We're from the government and we’re here to help. Ourselves. The hit parade just keeps marching, doesn't it?

The obvious answer would be to strengthen Social Security which operates on a 1% overhead. Waste such as advertising, bloated upper management compensation, and arcane eligibility rulings don't exist in the SSA. Make Social Security the retirement system instead of a supplement.

Clinton's answer: Add a layer of profit skimming to make the system corporate friendly.

Deplorable.

Here's Yves commenting on this story over at Naked Capitalism, early this morning...

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Yves Smith

...Readers may recall that Bill Clinton planned to privatize Social Security in the second term of his Presidency. The Monica Lewinsky scandal derailed his plan.

As the Clintons knew, only a Democrat can dismantle Social Security. Hillary looks to be picking up where Bill left off. As David Sirota describes in a must-read story, Hillary is planning to introduce mandatory retirement accounts, a scheme that Hillary has mentioned in high concept form earlier. As details emerge, this “enrich Wall Street at the expense of everyone else” program is even more attractive to pet Democratic party constituencies than the 1.0 version of going after Social Security directly. No one in the Clinton or George W. Bush administration was so audacious as to cut in private equity and hedge funds in the way this variant would.

But Hillary, and her major advisor on the plan who is also on her short list of Treasury Secretary candidates, Blackstone CEO Tony James, are too adept to label these required savings accounts as a stealth replacement for Social Security.The plan, as described in Sirota’s article parallels the way the contributions are made now to Social Security, with both employers and employees required to put aside a percentage of payroll…but not in the form of Social Security taxes, but in individual retirement accounts that in turn are put in “pooled plans run by professional managers”.

If you look at James’ speech, what he is proposing sounds innocuous, a supposed additional 3% of worker savings. But that is a nearly 25% increase over what workers are paying into Social Security now. Moreover, most experts agree that to the extent that Social Security needs fixing (30 forecasts are fraught), some not very onerous tweaks would do the trick. First and foremost would be to eliminate the payroll tax ceiling.

It’s not hard to see the long-term game plan. Social Security will be cut due to purported need to keep the budget balanced while funding bombing runs in the Middle East. It will be turned from a universal social safety net more and more into a welfare program. That in turn makes it easier to make more cuts, since its core supporters will be further and further down the food chain.

Moreover, the canard is the assumption that James makes: “…if these savings are invested correctly and earn a good return for the retiree.” Tell me how this happens in a world of ZIRP, NIRP, low growth, high private debt levels, and equity prices increasingly dependent on unsustainable stock buybacks? …

And, folks wonder why so many Americans have given-up on our current political system?

The Republicans are going to be all for this. Likely to be bipartisan too. I hope this is one of those things we end up holding her feet to the fire on. I also hope that we're enough awake that we don't need Bernie or anyone else to bring us to action. Of course, if that were true, she might not win at all.
So ready for this to be over. That Giant Meteor shows no signs of appearing...

We will be mandated by law...
To place a portion of our employment compensation...
In the hands of people who are skilled at making vast sums of money disappear...

Have they gone suicidal?

Oh and stop calling Social Security and Medicare an entitlement...
Or refund the damn money that was taken out of my paycheck for it since I first started working!

health insurance making people buy junk insurance which people can barely afford to pay the premiums and then have such high deductibles they still can't afford to see a doctor, now this.
I don't understand how the government can make people put their money in this program.
People should get to decide on their own money management company to invest this money in, not the government.
As people have been saying for decades, raise the f'cking cap on SS and problems solved. But of course the government doesn't want to inconvenience the rich people who won't even have to rely on SS for their retirement.

Progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have been pushing to fund more robust Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on the amount of income that is subject to the payroll tax. That initiative has been promoted by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and most recently President Obama.
Why not try this instead?
Others have trumpeted separate initiatives to expand defined contribution programs. Since 2015, California, Connecticut, Maryland and Oregon have enacted legislation allowing workers who do not already receive retirement benefits to opt into state-run retirement programs. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio — echoing a proposal from the Democratic-aligned Center for American Progress — has called for letting workers with no retirement coverage buy into the Thrift Savings Plan, a low-fee, defined-contribution system for federal employees. It invests only in assets such as stocks, bonds and Treasury bills that do not generate big fees for Wall Street firms.

Hey Barack, you have been in office for over 7 years and just recently you agree that we should lift the cap on SS?
It's nice of you to suggest this just before you enter your lame duck term, you worthless POS.
Imagine if you had spent as much time trying to help people in this country as you have on working on the TPP and the two other trade agreements that are going to see more jobs offshored, give the banks, financial institutions and the corporations more power over our regulatory agencies that have already been captured by the industries that they are supposed to be regulating.
You already screwed us over with the ACA and now your sidekick is going to screw us over on SS.
I'm sorry that I believed the shit you sold me during your first campaign, but I didn't believe you when you tried to sell me the same shit during your second campaign and I don't believe a thing that Hillary says she is going to do except for what she said to the banks.
BTW, in one of her speeches she gave to the banks

I'll be back in a few minutes with what she said to them

The bankers are desperate, they know full well that once the retirement boom picks up more pace, as people can't put retirement off any further, That in effect will create a large draw down of funds in the stock market, As total invested retirement capital goes from $10's of trillions to $3-5 trillion, This will push equity prices down, or at the very least flatline the market for a good 10-20 year period.

They will push hard on this, as they need something to pass before the Euro banking system creates the next crisis, which will end any chance of such a system passing.

House. It was Hopey-Changey that put the safety net up for cuts during his demand for 'austerity'. (Of course that was after giving the Wall Street thugs a key to the Fed.) But they wouldn't bite.

"

i.e. she changes lies like a kaleidoscope.