New York Times says: “On Social Security, 51 percent said permitting individuals to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts, the centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s plan, was a bad idea... a majority of those surveyed said they would support raising the amount of income subject to Social Security payroll tax above its current ceiling of $90,000, an idea floated by Mr. Bush but shot down by Republican Congressional leaders. Yet there is strong resistance to other options available to Mr. Bush and lawmakers to repair the system, in particular to raising the retirement age or making participation voluntary.”
This last point is odd because no one in public life, to my knowledge, has suggested making SocSec voluntary; rather, the proposal is to institute a new system of forced savings in the guise of privatization. What bitter irony that the public would end up paying the “transition costs” to nothing. Thus would the 20-year campaign to “privatize” social security conclude with a very D.C.-like ending: higher taxes.
