Hillary Proposes Plan to End Abortion, At Least Among the Poor
Much has been said of Hillary Clinton's absurd and fiscally irresponsible populist pandering idea of giving every baby $5000 at birth.
But has anyone thought about what effect this might have on abortion and birth rates among the poor? Her husband bill took a lot of flak from his own party to take on welfare reform, and reduce the financial incentive for poor single women to have babies. So now, Hillary is going to revive this incentive? Every woman who goes in to have an abortion is basically torching a $5000 bill. She may do more to limit abortions than George Bush.
Postscript: Yeah, I know, the program would probably be structured as some sort of bond that doesn't come due until age whatever. If so, how long do you think it will take payday loan companies to figure out how to factor this bond and pay out now in exchange for the bond's future value.
Mark:
Actually, such an "endowment" is not a bad idea and in my view can play a very important role in transitioning Social Security to private savings. I personally would propose a $10,000 enodowment given at birth to every legal US citizen.
With a 5% return over the course of a lifetime, these individuals at the age of 70 would have almost $300,000. What is $300,000? That is enough of an endowment to replace most Social Security payments. ($300,000*5% is $15,000 a year).
These individuals can then supplement this retirement income with personal retirement savings.
And, because the future payouts for the SOcial Security system have thus been totally eliminated 70 years down the road, we have more options to address our current and near term problems.
Paying for this new program is easy. Pushing back the Social Security retirement age of each age cohort one year is enough to pay for the program. Combine this with a reduction in the cost of living index, push back the retirement age an additional year, and eliminate any early retirement options for Social Security benefits and suddenly the fiscal mess of Social Security has a major fix.
September 29, 2007, 5:13 pmCharles D. Quarles:
Mark,
Where will the initial $20 to $40 billion come from? Governments may coin/print money, but they don't *make* money. Also, do you think that Socialists will allow you to *own* the "bond" they are bribing you with? They certainly don't allow you to *own* your "Social (In)Security" pension even though they stole your and your neighbor's money to fund it.
September 30, 2007, 8:06 pmMark:
I already explained. The initial money will come from defering the pensions of Social Security recipients for one year.
I would revise the current Social Security scheme by requiring the age of benefits for each age cohort to increase by a total of two years, reduce the cost of living increases by 50%, and eliminate the early benefit options (currenlty at 62.5 years of age). I believe that this, coupled with private accounts and this "endowment" would financially allow the transition from public Social Security to private retirement accounts.
As far as private ownership of the initial endowment account; yes, the only way for this to work is if the accrual of interest and investment income is real. The money needs to be invested in the private market rather than in a figurative government account.
One reason for such an endowment is that it can provide for the transition of Social Security from a public program to a private program. With these "endowed" babies we would create a generation of people who would pay INTO the Social Security system but never would receive benefits from such.
A tradeoff for this would be to create this system and attach a provision for private accounts.
One of the major arguments against privitization is the transistion costs. Some people have invested large amounts of money into the SSA system, and it hard to argue that they should not receive any benefits.
What I would do for some of these people is to allow them to trade their "present value" of their Social Security contributions for the tax liabilities against their IRAs and 401(k)s. Then, these people would be allowed to contribute a substantial portion of their income into private accounts whose growth can never be taxed.
September 30, 2007, 8:33 pm