On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:45:01 +0800, hamei wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:

BTW, I here that your privatization of social security wound up sucking in a
major way. Is that right?


Now *there's* a good example of short memories. It couldn't
be but five years ago that the stock market tanked so bad
that every fool I knew lost about 2/3 of his/her "investment."
Now they're back to talk about 'privatizing' social security
again. These are people who'd put their dicks on the table
and hit them with rubber mallets every day of the week, just
to see if it hurt less on Friday than it did on Monday.

What's really funny is that they are using places where it
was tried, such as Chile, as shining examples of the
practice.
All covered workers had to place 10% (a tax hike from 7.5% ) of
all monthly earnings in the market. Then they had to pay a
"commission charge" on top of that.
Then there were "administrative costs" of about 3%
of **of average taxable earnings** (not investments).
"This is close to 30% of the 10% mandatory savings rate."

The brokers & swindlers got very rich indeed.

"The outcome of the same plan in Chile was devastating for the
working population" though.
AFAIK The government (and taxpayers) are still trying to
bail the mess out. It failed big time.

Meanwhile, back at the Texas ranch, this all seems to
be a plan to loot the social security *surplus* by the
neocons. Plus, they want two+ more TRILLION US dollars
in deficit spending to do it.
--
Cliff