Thursday, January 27, 2011

A few thoughts on Social Security


Economics has rarely been the straightforward exchange of goods for money from the textbooks. A few abstractions, perhaps even white lies, come into play, and strangely,they actually tend to improve the economy and therefore social security.

Now, for the worth of a given company's stock to rise or fall without the introduction of a new service, product or procedure (i.e., without a change in the worth of the company), investors either have to judge those stocks exchange by some standard other than the worth of the issuing company or find some cheaper way to finance or process their purchase; and all of these things do seem to occur. Traders have bought on Credit, pre-sold crashing stocks and cyber-traded entirely worthless ones. Each of these actions has helped to raise the overall price of stocks, and each has drawn criticism for its believed role in a serious downturn. Even in the face of stern efforts to prevent such creative finance however, someone will invent some new system of something and bring the economy to new highs while risking very sudden lows, and, as the economy often follows the market for some reason, Gross American income will rise, taking the tax base and social security with it. Certainly given the twenty-five years till the expected S.S. blowout it will.

Of course, we'll still have the stock market to worry about, but that may be an unavoidable and perhaps ultimately desirable constant.

Just a few thoughts.

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