Private Social Security Accounts II ?

Some time ago I wrote that, on reflection, I think private Social Security Accounts may be a good idea. A couple of you accused me of breaking the ranks of liberal Democrats, which I was surely guilty of doing. Much as I hate to erode any of my long held parochial boundaries (and none are longer or more fiercely held than liberal Democrat), I still hold the same view.

I was late in learning that the so-called Social Security Trust Fund is a trust fund in name only. Congress has spent the money freely so there is no fund. It is a pay as you go fund, meaning my monthly check (yes, I am on Social Security) is funded by the payroll tax (FICA) on those who are still working. Now that we retirees are growing in number and living longer, the funds to support us are coming from fewer workers and will, at some point, be insufficient.

So why doesn't it make sense, first of all, to make the Trust Fund a Trust Fund, so the money is invested, whether privately or by the government to earn money to pay future retirees? The reason it hasn't happened before, I assume, is because there was so much money pouring into the fund that it was irresistible to politicians looking for ways to fund their programs. An understandable if bad reason.

Of course, if the money were taken off the table for congressional spending, we would have an even bigger budget deficit than we now do, but it would be an honest deficit since it would not be reduced by money we owe retirees.

And if the money is made unavailable to congress, then surely it makes simple fiscal sense to let some portion of it go into individual retirement accounts. After all, money market funds have returned more, always, than the near 1% that most recipients of Social Security will realize. And there is virtually no risk to money invested in money market.

What's more, the money invested will be working for the economy.

Is the reason Bush has done such a lackluster job of explaining and promoting this idea because he fears losing that revenue for his budget-busting plans? Some fiscal conservative!

Bush's Pep Talk

Andrew Sullivan, who has been a supporter of the Iraq war from the beginning, thinks it was good that the President reiterated his resolve last night, because in a war resolve is a big deal and popular support is critical. Sullivan goes on to say he thought Bush's attempt to explain how we were going to prevail was weak to non-existent.

I have been against the war from the start but now believe we must find some way to at least stabilize Iraq, if we can, or we will have left ourselves in a much more vulnerable position than when we began. The military side of that seems to me to include sealing the Syrian border, which we have been reluctant to do for reasons yet to be explained. And the political side, even tougher, has to do with appearing much more willing than we have so far to let the Iraqis sort out their own political and religious issues.

Unlike Viet Nam, which we could leave and lick our wounds here at home, our Iraq adventure appears to have given new impetus to Islamic rage and recruitment of terrorists.

The worst nightmare is that this really is a quagmire, that Bush and his people have no plan other than more force to achieve something before we leave. I found last night's speech frightening because the monotone voice in which Bush read his speech, stumbling over words, halting at odd points, without significant new ideas, left me with the impression of a desperate lost man.

Stronger Or Dead

Yesterday, after having the 12 stitches from a bike accident removed from my leg, it seemed time to go on another adventure. My two biking friends have ben bugging me for a couple of years to add a road bike to my toy collection. I have been riding my mountain bike over dirt roads and down rocky gullies, loving it, but they waxed eloquent about the pleasures that awaited long road rides between rough off-road rides.

I did spring for one and I have loved riding it, though road riding feels even more perilous than mountain biking and I am feeling the longer rides, needing at least a day's rest between rides. And I suspect it was my weariness at the end of a long beautiful ride that caused me to be lazy, not snap my foot out of the stirrup and go down hard, derailing and having the cog chew its way up my ankle. I was probably lucky to get away with those 12 stitches and no ligament or muscle damage.

Yesterday's ride was as usual wwith Conrad who, even though he is 6 months younger than I, has the strength and endurance of a man half his age. The first 10 miles were a long gradual downhill and my confidence was building. Finally we turned off the main road onto a small country road which made the ride even better. Until we started a gradual, then not so gradual climb, at the start of which Conrad said, ominously, "This is where it starts to count."

I had already been counting, but Conrad had not. When I had ratcheted down into my lowest "granny" gear, assuming we must be near the top, I asked Conrad, "Where's the crest of this #%^$ hill?"

"Just up the road," he said cheerily. Right, about five miles up the road. And by the time we reached it, my heart rate at been at maximum for longer than I can ever recall and my right knee was calling for a replacement.

Conrad subscribes to the notion that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I point out to him that there has to be a point of diminishing return in that formula. But he thinks not. He thinks allowing for age would be the beginning of the end.

And he is likely right. All my life, or at least the past 30 years or so, I have found myself among people who drive me much harder than I think I would drive myself if left to myself. What I have discovered is that I am much stronger and more resilient than I thought. But I still don't believe it, still think I hang on by a thread while I struggle to keep up with the strnger tougher people in my life.

Might describe my marriage.

Orwell Speak

Secretary Of State Rice, at a meeting of nations who have largely demurred from our Iraq adventure, chided the other nations saying the people of Iraq deserve a chance to gain the freedom they seek. Sometimes the requirements of diplomatic nicety must by excruciating. What might those from the other countries have responded had they not felt the restraints of diplomacy?

"Madam Secretary, your nation has done more to destabilize the middle east than all the other nations combined. By leaning solely on your military might, like trying to swat a fly with a nuclear weapon, you have turned what remained of moderate Arabs into militant anti-west Islamists. You refused to listen to the counsel of nations; you insisted on making a case without evidence, and you bullied your way into a morass you are now asking us to bail you out of."

Smarter and clearer heads than mine, such as Thomas Friedman, still believe there is a chance to salvage something worth while from our failed war. I hope they are right. But even the long shot he hopes for depends on the Bush people listening to new voices and becoming willing to consider their errors and take a new course.

Is there anything in the tenure of this administration that makes one think that is likely?

The lone hope I have is that Bush, now a lame duck with no clear heir, hasn't the scary countenance that has caused his own, and a significant part of the opposing party, to knuckle under to his bullying.

We are at a crossing point in testing the ability of democracy in this country to turn us aside from disaster.

Conservatism vs. Libertarianism

If you don't believe the Bush administration's total lack of focus on addressing our oil economy is purely self-serving, what does explain it? It is easy to say that Bush and Cheney both got rich in the oil business and are rewarding their friends and themselves. But perhaps it is their conservative convictions, their reluctance to interfere in the market place that drives their actions. Despite the evidence that conservatives are not reluctant to intervene when big business gets in trouble, as with the Chrysley bail-out, the Savings & Loan bail-out, which they would say is because it would have seriously wounded the entire economy (it's still tinkering with the market place isn't it?), suppose they really do think the market best adjusts itself.

Isn't that Ayn Rand libertarianism, not conservatism?

I am drawn to libertarianism (Vermotn comes closest, in some ways, to being a linertarian state than any I have lived in before), except that I don't trust our species to curb our own avarice even in the face of chaos and self-destruction. Lord Of The Flies is not only about adolescent behavior, it is about human behavior.

In the 70s, when the first Arab oil boycott disrupted our economy and our lives, after standing in gas lines, buying gas only on alternate days, we began looking for smaller gas-conserving cars and agreed to drop our speed limit to 55 mph. The oil rich nations saw their market shrinking, dropped prices, and we returned to our profligate ways.

You could make the case (I do) that our disastrous Iraq adventure stems from our renewed dependence on mideast oil.

So if conservatives have some interest in conserving the Unites States as a viable player in the world economy, wouldn't you think we might seriously address this matter?

Christian History

George Weigel, a Roman Catholic thinker, in a speech to the Foreign Policy Institute, has offered a challenging understanding of recent events in Eurpoe and their effect on the U.S. He suggests that rampant secularism (seen most recently in wiping from the proposed EU constitution any reference to a Christian past) has so demoralized the continent that it is suffering a sort of massive ennui that leaves militant Islam with a free pass to the future.

His is the first interpretation I have seen of the startling low birth rate in countries that once worried about over-population, notably Italy, France and Spain. So low, Weigel says, that the next generation will never know siblings, aunts or uncles. It is true, I believe, that the only reason the birth rate in our nation is above replacement level is due to recent immigrants, notably Hispanics. But they are hardly secularists.

Weigel argues, and I agree, that trying to eliminate the past is not only futile but emotionally depressing. And that relying solely on the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on denying the depths of spiritual richness to reality, robs life of an essential dimension. But there is nothing new about this debate.

What he fails to address is the role of the church in all this. The recent right turn of the Roman Catholic Church, demanding right belief and forbidding the clergy to join the struggle for justice in impoverished countries, has fit neatly with right wing American evangelica narrowness and meanness.

But he raises a good point and I take his point seriously. Deprived of spiritual quest presses down the human spirit. Whether that explains Europe's low birth rate is hard to say. But if the church is to lend to the relighting of hope and excitement in the old Christian west, and to serious challenge of militant Islam, she is going to have to risk loosing the reins on what is fair game for inquiry.