What's that W stand for anyway?

I think I've got it.... George "Watch me cut taxes with my right hand while I pick your pocket with my left" Bush.

Now what about the Social Security thing? Dubya's plan is to prevent insolvency by shifting the system to private investment accounts... Now the insolvency issue is just this: about 40 years from now the system will be taking in less than it's paying out.

At that point we will either have to raise taxes or cut benefits.

How will private accounts fix this? It won't. Period. This is just more picking your pocket with his left hand.

But it is kind of expensive. In order to switch from "pay as you go" to private investment accounts, we'll need to make an investment of about 2 trillion dollars.

Don't know about you, but I have trouble conceiving of a billion dollars and we're talking 2000 times that. Let's put it in perspective: The whole US economy is about $12 trillion.

So transfering Social Security to private accounts is like putting an additional 17% tax on the whole economy... so much for tax cuts, lol.

OK, we've gotten to dumb question time... how long would Social Security remain solvent if we just added $2 trillion to the Social Security trust fund? Maybe that would be a better approach.

BTW, several other counties have tried switching from "pay as you go" retirement systems to "private investment" systems. It's been a disaster in pretty much every case. The only one that anyone thinks is a success is Chile - and it's only government types with rose-colored glasses welded to their faces who believe that fairy tale.