On Tue, 24 May 2005 17:52:15 -0400, "Proto" wrote:
The reason so many people have only Social Security, as they by and
large, were told that SS would be there to bail them out when they
retired. A Retirement account. Something it was NEVER intended to be.
This is what I am trying to find out. Where does it say just WHAT it was
intended to be? I have heard many say what it was not intended to be. Who
can explain to me their idea of what it is supposed to be.
"Columnist Ellen Goodman claimed that conservatives were saying "that
FDR himself endorsed personal accounts." James Roosevelt, a grandson
of the former president, called it an "outrageous distortion" that
might warrant Mr. Hume's firing. Former labor secretary Robert Reich
called the citing of Roosevelt's interest in private annuities "just
one example of how the Republican propaganda machine is lying to the
American people about Bush's plan for Social Security, just as it has
lied about so much else."
But Roosevelt had indeed proposed a plan under which all workers would
have been allowed to make periodic voluntary payments in exchange for
certificates representing the amounts they had deposited. At 65,
workers would have been able to trade in their certificates for
annuities that paid up to $100 a month (the 1935 equivalent of some
$1,300 today) based on their total deposits plus interest. In fact,
Roosevelt expressly cited the need for private plans to become
available as the worst of the Depression passed: "I am greatly hoping
that repeated promises of private investment and private initiative to
relieve the government in the immediate future of much of the burden
it has assumed will be fulfilled."
But Congress balked. In an article this month titled "When Congress
Killed Private Accounts," National Journal notes that Rep. Frederick
Vinson of Kentucky, who later became Treasury secretary under
President Truman, helped kill the private annuity plan, saying he saw
no "particular need" for it at that time. But he also told his House
colleagues, "Many of us think the time will come when the voluntary
annuity plan, which rounds out the security program for the aged, will
be written into law." Yes, the plan proposed by Roosevelt and rejected
by Congress in 1935 is substantially different from the one Mr. Bush
is advocating. But taking into account 70 years of progress in
financial instruments, there are also many similarities.
No one really knows how FDR would have thought about fixing Social
Security today, 70 years after he brought it into existence and 60
years after his death. That's because Roosevelt was anything but an
ideologue. The historian Eric Goldman wrote of FDR that "he trusted no
system except the system of endless experimentation." FDR himself said
in a speech at Oglethorpe University that "this country needs . . .
bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method
and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above
all, try something."
I suspect that, whatever his views might be on personal accounts
today, FDR would have little use for liberals who attack them without
any suggestions of their own on how to "try something."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/bresiger/bresiger6.html
this may answer your questions
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner