[OT]America. The land of the not-so-free (economy)

[Will Johnson]

> I can hardly think that people controlling their own money, and
> getting a decent rate of return on it, is a bad thing.  Still, no
real
> problems with the program?  It can hardly be said to pay a liveable
> amount of money to seniors today.   I call that a problem.
 
(Why am I getting dragged into this?  Why?)

My problem with this issue is that it's not as clear cut as either side
would have us believe.  Do I believe that I am better equipped to handle
my own money than the government is?  Yes.  Are most Linux users (an
above average lot in my experience, intelligence-wise)?  Yes.  But is
the average citizen?  No.

The problem is that privatizing social security doesn't really take the
burden off of The Government.  For those of us who are careful with our
money, it does, assuming nothing unforseen happens (for example, how
many people saw Enron happening BEFORE it happened?  Even the SMART
people trusted the financial companies which were, even just months
before the crash, giving Enron a steady "buy" rating).

But suppose there's another huge stock market crash?  Or imagine the
results when folks with the financial acumen of peanut butter go trying
to manage their retirement money?  Yes, it's theirs to do so, but if
they squander it on foolish investments, then at retirement age, instead
of ending up on the SS rolls, they end up on the Welfare rolls, and it
still comes out of The Government's pocket.  The solution to THAT would
be for the "privatization" to limit the use of the money to certain
approved funds, but then we open it up to all sorts of complaints by
people who feel they could do better than the approved funds could do,
to say nothing of the brouhaha involved when one company's funds get
chosen and another's similar funds are not.

I don't really like the current situation, but as with a lot of
government, sometimes a bad solution in theory turns out to be in
practice much better (in terms of workability) than the others.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Linux discussion.  This
rant brought to you by a guy who really should be working.

--Will.