The Huffington Post reminds us that Paul Ryan tried to re-brand his idea for “privatizing” Social Security with the more positive-sounding ”personal retirement accounts”:

“Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate has already reignited the debate over the future of Medicare. Ryan has proposed ending the guaranteed benefit and instead giving individuals vouchers to pay for private insurance, which Ryan refers to as “premium support.”

“Ryan, in a March 2005 interview on C-SPAN, described his Social Security plan in detail. His bill would have allowed people under 55 to divert roughly half of their payroll taxes away from the traditional program and into a private account “owned” by the individual but managed by Social Security, and invested in stocks and bonds. But that plan did not cut any benefits, but brought such an astronomical price tag that the Bush administration called it “irresponsible.” [...] Ryan said his plan would work to guard against wild swings in the stock market by moving people out of stocks and into government bonds as they approached retirement. ”

It’s interesting that Paul Ryan has already collected and benefited from SS survivor benefits, so what he’s proposing is like saying, ‘I got mine but you’ll have to get yours another way.’ If you collect SS now and approve of Ryan’s “plan,” you’re basically saying the same thing to your children and grandchildren, and that’s pure Ayn Rand “Objectivism“, which Ryan believes in.

There was a time when the Republican Party wasn’t swarming with anti-government fanatics and zealots, when its members cared about average Americans, and thought government could be a positive foundation for the common good:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are... a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

--- from a letter President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his brother Edgar on November 8, 1954.