Leah gave me a copy of James Galbraith's The Predator State, which contains the best description of the Social Security "debate" that I've seen. Pages 138 -139. It's long, but it's good, good, good:
The financial crisis argument rests on the large numbers of baby boomers set to start retiring -- on the fact that eventually payroll tax receipts will start to fall short of benefits due and that at some point in the middle distance, the bonds accumulated in the trust fund will have to be retired. Yet the reality is that this was the bargain established by the 1983 Greenspan Commmission. The baby boom was old news when this commission convened; it understood the demographics perfectly well, and nothing that has happened since has made the situation worse. On the contrary, the labor force has grown more rapidly in the years since 1983, thanks to higher levels of immigration than were foreseen and the recovery of productivity growth in the late 1990s, generating a larger economy from which projected benefits could be paid. If the Greenspan Commission, notwithstanding the reactionary deal it made, dealt effectively with the need to match tax receipts to the stream of benefits due, then the finances of the system are actually better today than they were expected to be back then. And therefore if the Greenspan Commission resolved the crisis, there can be no crisis now. And there is not.
Seen this way, efforts to cut benefits to the impending baby boom retirees are a way, simply put, of taking back the 1983 bargain. If they were enacted, the very same people who overpaid their payroll taxes to "prefinance" their Social Security benefits would find that they had been given a dishonest bargain. Having paid a lifetime of higher payroll taxes, subsidizing the income tax cuts enjoyed by the investor classes of the 1980s and 1990s, they would come to the end of the rainbow and find the pot of gold empty.
Except for their 410(k)s, of course. Not.
Why then does the talk of an "impending Social Security crisis" never disappear? Because it is instrumental.* It is not a candid assessment of facts and logic associated with demography and economics. It is, rather, a means to an end: toward the privatization of the Social Security system. It is perfectly predictable that once deep benefit cuts are on the table, the "alternative" of private investment accounts will then resurface, in one form or another, to "ease the pain of adjustment" for America's seniors.
Which is why Obama should never have put Social Security on the table at all, and why he shouldn't keep doing it, and shouldn't appoint privatizers to cabinet posts, even if other Democrats like Pelosi approve, and even the talking points play well among Reagan's children. What good can come of it? Except for the people who want to loot it?
Crocodile tears will be freely shed at the doors of the "bipartisan commission" that will be convened to balance the needs of the bank[st]ers and fund managers, as against those of the elderly, in this matter.
And now, for our perspective, the nut graf (and written in 2007, let us remember):
This is, unfortunately, not a purely partisan matter, for the forces backing investor interests in the matter of Social Security have infiltrated and are strongly represented within the Democratic Party. This is not only smart, but inevitable politics, for it is clear that so long as Social Security remains a partisan issue, the parth to privatization will be blocked.
I've always wondered how to translate these words in Obama's 2008 platform: "A great nation now demands that its leaders abandon the politics of partisan division and find creative solutions to promote the common good." I think I'm getting an inkling....
It will therefore be necessary to take the Democratic opposition down from the inside, To this end, some of the Social Security trimmers have regrouped, quite recently, behind former Treasure Secretary Robert Rubin's Hamilton Project [see here], while outright privatizers throw themselves behind long-established "nonpartisan" operations like the Concord Coalition.... This group of determined, prudent insiders will now await the next administration.
Social Security offers perhaps the clearest, simplest, and most transparent large-scale example of the Predator State at work on a long-term project.
+1,000,000,000,000.
Consider this a Sunday Morning Book Review!
NOTE * Or, in the Vulgate, truthy.
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Front page
Comments
It's what we've been fearing, and hoping would not be the case.
Either Obama does not know what he's actually doing, perhaps thinking his words and actions will lead to some effects other than what they do lead to -- OR -- he's in on the game and feels he stands to benefit from it.
This does spell it out, so a big thank you. In spite of it making me sick to my stomach.
You wrote early on of the leveraged takeover of the Dem Party -- and the Big Bankster Boiz did provide the seed money for such a takeover. The taxpayers, in losses of services and standard of living, are going to pay for it. They can't fire us, but they sure can "downsize" us in terms of standard of living.
It's looking like all those leveraged buyouts of the Greed Is Good era -- where the buyers use leverage and the assets of a company to take it over, then strip the pension funds, make their big bucks, and leave a dead company or hollowed out business which can barely survive. One set of shareholders getst something with the purchase, but only if they sold off the stocks ASAP. Those who stay with the company tend to go down with the employees.
Now, this is being applied to the Federal government! To FDR's SocSec -- where the money is. Next? Declare LBJ's Medicare and Medicaid "unafforadable"? Or is there a way to loot them? Other than the monies already given to Big Pharma and Big Insurance?
Stunning. And being done through a Democrat -- or at least a DINO
. OMG.
When do they propose the Soylent Green solution? Ought to get some benefit out of the culling of the surplus population and unproductive old folks. With barely any manufacturing base, need something to make money....
A Soprano-Style Bust Up from Wall Street to the Treasury
In case you hadn't noticed, The Wall Street Pravda
still says Greed is Good.
Breaking companies is what the private equity biz is all about, and breaking countries is what the Company is all about. It was only a matter of time before they decided to do the same here. What is amazing is how easily the ideologues can be led by sparkly shiny dogma, and how cheaply the non-ideologues can be bought out. It's like the proverbial purchase of Manhattan- and DC- for a necklace of beads.
In a bipartisan way, of course.
What we're seeing is 9-11, Act II, and it's an inside job.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Re: Pelosi: Mark Shields today said admin "dropping dime" on her
[Third try to post this--did site go down for awhile? Google said link broken.]
Mark Shields on Inside Washington today was highly animated and indignant that the Obama administration -- well, someone within, was how he put it -- was trying to blame Pelosi for the messed up Obama Stimulus Bill situation. He said it was "all over the Hill," lots of buzz about it.
Now, this is unattributed information, but it does support the Jane Hamsher post, Raphm Throws Pelosi Under the Bus to Save Stimulus Bill. If this is accurate, Shields says it majorally stupid, that it will not help Obama with ongoing legislation.
[So, why is it happening? Part of the hostile takeover? A way of weakening the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to ensure the DLC/Reaganization of the party? To shut up liberal Dems about the awful TARP II (now with the acronym TALF), which will be even more of a giveaway to the Big Bankster Boiz?]
The panel seemed to agree that Obama just kind of gave the bill to the House, altho we know from ProPublica that Summers was point man. Where was the vaunted legislative expertise of Rahmbo during all these efforts? IF Obama now thinks the bill is not what he wanted or directed, why wasn't the WH on top of things during the committee meetings? I mean, I watched some of them on C-Span--they were not done in secret. I saw Repubs offering amendments, most voted down (with good reason), then they would go out an whine they had no voice in the legislation!! Why do Repubs hate representative democracy?
Evan Thomas said Obama liked to float above it all, no pay attention to critics or the MCM, and that had worked during the elections, but would not now.
Evan Thomas also was blatantly spouting Repub/Villager talking points about the Obama Stimulus Bill. I got the feeling he was sending a message that Obama had better toe the line or he would get the full Clinton/Gore/Kerry/H. Clinton Big Dem treatment from the MCM. Topic of no honeymoon followed shortly. Did you know there have been no honeymoons for new president beginning with Bill Clinton? So, what was that kid glove treatment given to BushBoy? Sheesh.
Charles Krauthammer, who previously had just luuuuuved Obama's transition and appointments, seems to have fallen out of love.
Nina Totenberg hopes Obama will get his grove back. Truly, the Hope president!
Inside Washington is shown on NJ public TV on Sundays, 11.30AM, but apparently is also on some other stations, so I was able to find a source for transcripts at WJLA, an ABC affiliate. Video is available now; transcript will show up (I hope), as last week's is now there.
Who benefits from the perception of Dem leadership disarray?
That's the question to ask.
There hasn't been anything I'd call disagreement between Obama and Reid and Pelosi over the stimulus bill. Some may argue that's a bad sign, wev, but the notion that they are all at each other's throats is a fantasy spread by the VRWC
for purposes of entertaining of the Village
, filling the "news" programs with empty blather, and engendering dismay and distrust in the general public.
And if Krauthammer has soured on Obama, my estimation of the President goes up an automatic 10 bonus points. What an absolutely useless twit.
Can you name a party that doesn't support SS privatization?
Yeah, that's what I thought...
...for the rest of us
The Predator State's longterm project has already succeeded
Right, Clinton was the Democrat with the quaint notion that public office means public service, not self service. She, like the other Clinton, wanted to enrich the treasury, not rape and drain it; to leave people better off than ever before, not use and abuse them better than ever before. “Any Democrat (even one in sheep’s clothing) is better than no Democrat at all,” sayeth BIO. Oh how I appreciated BIOs angry screed eviscerating the Clintons for eight long miserable years of peace, jobs, and prosperity. I need one of those every month because somehow I keep forgetting those horrific times. Only a Democrat (in sheep’s clothing) could do what is being done to us now…begun even before his anointment when he pushed the bailout over the hill, thrilling his followers with his FISA-like leadership and only putting a down payment on his debt to those investor class Bush Pioneers who staked him to 100 MIL before anyone had even heard of him. But they stuck by their man and he (and his minions) spent and spent and bought the election for a mere .8 billion dolleros. Such a deal. Indeed. Now they get what’s left in the Treasury, what comes into the Treasury, and whatever can be borrowed and spent on missile systems, munitions, green zones, and Quonset huts in the desert...hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions; trillions, in fact. Clinton had to be stopped; not stopped in a Wellstonean way, but stopped in a deceitful, misogynistic, race-baiting way. At any cost, however. The stupidity and vapidity of the American electorate can never be underestimated. Those who own the airwaves control the elections. And now they own both parties. Our overlords have pulled off the double monty. And the bitch who still managed to get more votes than the bastard has been moved out of harm’s way (not hers, theirs). While Obama fiddles as the economy burns and the Treasury’s contents are looted to rescue the ‘losers’ on Wall St. (Their description not mine. They sure look like the winners to me.) But at least that prevents all that lucre from being wasted on health care, roads, education, and condoms for the dirty, groveling hands-always-out, tax-paying citizens at the bottom (the bottom being anywhere not at the top). Entitlement programs, indeed. Only bankers are entitled to Treasury funds because they know how to trickle it down through cabana boys, prostitutes, and waiters. We’re being pillaged right in front of our eyes and we’re helpless to stop it without civil disobedience, marches, and riots. But no one’s into that shit anymore. Not with digital TV just on the horizon.
And don’t tell me anyone here is surprised; except for beautiful, romantic Sarah who even now…”JKF - All The Way!” Kind of like, “BHO – Pay As You Go!” Don’tcha think? Just like. Ask Caroline.