Social Security Retirees expected to bail out profligate American plutocrats
The elites - the plutocrats practicing class war against the working and middle class - are after Social Security because it's a way of taxing the lower classes and handing off the money to the wealthy.in 2000 Clinton had the deficit under control. Then Bush was selected to support a Republican House and Republican Senate. With the Presidency and Congress in their control the Republicans gave us two unsustainable tax cuts almost entirely for the rich plutocrats Bush represented. Then the bunch of them passed the prescription drug bill - with doughnut hole and without financing it. Then we got two unnecessary wars. The feds stripped the resources from Afghanistan after appearing to win it for the entirely unnecessary war in Iraq. Running military contractors has always been a way for the American rich to get much richer. (See Kevin Phillips - Wealth and Democracy.)
Add to these forms of straight up theft there was the libertarian idiocy that started seriously with Reagan and was then pushed by the Republicans plus Greenspan so that the world-wide economy went into the predictable Great Recession in 2008. So what does that have to do with Social Security?
Social Security retirement is entirely funded by the FICA tax on up to $106,000 per year in employment earnings. The working and lower middle class pay that. The plutocrats live on investments and fees, so they do not pay the FICA tax. As Social Security is it will not run out of money ever. It ispay as you go and is funded by the FICA tax. True, in 2037 the worst case scenario suggests that benefits might have to be reduced - at most by 27%. That is extremely unlikely. The SS retirement has never reached any one of its worst case scenario cases. Never. Social Security has not ever and by law can never add to the federal deficit. But it presents a big pot of accumulated money for the plutocrats to steal.
The tax cuts went to the wealthy plutocrats. They get their money from investments instead of wages and they do not pay FICA tax. Wars are fought because the plutocrats want to fight them, not because they are needed for the working and lower middle class. No one in the Middle East needs the wars being fought there except the elites. The American elites make big profits and gain political power. The Middle Eastern elites determine who will run their countries and gain power, along with the wealth the power brings them. No one gives a damned about the working or middle classes or the soldiers who are fighting those wars.
Then to, Social Security has been collecting more than it needed to since 1983. The extra funds were loaned to the federal government to pay for the excessive tax cuts for the wealthy and for the unnecessary wars. Then money from Social Security has been loaned by the trust funds to the poorly run federal government in addition to the money loaned by China. But the SS system is going to start cashing those bonds in 2012 as the baby boomers the excess FICA funds were collected for start being required. The federal government will either have to pay for the money it wasted on tax cuts and wars or it will default on federal bonds. Those bonds are the safest investment in the world right now. The feds can't default to China or the Middle Eastern oil Sheiks without massive world-wide financial problems like Argentina some years ago. Those problems would lower the wealth of the wealthy plutocrats like Pete Peterson. They might have to pay higher taxes to pay for the money the elites have been wasting for the last decade.
But if the elites can force workers to work longer and take lower retirement benefits, the elites will never have to pay the Social Security System back. America avoids the default and the elite plutocrats don't have to pay for the money they have been directing the federal government to give to them. Also, their wealth will not be in dangers since America will not be recognized as defaulting on its bonds - even though pulling the funds out of the SS Trust funds without ever repaying it is in fact a default.
Folks, this isn't sharing the pain. This is theft from the working people of America. The rich are stealing from the poor and working class. Reverse Robin Hood. That's all it is.
Paul Krugman has an interesting view on the current efforts to
Social Security [...] is something that matters enormously to the bottom half of the income distribution, but no[t] so much to people in the 250K-plus club. A 30 percent cut in benefits would represent disaster for tens of millions of Americans, but a barely noticeable inconvenience for VSPs and everyone they know. A rise in the retirement age would be a vast hardship for people who do manual labor, but if anything a gift to VSPs, who don’t want to step aside in any case. And so on down the line.
So going after Social Security is a way to seem tough and serious — but entirely at the expense of people you don’t know.
Addendum
The deficit hysteria which is being inflicted on America as though this was an unneeded war is designed solely to justify the attack on Social Security.
You will notice above that Social Security is fully paid through all its past history and continues to be fully funded into the reasonably foreseeable future. Even 27 years into the future (NOT reasonably predictable at this time) given the very unlikely worst case scenario Social Security retirement will not contribute to the deficit at all. By law Social Security Retirement can never be deficit funded.
If the problem is the deficit, then the solution has to be found in taxing the wealthy for the services they demand (wars) and in controlling health care costs. Notice that health care costs are not considered by the catfood commission or by the media. That's the proof that no one is serious about reducing the deficit and that this is all intended as an attack on the Social Security system.
Labels: Catfood Commission, Social Security
posted by Richard @ 8:41 PM
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