Bernard Wasow

on the Bush scheme to privatize Social Security:

"When it comes to pensions, President Bush's administration seems to practice a strange double standard: Private pensions are assumed to be superior [ha!] to the current system simply because they are, well, private. And so the president has stuck adamantly to the line that the solution to Social Security's perceived [the key word here] problems is privatization. But in reality, Social Security is far from crisis. And the private pension system is in serious trouble..."

Amen to that. Companies all over the country are ditching their defined benefit plans in favor of 401(k)s or scrapping pensions altogether. Companies miscalculated on the rates of return for pensions and want an "accounting whitewash," to use Wasow's words.

As for Social Security privatization, not only the brokerage companies pushing for it in order to make a killing, but companies would like nothing better than to ditch it in order to save money. After all, they put in 50 cents on every dollar paid in Social Security taxes (the employee, of course, picks up the other half).