Gaming Your Retirement Income
If you’re addicted to the latest hot tip from Uncle Willie or listen to what your caddie heard whispered during a big-shot foursome last week, you’re bound to be enthusiastic about George W’s plan to put your future retirement income on ‘red 33’ and spin the wheel. Sounds like roulette but it’s called ‘privatizing social security’ and a good many thoughtful economists think W named it thus because it takes a public trust and puts it in private pockets.
Wall Street has a trade association, a nifty little group called the Security Industries Association. They have an opinion about how little their members will reap from privatization, which is sort of like foxes having opinions on how little farmers will miss the chickens disappearing from chicken-coops. Foxes haven’t yet organized trade associations, but that’s just another sordid example of the natural world’s superiority to man. Getting back to the SIA, they forecast no more than $279 billion in industry rake-offs over the next 75 yea…