Hundreds rally in SF supporting Social Security & Medicare

What a Marvelous event.
Thank-you so much to everyone who participated, for those of us who could not as there is no Schwab guy around.
We had a smaller demonstration against Bush when he came to Memphis, TN to sprew his SS poison.
Everyone has to keep writing and calling their congresspeople.
Howard V, you're L(((o)))(((o)))king good!
Sincerely,
Kelly

Goodie for them!
Goodness knows I don't want to be responsible for my own retirement. Why, that would almost be adult. I much perfer the government dip into other peoples pockets and give me their hard earned money.

Your comments are a good example of the dumbed-down mindset of the folks who fall for the corporatist propaganda. Excuse me but you must have never had an actual job or you'd know that as an employee you are paying into social security. It's our money. We earned it, were promised it would be there for our retirement, and expect to have it protected from the greedy mismanagers whose only concern is filling their pockets with other peoples money.

The money coming out of my SS isn't my money. It's going into someone elses pocket. Now, if there were private accounts involved, it would be my money and it would draw far more interest. As it stands now, it's just simple income redistribution. You may be ok with that, but I'm not.

There is much written elsewhere about the assumed interest you can get in the future, particularly when huge sums are suddenly invested at once and speculators would have a heyday (you're free to set up your own account anytime). When they switched to a choice between a regular social security and a private accounts system in Chile, the private accounts people ended up with half as much for retirement as the standard system. Another area that you don't seem to be thinking about is the cost for people who either live longer than expected, or didn't get a good return with their private account.
You'll end up paying twice.
Before the 30s, there was widespread senior poverty. When we end up with a bunch of seniors who lose out under the system, politically the country would end up having to institute some sort of patchwork secondary welfare system, or... these seniors will be lying around in homeless shelters, and you'll be hit up for charity money all the time. The country will not be ready to do that until we are at some sort of end-times peak oil scenario where everyone accepts that the standard of living is plummeting and the homeless seniors dying outside of hospitals are part of it, along with roadwarrior vehicles cruising the landscape for resource caches. Meanwhile, the rich speculators who made mint off of the initially rising market when billions were poured into the stock market at once will be living in a gated community somewhere.