Homestead mailing list

[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

clanSkeen wrote:

> Don writes:
>
>  
>
> > In not too many years in the future the cuts in Medicare and SSI will be
> > combined with the cuts in private retirement so many will be forced to
> >    
>
>
> Many of us have been saying for years to run the numbers:  how many, what
> percent, of the population can be receiving SSI SSDI and retirement pensions
> before you have more than half the people expecting to receive goods and
> services while they are producing nothing. 

tvoivozhd---numbers have no ideology. Numbers ultimately rule in 
everything---education business, private business, any other business 
including Medicare and SSI.

I haven't followed it for many years, and given the Congressional 
passion for avoiding successful role-models arount the world, I know our 
"elected" representatives have not----but in Chile the magic of compound 
interest in a very few years in their version of SSI, stuffed two and 
one half times the wage-deduction into government-administered 
retirement funds.  Unlike ours, Chilean SSI is not a piggybank from 
which government can steal.  The investment funds were not confined to 
sterile government bonds either--and of course not junk bonds as well

A government can go two ways---government-administered SSI fund 
investment---or individually-owned, (portable, inheritable) investment 
funds.  Both have merit and defects of bad individual investment 
decisions can be minimized. But the transition of present U.S. SSI to a 
more rational system would require one trillion dollars, which 
BushBabble carefully avoids discussing..

One difficult thing in small individual SSI accounts is the enormous 
management costs relative to the relatively small cost of administering 
a single huge government fund.  You know how the prospect of siphoning 
off small-account investment capital has the stockbroker industry 
drooling all over the floor.

>