I missed an opportunity last night. The phone rang and a mechanical voice said “This is a political poll, it will take about 45 seconds, Did you watch the Presidents’ State of the Union Address?” This was like five minutes after the speech, while the Democrats were starting their response.

I had listened to it on radio (NPR) and was sort of watching the video on NBC. It is strange to watch the delayed video with the radio audio. Works a lot better with Football games. I wonder if NBC was delaying their feed in case they had to bleep the President.

Anyway, I thought a second and hung up on the machine. If it had been a live voice I probably would have responded. It would have been interesting to find out what sort of questions the pollsters were asking after the speech.

I don’t think the President has defined what is “broken” about Social Security and how his private accounts would “fix” it. SS is working the way it was designed, it’s not broken. The original design parameters don’t appear to be valid anymore.

It may be time to design a new system from the ground up. Of course, people who have worked on implementing new computer programs know the difficulties of implementing a new system that does what the old does plus more features that meet the new environment while keeping the old one active. I don’t know, I am still looking into the problem. (Since I am one of those under 55, I am in potential trouble. I don’t actually hit 65 until 2018, the year SSA goes red.)