Wisdom and Liberty's Impetus Returns!

Longtime readers (are there any out there?) will remember that back in the early days of this humble, one-guy-in-his-free-time blog the topic of choice was more often than not Social Security reform. It's the topic of several of the letters I've sent newspapers as well as the subject of the commentary article the OC Register published almost exactly a year ago. Since Congress gave up and the debate was taken over by the promoters of the status quo and their horrendous logic, little has been said about it here, though my opinions haven't changed one bit.

Well, it's back! It's being widely reported that the Bush Administration actually put provisions establishing private accounts into its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year:

But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
...
In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called "voluntary private accounts." The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016.

It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.

One would hope that some other system is devised (you're keeping about 1/3 of the total being contributed to the glorified Ponzi scheme on your behalf, counting your 6.2% and your employer's 6.2%, so it would seem simple and logical to cut each hypothetical benefit check by 1/3), but I'm quite confident that I'm not the only person who would gladly give up 100% of my future Social Security benefits for the opportunity to keep any of my own tax money in my own hands. A bird in the hand, you know.