Social Security, etc.

I met a 30 something woman at a party the other day. She is a "human resources professional", and she informed me that she had received a letter from the SSA that indicated that no person born after 1965 will receive social security benefits in the future (except those who become disabled). This was the reason that she supported the Bush reforms. She believed that she would get nothing without the private accounts. Was such a letter transmitted? She also told me that black squirrels are carnivorous.

In discussing reform around the water cooler, there seems to be a lot of confusion about what the Bush plan is. Most folks are skeptical, given the administration's track record of screwing things up, but the one reliable Bush-apologist insists that it is not appropriate to criticize the Bush plan because he has not actually proposed anything. We are supposed to support the President (war time and all that) and trust him to come out with a great plan.

I would just as soon scrap Social Security altogether, and one of my wingnut acquaintances assures me that the Bush plan is just a step in that direction. That is, the Bush agenda is to (a) make SS look more like a private asset than a social obligation, and (b) divert so much money from it that it fails without massive tax increases. If we are going to get rid of SS, we should debate it honestly. The "starve the beast" idea does not work; it just sticks taxes on future selves or descendants. I don't have children (thanks to those pesky child labor laws that make them unproductive), but I do not think it is moral to burden children with debt.

In fact, when I told my 9 and 10 year old nephews that Bush had borrowed so much money that they would probably have to pay enormous taxes when they grew up, they told me that they did not feel that they should be responsible and that they were not going to pay. I would not blame them if their generation repudiates the national debt.