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Wednesday, January 05, 2005

And What Do You Get For NOT Rehearsing?

Ho.

Lee.

Fuck.

Remember when Bush said that his amusing little Social Security plan would divert, say, two percent of your Social Security payment into an account? Well, it turns out that his actual plan is gonna ask for a little bit more:

The White House cautioned Tuesday that Bush had not decided on a specific plan.

But the administration is leaning toward letting workers divert 4 percentage points of their 6.2 percent in payroll taxes — almost two-thirds — into investment accounts, up to $1,000-$1,300 a year, the official said. The remainder of the workers' payroll taxes would continue going into the system.

The key words here, as pointed out by Atrios, are "percentage points". 4 percent of 6.2 percentage points is .248 -- not that much to risk out of 6.2. But, as mentioned above, 4 percentage points of 6.2 percentage points is 64-1/2 percent, damn near two-thirds.

To my chagrin,
this information has been out there for awhile. But the sell has been brutally misleading. Even recently, it was being described as "2 percent of their Social Security payroll taxes", which implies that 98% is still in the system, rather than 35%.

I've been trying to figure out for five years now under what possible logic it makes sense to divert a hunk of peoples' future into a stock market that has been unstable at best. And the only thing that makes any sense is the same ol' plan that BushCo has been actively pursuing all along: making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The Wall Street folks who will surely be called upon to manage the investment funds will get one hell of a sweet payout for that service, before one dime is made -- or lost -- in the markets.

They are lying about the financial health of Social Security in order to divert the bulk of the money in it to private investment firms. They will let old people starve on the street to enrich their own coffers.

Call or write your Congresscritter about this today.

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