There's One, Only!

"Kitchen Sink"

I'm sure that a lot of you have seen the AARP Social Security commercial where a middle-aged woman with a clogged drain has her house torn down in an effort to fix it.

The tagline for the commercial is:

If you had a problem with the sink, you wouldn’t tear down the entire house. So why dismantle Social Security when it can be fixed with just a few moderate changes?

Which is then followed by the usual "payed for by the AARP" stuff.

My first response to this commercial was "A clogged drain! That's how bad you think the problem is?"

To be fair, no one would tear down an entire house just to fix a clogged drain. (Unless of course, the house was owned by any government beurocracy. In which case the house would not only be torn down, but the new one would be built five years behind schedule, at a cost over-run of over 200%. But that's not the point.)

On the other hand, one wouldn't simply slap a coat of paint on a house with a massive termite infestation in the foundation. And that seems to be what the AARP seems to suggest with their "few moderate changes."

And then, they are always taking different parts of the President's plan out of context in order to cast each in the worst possible light.

First, they'll say that by "privatizing" part of the social security funds, there won't be enough money to pay all of the benefits, and that the plan will cause a deficit of trillions of dollars.

Then, they'll say that he is planning on cutting benefits, for no apparent reason.

What they don't want anyone to know, is that the returns on investments from the "privatized" parts of social security will more than cover any decreased benefits. Plus, if more people have proper retirement savings, they shouldn't need any social security for themselves at all. And less people using the system, makes it that much more viable.

Posted by GEBIV at April 4, 2005 01:58 PM