Why Have Some Politicians Created a Social Security “Crisis” and Proposed Privatization as a Cure?
After all, privatization is not a solution to the “crisis” they are describing. On the contrary, it creates a new problem–how to fund current benefits, now paid by payroll taxes, when some of those taxes are diverted to private accounts. • Perhaps the worst aspect of the privatization debate is that it obscures the planned benefit cuts, which may mean the end of Social Security as a social insurance program. The intention is to so reduce long-term benefits for all but the poorest retirees that Social Security will effectively disappear as a social program. • The poorest 30% of recipients [those currently earning less than $20,000 a year] would continue to receive the benefits of the current law. For those receiving above $90,000 a year, inflation-adjusted Social Security benefits would be frozen forever at the level of the year this procedure is begun. For all other workers, there would be some upward adjustment. However, the benefits of a worker making $60,000 today would be cut by m
