The jury is still out

Okay, I've been unusually silent on the Social Security issue. That's because I'm reserving my comments for when I understand it more. There are conflicting reports coming in continuously, and I'm trying to get a handle on them. It's kinda like 9/11. When somone told me that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, I was like "Wow!". Then when the other tower was hit, that's when I was hit also. Someone was trying to hurt us. And it pissed me off.

When Bush initially suggested 'private accounts', I thought "when people are putting their FICA money elsewhere other than FICA, what's going to pay current retirees?". I answered myself "more national debt, of course".

Then, in his SOTU address, he said that all money put into 'personal accounts' would belong to us. Now I hear that, in addition to reducing our benefits by whatever we put into these accounts, we would be charged broker fees, and the gubmint gets to keep profits over and above what we would've gotten with Social Security, and I thought, "WTF?".

Not so, say the yaysayers. Yet I've heard these terms bandied around: "benefit offset" and "No Stockbroker Left Behind".

Atrios has asked that we attempt to explain this plan in layman's terms. So until I can do that, I'll withhold my comment and judgment, since all I've seen so far is smoke and mirrors. Judging from past experience, though, chances are that the administration is going to screw us. But once the smoke clears I'll try to explain it, and you can decide for yourself if our own people are trying to hurt us.

Then we can both be pissed off.