Social Security

Finally, we have arrived...

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress on Wednesday to deal with the country’s escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees. Without action, he warned, long-term interest rates would rise, seriously harming the economy.

  article

Paul O'Neill, Bush's first Treasury Secretary who was fired for not saying yessir often enough, had suggested a plan to fix Social Security using the $200 billion surplus we had when Bush took office. Instead, he spent it on tax cuts for the wealthy and war.

While the country is currently enjoying the lowest interest rates in more than four-decades, Greenspan warned that this situation will not last forever. He said financial markets will begin pushing long-term interest rates higher if investors do not see progress being made in dealing with the projected huge deficits that will occur once the baby boomers begin retiring. “We are going to be confronted ... in a few years with an upward ratcheting of long-term interest rates which will be very debilitating for long-term growth,” Greenspan told the committee if the deficit problem is not addressed. Greenspan suggested two ways that benefits could be trimmed. He said that the annual cost-of-living adjustments for those receiving benefits could be made using a new version of the Consumer Price Index called the chain-weighted index, which gives lower readings on inflation. He also said that the age for retirement should be indexed in some way to take into account longer lifespans. He noted that presently the age for being able to get full Social Security benefits is rising from 65 to 67 as one of the changes Congress adopted in the mid-1980s, based on recommendations of a commission Greenspan chaired. In his testimony, Greenspan said Congress should go further and index the retirement age so that it will keep rising.

And so then you have a fleet of 70-year-olds in the work force. Let's be honest. Can they continue to perform to the same capacity that they do at age 40 or 50? And let's also think about how employable any of them might be once they've lost a job. And let's also think about how many new people coming into the work force are going to be competing for the same jobs.

We are heading over a cliff, ladies and gentlemen. And the answer is to work longer?

Work will set you free! Seig Heil!

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.