There Is No Crisis…But There Certainly Could Be

President Bush, in promoting his ideas for reforming Social Security, has invoked the Chilean plan, which during Pinochet’s tenure switched largely to privatization, as a model for the reforms he intends.

The problem is, Chile’s participants aren’t finding the plan particularly worthy of emulation:

Dagoberto Sáez, for example, is a 66-year-old laboratory technician here who plans, because of a recent heart attack, to retire in March. He earns just under $950 a month; his pension fund has told him that his nearly 24 years of contributions will finance a 20-year annuity paying only $315 a month.

"Colleagues and friends with the same pay grade who stayed in the old system, people who work right alongside me," he said, "are retiring with pensions of almost $700 a month - good until they die. I have a salary that allows me to live with dignity, and all of a sudden I am going to be plunged into poverty, all because I made the mistake of believing the promises they made to us back in 1981."

The whole article is worth reading, to see the road down which we could be headed. I guess it just goes to prove that old adage: modeling the presidency after the authoritarian government of Pinochet is kinda kooky.