Larry Kudlow, on CNBC, was debating David Frum, a conservative but not rabid Republican, who was recently fired from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, because he was critical of the current Republican party and its relationship with Fox “News” and the media in general. During this program, another Republican (I didn’t get his name) was supporting the notion that privatization of Medicare and Social Security was a good thing and too bad George W. Bush didn’t succeed in this. I am relieved that he failed. What insanity.

The reason Social Security works is because it mandates savings and removes decision making from the general public, many of whom (I would say most) are totally financially incompetent to plan for the future or wisely invest their funds. Those who would privatize these programs are behaving from an elitist standpoint of “we all want control over our money” and they are thinking in terms of “people like us” and not of those people who live in trailer homes or those with little education and less of an aptitude for complexities, those who have trouble filling out forms of any kind, and as for following the market and making sound choices, who is kidding whom?

Incidentally, I am including myself in the group who wouldn’t know how to make the best use of my funds. Thank God for Ed, who has a degree in business and can do involved math in his head.

We get mail regarding our home and insurance and taxes and it all looks like Sanskrit to me. If something happened to Ed, I’d have to lean on a lawyer for the regular mail, let alone investment decisions.

For me, the most daunting aspect of owning a home other than that IT ISN’T CHEAPER THAN RENTING, is that you have so much paperwork to wade through. Yes, your money isn’t going into rent and you are not building equity, but a renter is not responsible for major repairs, improvements, and landscaping.

Home owning ain’t for sissies and if social security and company investment benefits had not been managed for me, I would have been in a box under a bridge a long time ago.

xx, Teal