Andrew Hagen

Conservative Joe Scarborough and liberal Paul Krugman agree. The Bush plan to privatize Social Security will end up costing far more taxpayer dollars than the current system. (*)

For years now payroll taxes (the FICA deductions on paystubs) have mostly gone to pay Social Security, and partially gone to finance the federal budget deficit. That will change. As baby boomers retire, payroll taxes will completely go to Social Security. Then, for a temporary period of time, a relatively small number of other taxpayer dollars will go to pay for the rest of Social Security. It will be a payback to American workers for all those years of payroll taxes financing the budget deficit.

There appears to be no Social Security crisis, and hence no need for privatization.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 10th, 2004 at 21:18 and is filed under Economic policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.