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Social Security Reform Thursday: Week Thirty -- Reform Is A Better Deal Than The Status Quo.

Thursdays are good days for reform, because they fall between Wednesdays and Fridays.

That's why WILLisms.com offers a chart or graph, every Thursday, pertinent to Social Security reform.

This week's topic:

Social Security Reform: A Better Deal Than The Broken Status Quo.

When Congress returns from recess in the coming weeks, they will take up the issue of Social Security reform. Right now, there is significant inertia behind GROW Accounts in the House of Representatives (.pdf).

GROW Accounts should not be the ultimate goal of Social Security reformers, but they are a great first step.

Here's why.

Take a look at the problems with Social Security:

For the next decade, there is a temporary surplus in the Social Security trust fund (which isn't really much of a trust fund). Suddently, after 2017, the surplus becomes a deficit. In the meantime, that surplus money is being raided by Congress to pay for highway pork-- and war-- and other projects Congress deems worthy at the moment.

So why not pass something to stop the raid on the temporary surplus, putting the funds into personal accounts, owned by individual Americans?

It is a no brainer. Stop the raid. It's also politically astute. It creates personal accounts, which will prove to the skeptics out there that "privatization" is far from a risky scheme. It will please elderly Americans who will not see a change in their benefits, paving the way for more significant reforms in the near future.

And personal accounts are just a better deal than the broken status quo.

Right down the road from me, in Galveston, Texas, the city took a "risky gamble" years ago, a gamble that paid dividends, literally.

Galveston was one of a few cities in the early 1980s that opted out of Social Security in favor of personal accounts in the market:

And it worked. Like clockwork.

And it will work for the United States.

Let's build some momentum behind more serious reform with GROW Accounts. And let's do it A.S.A.P.

The clock is ticking.

Previous Reform Thursday graphics can be seen here:

-Week One (Costs Exceed Revenues).
-Week Two (Social Security Can't Pay Promised Benefits).
-Week Three (Americans Getting Older).
-Week Three, bonus (The Templeton Curve).
-Week Four (Fewer Workers, More Retirees).
-Week Five (History of Payroll Tax Base Increases).
-Week Six (Seniors Living Longer).
-Week Six, bonus (Less Workers, More Beneficiaries).
-Week Seven (History of Payroll Tax Increases).
-Week Seven, bonus (Personal Accounts Do Achieve Solvency).
-Week Eight (Forty Year Trend Of Increasing Mandatory Spending).
-Week Nine (Diminishing Benefits Sans Reform).
-Week Ten (Elderly Dependence On Social Security).
-Week Eleven (Entitlement Spending Eating The Budget).
-Week Twelve (Benefit Comparison, Bush's Plan versus No Plan).
-Week Thirteen (Younger Americans and Lifecycle Funds).
-Week Fourteen (The Thrift Savings Plan).
-Week Fifteen (Understanding Progressive Indexing).
-Week Sixteen (The Graying of America).
-Week Seventeen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Eighteen (Debunking Myths).
-Week Nineteen (Reform Needed Sooner Rather Than Later).
-Week Twenty (Global Success With Personal Accounts).
-Week Twenty-One (GROW Accounts: Stopping The Raid).
-Week Twenty-Two (Millions of Lockboxes).
-Week Twenty-Three (Support for Ryan-DeMint).
-Week Twenty-Four (KidSave Accounts).
-Week Twenty-Five (Latinos and Social Security).
-Week Twenty-Six (AmeriSave).
-Week Twenty-Seven (Cost Of Doing Nothing).
-Week Twenty-Eight (Chile).
-Week Twenty-Nine (Entitlement Spending Out Of Control).

Tune into WILLisms.com each Thursday for more important graphical data supporting Social Security reform.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 August 2005 09:42 PM

Comments

Posted by: Am I A Pundit Now? at August 25, 2005 09:58 PM

Posted by: Hoodlumman at August 25, 2005 10:14 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at August 26, 2005 05:22 AM