Having digested almost a week's worth of rhetoric about Bush's Social Security plan, I have reached the conclusion that Bush is trying to wipe out it out altogether. The funny thing about this is, I would probably support a plan to phase out social security over time (provided there was still some safety net for the truly destitute). Instead, Bush is promoting a plan to "address the Social Security crisis" that will cause the system to collapse -- like some evil Dr. Kevorkian slipping a patient a cyanide pill while claiming it will cure the patient's cancer.... OTOH, I will give Bush a little credit. If his personal retirement accounts go into effect (BTW, it is no longer called "privatization", because that word didn't poll well) then at least the younger people who will be effected by the SS collapse might have a something put aside they can use later. Emphasis on "might". First we have to look at the SS problem. Everyone agrees that SS will eventually run out of funds, the only question is "WHEN?". Predicting the future economic state is a bit like predicting the weather, because so many things can happen to change it. Currenty, SS takes in more money annually than it pays out. At some point in the future this will likely change, and SS will begin paying out more money than it takes in. In order to pay out more money, SS will have to tap in to its "reserves" which are basically stacks of T-bills that SS has issued to Congress to help cover the defecit budget we have worked under for 40+ years. This strain on our annual budget will continue for some number of years until the T-bills run dry...at which point SS will have to find some way to survive solely on its annual revenue (either reducing benefits or increasing payroll taxes). Now, the dates of when this will occur are subject to much debate. In order to support his cries of "crisis", Bush has chosen the worst case scenario of poor economic growth coupled with steadily increasing life spans. In other words, for purposes of scaring us all, Bush is willing to assume that his tax cuts for the wealthy will NOT stimulate any economic growth, and that no President for the next 40 years will be able to stimulate any serious economic growth either. So, Bush says the date where payouts will exceed revenue is 2018, and the date where the T-bills will all be cashed in is 2042 (Bush calls this the date that SS will be "exhausted and bankrupt", purposely making it sound as though SS will just have to shut down). Nevertheless, the quibbling over dates is just politics. SS might use up its T-bills in 40 years or 75 years, depending upon whom you believe, but we should still look at ways to address this looming problem. So, what does Bush propose? Well, the logical thing would be to look for ways to increase SS revenue, and/or decrease the amounts paid out. We could accomplish this simply by: a) Slowly increasing the age of retirement, and restructuring SS benefits to encourage people to delay taking SS; and b) increasing the cutoff for SS payroll deductions. In 2005, you stop paying SS after earning $90,000. We could increase that to, say, $110,000, and ease quite a bit of the pending burden. But, no. Bush has come up with a plan to thoroughly GUT revenue, while pledging to make no changes to the SS payouts. He is offering to let younger workers divert almost 2/3 of their SS payments to these "Personal Retirment Accounts". It doesn't take a genius to realize that this will further accelerate the dates that SS will face its problems. FAR from resolving SS problems, this totally exacerbates the issue. Why has Bush come up with such an outrageous scheme? It should be obvious given the title of my post. Bush's plan is to bankrupt SS so that the system collapses under its own weight. He is hoping to protect the older workers by making sure they still receive their payments, and partially protect the younger workers by setting up funds for them in a different account. The middle aged workers, like myself, will get pinched, but we supposedly still have time to take care of ourselves. Also, with any luck, the system will collapse before Congress has had to repay all those T-bill, and a good chunk of our ever growing deficit will just evaporate. Not a bad deal in execution, but an outrageous way to sell the plan. Kind of reminiscent of the War in Iraq.