Since I began the campaign to save Social Security, I have conservatively posted perhaps a thousand messages, mostly on the Society of Actuaries website, but also in quite a few other places on the Web.I have also mailed hundreds of letters to the White House and Congessional members on this subject, as well as numerous other important players.
And I have done many talks and speeches on the subject, and will continue to do more, working up my courage to have a session at the National Press Club, a forum my dad used many yaers ago when he was responsible for Press Relations for Associated Press.
Only when the people know and get riled up enough to be able to discern the good politicians from tne bad in this area will dthe nation finally do the right thing.
When the history of this century, with all its miracles and inventions iand horrors is finally written, I hope there is a chapter on why it took so long to do what appears to be so obviously necessary. America, the gretest nation on earth, invented how defined benefit pensions work---more than 50 years ago---and ironically it was Congress that passed the laws to make it work better in 1974.
This engigma inside a riddle inside a mystery deserves a chapter all its own, as an example of how things can go so wrong in such an important area. I sincerely hope the ending will be that we did the right thing, make it a true defined benefit pension system, before doing exactly the wrong thing, converting it to a defined contribution plan---and possibly plunging the world into darkness similar to the way this century began.
I will do a lot here as long as I can---but I will need a lot of help and support.
Anyway, I am babysiting my grandaughetr in Boston for a couple of days, so I cannot do all that I want to here for a few days.
Please be patient. I intend to answer every question, and explain a lot about how these marvelous inventions work, and how they evolved and what makes them so great.
I will also give some of the history of them, and their opposite, the defined contribution plan (not really a pension system at all, but a capital accumulation system), and of course, the alterative universe of Social Security.
I will also explain why Social Security had to start as a payGo system but why it never evolved, as did similar defined benefit systems in the private sector.
It is a fascinating story, one worth exploring, if for nothing else than to discover how the human mind stops thinking after a while on a subject---a study in anthropolgy and evolution and politics and pefidy and maybe even the famous nature versus nurture arguements that will go on forever.
It's also, as I have said before, the result of something as mundane as proper 'bean-counting', the disparaging term often used by those who dont want to be held responsible or accountable for the financial aspects of programs, no matter hgow socially useful or necessary.
And of course of laws to enforce the same.
Free markets and effecient markets, both of which the US has more of than any other nation, both depend heavily on sucurity laws and proper accounting of businesses.
Remove them or even seriously weaken them and you have not just less free markets or less effecient markets, but misunderstanding, misinformation---often deliberate---
and sometimes chaos.
We are close to having that in Social Security, but havent yet done it.
