What would we do without the Internet? Or, more specifically, without Josh Marshall, who brings us this gem with excerpts from an LA Times piece collected by an alert reader:
"In a significant shift in his rationale for the accounts, Bush dropped his claim that they would help solve Social Security's fiscal problems — a link he sometimes made during last year's presidential campaign. Instead, he said the individual accounts were desirable because they would be "a better deal," providing workers what he said would be a higher rate of return and "greater security in retirement."
A Bush aide, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, was more explicit, saying that the individual accounts would do nothing to solve the system's long-term financial problems."
And the money quote (or, more accurately, the money panic attack and moment of revelation and clarity):
"Oh, my God," one GOP political strategist said when he learned of the shift in rhetoric. "The White House has made a lot of Republicans walk the plank on this. Now it sounds as if they are sawing off the board."
It just doesn't get any better than seeing Republican hacks suddenly realizing they sacrificed their political careers for Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. Are you starting to see a pattern here? "We invaded Iraq because of ... WMDs. Yeah, that's it. WMDs. No WMDs? OK, then ... they were behind 9/11. No? OK, then ... well, Saddam was a really bad man who gassed his own people. Sorry? We knew all about that? And still wanted to be best buddies? All right, then, he conned the food-for-oil program. That's it. We knew about that, too? Damn ..."
And on it goes.
5 comments:
Let's be really clear about this: the Bush plan is specifically to break Social Security, not to save it.
Social Security is just another element of New Deal socialism, and this administration has pursued an aggressive agenda of destroying all those policies. The fact that this will return the U.S. to the robber-baron days of the early 20th century is not a problem, since Bush's friends and family are the aspiring robber-barons.
Most people don't understand that Social Security is not a fund. There's not a big pool of money that we can "run out of." Money is taken from current workers and immediately paid out to current retirees. The only way Social Security could "run out of money" is if the U.S. reached 100% unemployment, or if, say, the money were going somewhere else.
Diverting income from current workers into funds reserved for those workers' future retirement creates an immediate shortfall in funds available to pay out to current retirees.
The net effect of the Bush plan is to exacerbate the impact of the impending baby boomer retirement. There is not enough time between now and 2012 for the boomers to realize significant benefits from investment of Social Security funds, and diverting income from current workers reduces the funds available for traditional Social Security payments.
In short, Bush seems to be intentionally jeopardizing the boomers' retirement security in the hopes that when people start suffering Americans will blame Social Security as unworkable and scrap it altogether.
In the meantime, this windfall of "private investment" into a government-annointed portfolio will just be pouring money into the pockets of the aforementioned robber-barons, who will doubtless find themselves part of the government portfolio. All the while the GOP will still be working to undermine another New Deal institution, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and eliminate corporate accountability under the rubric of "smaller government."
And since the same government that would otherwise be charged with enforcing responsible corporate behavior will now be heavily invested in those same companies, the conflict of interest and the resulting temptation to whitewash corporate malfeasance among portfolio companies will be catastrophic.
Think of it like this, for perspective: Had the Bush plan been passed five or ten years ago, Enron would doubtless have been part of the government portfolio.
From CC:
(Sorry, had to delete the previous comment as it contained the wrong link.)
Regarding the commenter's paragraph:
Most people don't understand that Social Security is not a fund. There's not a big pool of money that we can "run out of." Money is taken from current workers and immediately paid out to current retirees. The only way Social Security could "run out of money" is if the U.S. reached 100% unemployment, or if, say, the money were going somewhere else.
I made much the same point back here (see third paragraph).
Like they say, great minds think alike. Or is it, fools seldom differ? I always get those two confused.
From CC:
I'm kinda hoping that folks read the "great minds think alike and fools seldom differing" as my attempt at humour, the point being how two timeless proverbs contradict each other totally. You know, like "Haste makes waste" but, at the same time, "He who hesitates is lost."
Like "Arguing with a right-wing wanker is a waste of time" and, uh, "Arguing with a right-wing wanker is a total waste of time".
Or something like that.
Original respondant here... No worries: I got it. Carry on. ;-)
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