Pensions

I'm getting more conservative. Here's a Times article (from 2 days ago) on pension costs in Europe. Due to different attitudes on immigration, their problem is much worse than ours.

"One factor that may offset the issue could be the surprising success some countries have had with the introduction of private pensions.

Sweden created a system in 1999 that siphoned off 2.5 percent of a worker’s gross income and invested it in privately managed stock and bond funds. Employees choose the funds themselves, based on their appetite for risk.

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Related

Managing Globalization: Generational Wars in Europe

Since then, countries including Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and all the Baltic states, as well as Germany, have adopted similar programs. (A proposal by President Bush to do much the same died at the beginning of his second term.)

Germany’s system, using tax incentives to persuade people to save for their own retirement, got off to a slow start in 2001. But now some 11 million Germans have bought into it.

I think the Dems should consider this, even though it's like what Bush and the Reps have suggested in the past. A 1 percent add-on, phased to 2 percent with a corresponding reduction in FICA taxes for the second percentage point, sounds about right to me.