The Oregonian appears to be constantly improving its coverage of Oregon and national politics, much to the benefit of the residents of Portland and the rest of the state. Today, for instance, Jim Barnett has an insightful piece on Social Security on the front page, above the fold that's well worth reading for anyone. Barnett leads:

Young workers can retire richer by investing Social Security taxes in private accounts, and people older than 55 will feel no impact from changes, President Bush has said. But in between, a generation faces a future that is likely to be less secure under his plan.

Workers now in their 40s would suffer the deepest cuts in guaranteed retirement benefits payable under current law, an analysis by The Oregonian has found. At the same time, they have the least chance to recoup reductions by investing in stocks and bonds.

The effect of President Bush's evolving plan for Social Security would depend largely on market returns -- a variable that has swung widely in recent years. But in all except best-case scenarios, 40-somethings would fare worse than if Congress did nothing at all.

The Oregonian's usage of data from the Social Security actuaries, the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Heritage Foundation is somewhat troubling, but they nonetheless find that all workers born between 1950 and 1965 will lose out do to the President's plan (again, using the overly-optimistic rates of growth envisioned by the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation). Check out the rest of the piece, too. It's a great article from a good daily paper.