Making that whole Social Security con game painfully clear.

In case you still need convincing about how the Bushistas' SS piratization scheme is flat out going to rip you off, flash back to here and look at the table (labelled "Table 2") and, as one example, look at the row for the year 2000. And what do those three numbers mean?

• "Scheduled Benefits" ($26,400) is what you'd get if all went well and Social Security kept motoring along without running a deficit before then.
• "Payable Benefits" ($19,900) is what you're predicted to get based on no fixes to SS -- this is the much-quoted "75%" that people keep talking about that you should expect to get given the current predictions that SS will run into trouble but will still be able to pay the bulk of what it should. In other words, it's what you should expect to get if SS is not fixed in any way.
• Finally, "Benefits (Social Security Plus Private Accounts)" ($13,092) is what you should receive as a combination of SS plus your private account under Bush's reformation scheme.
  

That's right -- Bush's fix to SS will cost you several thousand dollars. This is his idea of a fix. He takes a system that is allegedly going "bankrupt", well on its way to being "flat broke", and manages to make it worse.

Coming soon: right-wing economists defend the President's plan to reform Social Security. You know they will. It's their job.