The Nacilbupera Guzzle

Whoever examines with attention the history of the dearths and famines … will find, I believe, that a dearth never has arisen from any combination among the inland dealers in corn, nor from any other cause but a real scarcity, occasioned sometimes perhaps, and in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases by the fault of the seasons; and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth. (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations IV.5.44)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Galveston Model for Social Security

On today's Glenn Beck program, Glenn highlights a fantastic alternative approach to Social Security called the "Galveston Plan":



In doing further research on this plan, we discovered that three Gulf-of-Mexico counties near Houston (Galveston, Brazoria, and Matagorda) opted out of the Federal Social Security plan for their county workers just before such an option was closed with the 1983 Social Security reforms.

In 2005, the National Center for Policy Analysis gave a thorough analysis of the results of this program and found it to be highly successful; we highly recommend the reading. "Workers' contributions were put into conservative fixed-rate guaranteed annuities, rather than fluctuating stocks, bonds or mutual funds" yielding an impressive 6.5% annualized yield over 24 years (and much higher than the Federal Gov't as shown in the Beck video above).

With such a successful program, we are left wondering why we are stuck with such an awful leviathan that Social Security is today and what we can do to start such a program in our own county--not only for public workers but for private ones as well.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glenn Beck is entertaining but in no way would I trust such a conspiracy theory victim and loose cannon to manage my social security which I depend on now to survive.

Nacilbupera said...

@ A:
(1) We agree: GB is hilarious! Did you hear his modified Van Jones "Green Jobs Czar" song where he gives the full title?
(2) We do not regurgitate talking points from opinion columnists, thus the link to the NCPA which has nothing to do with Beck. Did you read the article?
(3) We do not and have not advocated eliminating Social Security for current recipients; you presumably have paid your whole life into the socialist system. However, things like the Galveston Model and an increase in the retirement age are sensible solutions to a socialist system about to break the financial backbone of our republic. What solutions do you propose for Social Security?