As well, you’ll have access to all of those funds when you retire. Social Security, on the other hand, is part tax and part game of chance rather than a true government “retirement plan”. You *might* get back some or all of the money you paid in (or possibly, more), but only if you live long enough and only in installments…and it sure as hell won’t be enough to live on. A more honest approach for the government to take would be to tax people – at a significantly lower rate – to fund the very useful social services/welfare aspects of Social Security while eliminating the “pension/retirement fund” aspect of the program and (perhaps) mandating that people defer a certain amount of their wages into a retirement savings vehicle of their own choosing.
All that said, I think you’re absolutely right that it would be awful for the government to invest peoples’ money *for* them in the stock markets. As it stands now, at least Washington has to make excuses for the Social Security shortfall; if they invested the public’s money in the markets, they could (and doubtless, would) absolve themselves of any responsibility in the case of unfortunate investment strategies.
- Uncle Roger says (October 6th, 2008 at 12:10:45 )
McCain in 1999, on Social Security:
http://www.socialsecurity.org/daily/06-07-99.html
Some commentary on that:
