[North-NV-Greens] Re: [NV Greens] Fwd: Social Security - Inventing A Crisis

[michael s bean]

Also Bill Moyers is retiring this December.  This may be one of his last
shows.  What a loss.  I would be interested in hearing the reasons for why
he is leaving.  He has been hitting hard at the Conservative Right the last
few weeks.  I believe there is some kind of ideological shift taking place
at PBS due to lack of funding.  That is why there are so many new corporate
sponsors that are fundamentally in opposition to progressive values and
agenda.  This is my own, perhaps unfounded, reasoning for what is happening
at PBS.  Does anyone have any information about these issues?

On the issue of SocSec, Nader holds that the system is working well and
needs only a little tweaking to keep it going.  Krugman is right, in my
opinion, about the issues below.  For decades the SS Trust fund carried
surpluses except for one little tiny problem; there was no trust fund.  As
you probably know the money has always gone to the general fund and has been
spent by the congress like a drunken sailor on liberty.  So now Bushwhacker
wants to fix it by allowing some people to place some dollars into the stock
market.  I will be interested to see who gets the "brokering contract" to
buy and sell the shares for participants.   When dubya took the Texas
Teachers Retirement Fund out of the bank and made it a stock market
investment, one of his good old boys was the sole broker for the whole fund
and reaped millions in commissions.  Does that surprise anyone?
    This SS fiasco should be another "how to" lesson in graft and corruption
for the Murrican people....A train wreck waiting to happen and no one seems
able to stop it.
M~
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Etxeberri" <eusko at earthlink.net>
To: "GPNV Discussion List" <nvgreen at dasbistro.com>; "North NV Discussion
List" <north-nv-greens at dasbistro.com>; "Clark County Green Party"
<clarkgreen at dasbistro.com>
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 00.36
Subject: [NV Greens] Fwd: Social Security - Inventing A Crisis


> >Paul Krugman has appeared on Bill Moyer's NOW program on PBS, which
> >is broadcast on
> Friday nights at 9 PM. If you haven't seen NOW, please do while you
> still can. The Bush "regime"
> has targeted NOW; in the near future it will be reduced to only half
> an hour weekly.
>
> Pax, Paul Etx
>
> >
> >Social Security - Inventing A Crisis
> >
> >Inventing a Crisis
> >By Paul Krugman
> >
> >New York Times Op-Ed Columnist - December 7, 2004
> >
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html
> >
> >Privatizing Social Security - replacing the current
> >system, in whole or in part, with personal investment
> >accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's
> >finances. If anything, it will make things worse.
> >Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend
> >crucially on convincing the public that the system is
> >in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy
> >Social Security in order to save it.
> >
> >I'll have a lot to say about all this when I return to
> >my regular schedule in January. But right now it seems
> >important to take a break from my break, and debunk the
> >hype about a Social Security crisis.
> >
> >There's nothing strange or mysterious about how Social
> >Security works: it's just a government program
> >supported by a dedicated tax on payroll earnings, just
> >as highway maintenance is supported by a dedicated tax
> >on gasoline.
> >
> >Right now the revenues from the payroll tax exceed the
> >amount paid out in benefits. This is deliberate, the
> >result of a payroll tax increase - recommended by none
> >other than Alan Greenspan - two decades ago. His
> >justification at the time for raising a tax that falls
> >mainly on lower- and middle-income families, even
> >though Ronald Reagan had just cut the taxes that fall
> >mainly on the very well-off, was that the extra revenue
> >was needed to build up a trust fund. This could be
> >drawn on to pay benefits once the baby boomers began to
> >retire.
> >
> >The grain of truth in claims of a Social Security
> >crisis is that this tax increase wasn't quite big
> >enough. Projections in a recent report by the
> >Congressional Budget Office (which are probably more
> >realistic than the very cautious projections of the
> >Social Security Administration) say that the trust fund
> >will run out in 2052. The system won't become
> >"bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is
> >gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of
> >the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run
> >financing problem.
> >
> >But it's a problem of modest size. The report finds
> >that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd
> >century, with no change in benefits, would require
> >additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of
> >G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending -
> >less than we're currently spending in Iraq. And it's
> >only about one-quarter of the revenue lost each year
> >because of President Bush's tax cuts - roughly equal to
> >the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with
> >incomes over $500,000 a year.
> >
> >Given these numbers, it's not at all hard to come up
> >with fiscal packages that would secure the retirement
> >program, with no major changes, for generations to
> >come.
> >
> >It's true that the federal government as a whole faces
> >a very large financial shortfall. That shortfall,
> >however, has much more to do with tax cuts - cuts that
> >Mr. Bush nonetheless insists on making permanent - than
> >it does with Social Security.
> >
> >But since the politics of privatization depend on
> >convincing the public that there is a Social Security
> >crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent
> >one.
> >
> >My favorite example of their three-card-monte logic
> >goes like this: first, they insist that the Social
> >Security system's current surplus and the trust fund it
> >has been accumulating with that surplus are
> >meaningless. Social Security, they say, isn't really an
> >independent entity - it's just part of the federal
> >government.
> >
> >If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that
> >Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980's was
> >nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on
> >working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent
> >went down, and the workers have nothing to show for
> >their sacrifice.
> >
> >But never mind: the same people who claim that Social
> >Security isn't an independent entity when it runs
> >surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the
> >benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax
> >receipts, this will represent a crisis - you see,
> >Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and
> >therefore must stand on its own.
> >
> >There's no honest way anyone can hold both these
> >positions, but very little about the privatizers'
> >position is honest. They come to bury Social Security,
> >not to save it. They aren't sincerely concerned about
> >the possibility that the system will someday fail;
> >they're disturbed by the system's historic success.
> >
> >For Social Security is a government program that works,
> >a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and
> >spending can make people's lives better and more
> >secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it.
> >
> >E-mail: krugman at nytimes.com
> >
> >Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
> >_______________________________________________________
> >
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> --
> Paul Etxeberri
>
> "Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand
>
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