still more reality intrudes on bush's "crisis"

From The Guardian :

The case of the missing crisis
President Bush is predicting doom for America's social security system, but some critics are questioning his motives, says David Teather

It is has been dubbed "the fake crisis" by its critics, and there are many.
Since re-election, the Bush administration has been aggressively arguing that the social security system, which pays cheques to America's elderly, is facing insolvency.
President George Bush insists the system is in need of dramatic reform if it is to avoid going broke. At the heart of his solution is partial privatisation; allowing individuals to divert tax dollars into personal accounts that would be invested in the stock market and carry the attendant risks and rewards.
It would be the most radical reform of social security since the New Deal came into being 70 years ago and, as one commentator has noted, do more to dismantle the programme than any of Mr Bush's Republican predecessors managed to achieve.
---
"The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons are now trying another bum's rush," the economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times. Democrats are in the mood for a fight. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid described the Bush plan as a "disaster for the most successful social programme in the history of the world".
---
"The existing program, as it has been developed in the last 70 years, provides a stable monthly income that has prevented seniors, almost 50%, from falling into poverty. I don't think we want to erode the principles of that system," she said.
---
"But there is a strong argument, which the (social security) agency acknowledges is a possibility, that the system is solvent as it is."
The real issue, Mr Lowenstein pointed out, could be that the government has been spending the social security surplus and will need to find the cash to repay its debts from 2018, causing even larger federal deficits down the line.
---
Today he receives an amount indexed to wage increases. That would shift to price indexing. Because inflation has grown in the past far slower than wages, it would lead to benefits being cut by 40% in real terms by 2075, according to some estimates.
The other issue thrown up by private accounts is the immediate impact on federal debts. By allowing younger workers to shift cash away from the trust fund, the Bush administration would starve the system of a large chunk of revenue. The government would be forced to borrow a further $2 trillion in the next 10 years on top of the already record $5 trillion deficits run up in the Bush administration's first term.
Wall Street's role in managing the funds is also controversial. Investment bank fees would effectively be deducted from social security taxes.
---
Over the next 75 years the Bush tax cuts, largely aimed at wealthy Americans, are projected to cost between $10 trillion to $12 trillion. Simply paring the cuts back by a third and putting the cash into social security would cover any funding shortfall.
Instead, through the introduction of private accounts and increasing the federal deficit even further, President Bush, she said, is "transforming an imaginary crisis into a real one".
---

Of course, we well know that bush will never listen to logic or facts and bases everything that he does on, well, nothing really! Of course, as usual, the American public are the ones that will be hurt by his stubborn insanity.
---

Man, the evidence against bush's plan continues to mount. Here the NYTimes explains the mess that a similar plan has caused in Chile.