Play it again, Mort

from the "small-c" conservative Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report:

In pursuit of his 'ownership society,' (Bush) wants to move Social Security toward 'greater individual opportunity, risk, and reward' by allowing individuals to carve themselves private investment accounts out of Social Security payroll taxes, much like a 401(k) plan. This raises a whole host of problems. It discriminates against poorer workers, for one thing. Why? Because the lower your income, the less you have to invest, and the smaller your return will be. The Bush plan offers nothing close to the financial security of the existing program. Then there's this: Are individual investors sophisticated enough to match the higher returns now being forecast?

Mr. Zuckerman, whose well-known fiscal conservatism is on display almost every week on the always enlightening McLaughlin Group, stunned me with this cogent and absolutely impartial analysis. For me, this was the capper:

Privatization thus gets things upside down. Social Security was not meant to re-create the free market; it was intended to insure against the vagaries and cruelties of the market and to permit Americans to count on the promise that the next generation will take care of them in their old age.

There now, why does it sound good coming from him but when Ted Kennedy says it, somehow it carries less weight. Hm...odd.

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