Social Security Reform Research Paper

Social Security:

Being a nineteen year old college student, what does Social Security have to do with you? The fact is, it has every thing to do with us as students! Shortly after President Bush's re-election, he started to put his new found political muscle into Social Security reform, declaring now is the time to act. This new reform will allow workers to withhold payroll endings and put that money into personal retirement accounts. This new plan is designed to give the American people the ability to invest their own money. So many of us less informed and younger voters might ask, why do we need this new Social Security and what is wrong with the old system? The answer is simple, we simply have too many people to support the system
I feel that as students we simply are not paying enough attention to what is going on in our country. Social Security is going to have a very big impact on our lives if we don't start taking action. The fact is that the people who will be affected by this new reform the most are this generation; it is not the President or his generation of baby boomers, it is us, the young college students. If our generation is going to be affected by this new reform then don't you think we should know why we need Social Security to be reformed, and how the new system will
This is how the Trust Fund works right now, the federal government collects the pay role tax. These tax dollars are used to pay benefits to current retirees. Then the money that is left over is credited to the Social Security Trust Fund with a I.O.U. The surplus of cash is brought into the program over benefits paid out; it is then spent by the government on other government programs. A example of this is an episode of The Simpson's where Homer walks over to the refrigerator to get a donut; he opens the door and grabs the box of donuts, but what he finds instead of a donut is a piece of paper that says I.O.U. one donut Homer Simpson. The only way that he can get the donut is if he goes out and buys a new box with his own money. This is how the Social Security Trust Fund would work if it were to become exhausted. The sources that economists say that we could use if the Trust Fund became exhausted would be to slow the growth in benefits, such as food stamps. Other sources that we would have to use would be to increase taxes, and increase investment rate of return. The country would be in a world of hurt if we had to cut food stamps and increase taxes, just so that we could support the Trust