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It's Always a Great Time to Privatize Social Security!

by: Dean Barker

Tue Feb 02, 2010 at 06:24:37 AM EST
Do you remember in 2005, before the market crash, how President George W. Bush and Senator John E. Sununu and Representative Paul Ryan took the lead on trying to turn Social into Private and Security into Risk?  Remember how that was the turning point to W.'s overreach?

Well, two of the three may be out of office, but Rep. Ryan is the privatizing energizer bunny that just won't quit.

Because Wall St. did such a great job with our retirement accounts recently.
Dean Barker :: It's Always a Great Time to Privatize Social Security!
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It's Always a Great Time to Privatize Social Security! | 7 comments
It's not just (4.00 / 1)
conservatives that are putting entitlement programs on the chopping block.  The privatization schemes are cover for making cuts in social safety net programs...conservative Dems are complicit in these games, including our friends from Indiana, SD, LA, and the Blue Dogs in the House.

SS is not insolvent.  Medicare and Medicaid are in trouble but the the fix is universal health care.  Poof! problem gone.  What's next?  

Medicare and Medicaid (0.00 / 0)
are not "solved" by universal health care. Though it helps, a lot.

One obvious additional fix, for Tens of Billions Alex!, is letting Medicare bargain for low prescription drug prices, like the VA does.

[ Parent ]
Part D (0.00 / 0)
Creating new entitlements. Okay when a Republican does it?

--
@DougLindner
[ Parent ]
We saw what would happen to SS last year with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (0.00 / 0)
This is the agency that guarantees private pension plans, sort of the way the FDIC guarantees bank accounts. It collects a fee from each pension and pays out when a pension plan goes under, which happens with distressing regularity.

In 2008 Bush appointed a guy from Lehman Bros. who decided investing in mere bonds and treasury bills was too 20th century for his taste. Instead he invested the PBGC's money in speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds,  losing billions in the process.

Presumably Rep. Ryan knows this sad tale. My guess is his faith in the market is so strong it can't be swayed by mere facts like the story of the PBGC.

this is being presented (4.00 / 2)
as a way to save money - yet in 2005, putting those private accounts into place had an estimated cost of about $1 trillion.

This isn't about deficits. This is about destroying a program the GOP has always hated.

member of the professional left  

There is no reason to save money. It's not like we're going to (0.00 / 0)
run out of it.  Politicians are as likely to run out of words as we are of the money that lubricates our exchange and trade and facilitates transactions.  Which is not to say that sequestration won't make it scarce or that certain populations can't have their access denied.  (Remember when women weren't permitted to take a loan in their own name?)

The desire to control the nature and volume of  transactions and who carries them out is what lies behind these harangues.  Now that we have the perfect/ideal currency (one with NO intrinsic value) the people who maintain a leisurely life-style by taking a "cut" of each loan, purchase or sale (without providing any added value) are desperate for additional streams of cash-flow for them to intercept.  
When financial institutions were actually facilitating the flow of cash to energetic people with good ideas, they did contribute some value.  But, when they simply facilitate a shell game of acquisitions, divisions and arbitrary relocations in search of low cost resources and labor, they simply generate a social loss.

Accumulated wealth is not a sign of expertise when it's accumulated by theft.  It may even be done under cover of law, but that doesn't make it right.

[ Parent ]
I think you're right... (0.00 / 0)
...they smell victory on HCR and want to go after SS as well.

They believe, or hope anyway, that enough people have been bamboozled into thinking "goverment is not the solution, it's the problem" that they have a chance.

[ Parent ]
It's Always a Great Time to Privatize Social Security! | 7 comments

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