Wake Up

There’s a lot to say about the farce that is Social Security privatization, so I guess it’s about time I start posting about some of these pieces rather than just collecting the links as they come to my attention.

Paul Krugman takes a break from his hiatus to offer this:

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.

This attempt by Bush and his cronies to “fix” Social Security by allowing people to save part of what they now pay in payroll taxes is a real problem, and one that will affect our grandparents, parents, and us. It will require a huge amount of borrowing, ballooning the huge Federal deficit even further, and most likely also a big reduction in benefits. It’s an attempt to kill the Social Security program, while at the same time funnelling money to Wall Street. The end result is the rich getting richer while our elderly are left to die in poverty. Are these those “values” we’ve been hearing so much about?