OS 2.1

"We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people," President Bush declared in his 2004 State of the Union speech.

This muddled phrase was apparently meant to amplify the sentence that came before it:

"Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account."

This is one of President Bush's favorite ideas and it's a central tenet of his evolving "Ownership Society" agenda. His enthusiasm for this idea is undiminished by the fact that it involves magically spending the same $1 trillion dollars twice.

Brad DeLong stated this succinctly in a post Monday:

You cannot -- not given current projections -- "support" all three of (a) diverting Social Security revenue to young workers' private accounts, (b) maintaining benefits at their current levels and (c) keeping payroll taxes from rising. One of the three must crack.

President Bush purports to believe that all three of these things can be done at the same time -- leading DeLong to wonder whether the president is really dumb enough to believe this is true.

I don't know about the president himself, but I do not believe that those encouraging him to promote this idea are stupid. They are simply gambling that the American public is, and that we won't notice that we are being either double-billed or robbed outright.

The White House insists that it wants to do (a), diverting Social Security revenue to allow/require younger workers to create "personal retirement accounts."

Thus -- according to Dr. DeLong and to elementary arithmetic -- either the benefits that were supposed to be paid with this revenue will have to be cut, or else the amount of Social Security revenue will need to be increased. Or some combination of both.

This is what President Bush means by making the Social Security system a " a source of ownership for the American people." Those who have already paid into the system -- who already "own" it -- will get less and less, if anything, in return. Those who are currently paying into the system will now be charged twice as much.

This man shouldn't be president. He should be the manager of a Rent-a-Center franchise.

Comments

[Riggsveda]

Grover Norquist, who has served as a sort of Wormtongue to Bush's admin, has made no secret of wanting to get rid of SS, along with all the other nasty remnants of FDR's New Deal. Yet Bush sets up this lying pretense that he wants to retain it as a viable institution. Make no mistake, he has no interest in keeping it alive, any more than he would like to maintain Medicare or public schools.

Anyway, I always thought SS was a source of ownership for me...and a damned good one, too, given that, with a decent lifespan, I'll rake in much more than I invested.

But, hey, this is the era of the unfettered laissez-faire and the infinite global predation. Why not let the folks who have the money and expertise turn their spare cash into windfalls, and let the dullards who know nothing about investments sink into the Darwinian tar pits they so richly deserve?

Let's set the Way-Back Machine for 1890! That'll fit right in to our Vision of America! Imagine! No income tax! No unions! The Golden Age of Capitalism!

What these people want is a feudal state, i.e., facism. Arthur Jensen said it best, in "Network," back in 1976:

"There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today."

This is what Ralph Nader says he's fighting for -- to wrest the symbol of power, the Presidency, from the grasp of corporatism. A laudable goal, but more pie-in-the-sky than reality. Ralph: We don't live in Never-Neverland.

The most we can do in this election is turn back the spread of corporatism, by throwing their posterboy out in the street.

I loath Dubya. I only wish I could say it in public.

[Elton]

That last comment was mine.

-- Elton