{"id":1468,"date":"2005-02-03T03:05:59","date_gmt":"2005-02-03T08:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/02\/benefit_offset\/"},"modified":"2005-02-03T03:05:59","modified_gmt":"2005-02-03T08:05:59","slug":"benefit_offset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/02\/benefit_offset\/","title":{"rendered":"“Benefit Offset”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some fine print<\/a> from Bush’s Social Security piratization<\/strike> privatization plan:<\/p>\n

The plan is more complicated. Under the proposal, workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent.
\n. . .
\nIn effect, the accounts would work more like a loan from the government, to be paid back upon retirement at an inflation-adjusted 3 percent interest rate — the interest the money would have earned if it had been invested in Treasury bonds, said Peter R. Orszag, a Social Security analyst at the Brookings Institution and a former Clinton White House economist.
\n. . .
\nCritics of the Bush plan said the proposed “claw back” renders the whole idea of “personal retirement accounts” virtually meaningless. Indeed, the system would ultimately look something like a proposal made by President Bill Clinton, in which the government would have invested Social Security taxes in the stock market.
\nThat idea was criticized by conservatives because the federal government could end up choosing winners and losers in the financial markets. But under the Bush system, the government is still choosing the stocks and bonds to be bought with Social Security money, said Jason Furman, a former Clinton administration economist. Individuals would get a limited choice, and the government would still keep most of the returns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conventional wisdom is that the president’s plan is already dead on arrival with 90% of the Democrats and a few Republicans. I doubt this is will go over well with a number of the remaining Republicans. If I understand this correctly, it means that in exchange for assuming market risk, individuals can realistically expect only a 0-3% return from these private accounts–the rest will go back to the government.
\nSo our retirement insurance program gets dismantled and seniors get only a minimal return in exchange for assuming market risk. Hmm, who’s the big winner here? Those earning commissions from managing all the accounts?
\nWhich candidate was it that Wall Street contributed heavily to last year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some fine print from Bush’s Social Security piratization privatization plan: The plan is more complicated. Under the proposal, workers could invest as much as 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}