Privatize Social Security to Save the Economy

I woke up this morning to sound bites for the Angle-Reid debate last night. The contrast could not have been more stark, and I’m looking forward to the end of Reid. Is there anything worse for your career than to become the Democrat Senate Majority leader?

Reid’s biggest swing was his most predictable, going after Angle’s stance on Social Security. During the primary Angle was a pro-privatize or get rid of it altogether candidate, and she has now stepped back from that a little. Reid is of course a do-nothing Democrat, more than happy to continue to force Americans to throw money into a black hole and not at all shy about admitting they will lose out on the deal. His attack used the tired charge that if Bush had succeeded in privatizing SS in 2005 most Americans would have lost their retirement when the economy crashed.

For some reason, smarter political minds than mine have not mounted a respectable resistance to this claim, but it came to me this morning.

First off, Bush wanted to make privatization optional. Why don’t Republicans ever bring that up? If you’re about ready to retire or already retired, then don’t change anything, and keep sucking on the teat. If you’re young and can take on short term risk for long term gains, privatize. Bush tried hard to get that message across, but the likes of Harry Reid and the Democrats successfully scared enough seniors with their lies that the public never came around to the idea, and unlike Obama, George Bush listened to the people, even though they’d been sold the liberal lie.

But the real master stroke is that if Americans would have been allowed to privatize SS in 2005 we would never have had this degree of financial collapse. Think about it. If every day thousands of US companies received millions in new investment dollars the credit market would not have seized and yeah, the mortgage crisis would still have happened but millions of Americans would not have lost their jobs because American businesses would not have failed when the money ran out. The money would not have run out! President Bush would have prevented this collapse, but Democrats stopped him!

Conservative candidates need to make this point. Today SS money gets turned into an IOU with an ever increasing likelihood of default. If it were privatized it could be invested in American companies and American jobs! And if the economy takes a hit again history is on the side of the investor, whereas the future is against anyone relying on Social Security and its guaranteed 25% loss.