Interesting article today in Newsweek about Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton "considering" to run for President in 2008. I'm interested to see what either of these candidates' positions are on social security, education, fiscal policy, et cetera. Perhaps being in a funk forces me to delve a little into today's social/political issues...

Social Security. Did you know that by 2011 (4 yrs from now), money going into social security will be LESS than the money being paid out? By 2018, we're going to have to start dipping into the humungus social security slush fund we've been building up. And sometime between 2035-2050, the slush fund is going to run out. (this is all according to Olivia Mitchell, a professor who researches social security at Penn).

By no means am I an expert, but the following is a snipet of what I've gathered:

Option 1 is to cut benefits or raise SS taxes. This makes sense: either reduce money going out of SS, or increase money coming in. Unfortunately, politically unpopular.

Option 2 is these so called "private accounts", where a portion of your SS taxes are put into your very own "lock box" at the Treasury Dept, where it is invested VERY prudently until you retire. Also politically unpopular.

Option 3 is to pretend there isn't a problem, and hence do nothing. Politically this is very popular, because nobody gets screwed over. And as you've probably guessed, this is precisely the plan we're following.

Now I don't know, but fellow classmates of 2006, it doesn't seem that there are going to be any SS checks to collect in 2049 when we all turn 65. This is troubling. In accounting terms, Social Security owes about $3 trillion to people like us over the next 75 years, and as of right now, there is no way to pay for it.

Pretty serious, until you look at Medicare. The only thing worse than the current state of social security is Medicare. Medicare, on the other hand, owes somewhere in the neighborhood of $28 trillion to people like us over the next 75 years, and has no way to pay for it.

Since I don't vote in this country, I can only HOPE that Barak, Hilary, or whoever gets elected in 2008 will actually do something about the two giant white elephants sitting in the room, twiddling their thumbs as we all pretend not to see them.