(no subject)

I bought a well-used Sony Vaio laptop on ebay recently - my Dell was just too slow to run the statistical programs I need it to, and the CDROM finally gave out. So, I went from top-of-the-line-circa-1996 to top of the line circa-1999. It does have a number of distinct advantages: faster, much bigger and brighter screen, internal modem - even has a DVD drive!

Unfortunately, the hard drive in the thing went faulty within a week of arrival, so I decided to put a 20GB drive in it to extend it's viability. Something I didn't know is that the Vaio is difficult to switch hard drives in, since Sony decided to put the HD under the keyboard in a fairly inaccessible place. Fortunately, the web came through again, and folloiwng the instructions I found posted here by a tech, the procedure was fairly painless. Didn't even lose any of the tiny screws.

A Social Security fix that might work

via Andrew Sullivan, found this brief on a proposal by Phillip Longman to rescue Social Security from the train wreck it appears headed towards as the Baby Boom reaches retirement age. It's pretty simple, really:

"Monthly Social Security benefits would remain what they are today, but the age at which future retirees qualified for them would be delayed. Today you can qualify for early, reduced benefits at age 62; that age would gradually increase to 68. The retirement age for full benefits would be pushed back from 65 to 72. Preliminary analysis by the SSA indicates that the rollback in retirement ages would not only save enough money to fund the Early Retirement Accounts, but also return the system to solvency."

This proposal sounds reasonable. As a Gen-Xer, I always figured I'd never see any of the Social Security payments I put into the system, unless I was unexpectedly disabled - it was all going to be gobbled up by the Baby Boomers as they passed through. It remains to be seen whether any of the current political leaders have the courage to bite the bullet like this, but the current meme that everybody will continue to get full benefits at current age cutoffs is just unrealistic given the huge # of recipients coming down the pike - in this case at least, demography *is* destiny.

There'll probably be some temptation to just abandon the system entirely, but I think there's significant value to society at large in ensuring that the disabled and the elderly are not reduced to absolute destitution. It's just morally the right thing to do, to ensure there's at least some measure of "safety net" for those least able to look out for themselves. And that's pretty much all we can expect the Social Security system can do; the traditional assumption that it would provide a comfortable retirement in and of itself for everyone just won't work anymore. And the sooner the problem is dealt with, the less drastic the neccesary actions will have to be.

[UPDATE 12-29-04] I got a chance to talk with my Mom over Christmas, and she made a good point: this might be OK for white-collar workers, but what about folks who work in labor-intensive jobs where they're both physically much less able by their 60s and also most likely to be laid off because they have the highest salaries? Extending the retirement age like this would be a huge change. There's a good discussion of the whole SS reform issue over at Winds of Change.