|
IMPEACH Obama on January 20, I say!
We are being Shock Doctrined into reductions long wanted by the right and by Obama's appointed economic team. Social Security is solvent and requires no change. Instead, what we have is a general budget in crisis. How dare any Democrat, never mind someone from the cabal of blood-sucking Republithugs, try to solve the general budget crisis on the backs of everyday Americans, Americans that were forced to pay an elevated regressive tax since Greenspan's 1983 Social Security fix. I guess in reality that "fix" was meant to disguise the extraordinary tax largess given to our upper class these last 28 years. It is a shell game, a swindle, and a theft from the American people. We are being Shocked into giving up arrangements we made for ourselves during FDR's reign. We decided as a people to implement and continue to support an income security program that keeps many disabled citizens and senior citizens from utter destitution, and that eases retirement for many others who worked desperately hard all their lives. It is one of our most popular programs. Yet our politicians would like to undo that decision.
George Bush's two tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited U.S. citizens at the top 1% of our socio-economic hierarchy, are known to cost $2 trillion by 2010. Bush's illegal and immoral adventure in Iraq has cost another $1 trillion. Bush's unregulation of the U.S. financial systems resulted in destruction of tens of trillions in wealth, including the main vehicle of middle class wealth, our homes. Social Security will have built up around $2 trillion in surplus in the form of money extracted from our paychecks and lent to the U.S. Treasury. In return the U.S. people received Special Treasury Bonds paying about 2% interest, held for us through the intermediary of the Social Security Trust Fund. Those bonds are very real, just as real as the additional ordinary U.S. Treasury Bonds the top 1% we're able to buy with the tax money not collected from them by Bush (68% of these Bonds are concentrated in the hands of the top 1%). Why should the U.S. government -- a DINO Democrat, it appears -- default on Treasury Bonds given to everyday Americans (the real meaning of benefit reductions) but not on Treasury Bonds given to the rarefied class of Americans known as the top 1%?
The answer is simple and can be seen in very recent events. The financial predator class is in trouble? Give them $700 billion dollars no questions asked so the executives can continue to be paid their bonuses and hold on to their mountain chalets and beach houses while acquiring competitor banks instead of opening up the spigots of credit. No strings attached. The federal government isn't even keeping track of where the money is going. (Can you spell c o r r u p t i o n? I knew you could!) The auto-industry is in trouble? They're asking for $20+ billion? No way! Not without racking labor over the coals. Use the crisis as an opportunity to tear down the power of the UAW and get anti-strike terms built in and compensatory concessions from the everyday assembly line workers. Now even more of the value created by labor canbe xtracted to pad the pockets of management and shareholders. How can it not be blazingly clear that our politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, represent only a small class of U.S. citizens? They certainly do not steward the interests of those who, as they say, shower when they come home from work.
Social Security is not in crisis and is NOT in need of a fix. It will continue to build a surplus in the Trust Fund until around 2019. Thereafter, based on 2005 data cited below, and on very conservative assumptions about GDP growth per year (1.8% when the 100 year average has been closer to 3%), the Trust Fund won't be depleted until 2042. After that, if nothing was done and GDP growth remains the assumed 60% of historical average, benefits could still be paid out at a 70% rate until past 2075, the end of the current planning horizon. If GDP ticks up to 2.5% -- still below the historical average -- the Trust Fund is not depleted until 2052. If GDP ticks up to the historical average, benefits can actually be INCREASED! So where's the beef?
The problem, a DINO or Republithug would say, is when the U.S. Treasury has to start redeeming those Special Treasury Bonds to make up the pay-go gap starting in 2020 and thereafter. If you assume GDP growth will remain at 60% of historical norms and assume a straight line depletion of the Trust Fund, that amounts to an additional $80 billion per year of spend from general funds. Lemme see, the bloated security budget (military, HSA, CIA, etc.) is somewhere above $650 billion per year. Tax revenues not collected by Bush that would've been collected by Clinton run some $200 billion per year. Dontcha think we can squeeze out a paltry $80 billion from somewhere? Of course. It's just easier to squeeze everyday Americans than slow down the upward escalator of wealth and privilege our (carefully manufactured) ignorance accords the upper class. It's better for them to reduce us, the vast unwashed masses, to peons dependent on the largess of their wealth. Facing work or destitution, many of us -- especially when observing the destitution of those unable to work -- will choose work and at reduced wages, thereby padding the pockets further of those who would lord over us. Welcome to Twenty First Century Feudal America, the land where the "freedom" of which we sing is actually the freedom of the Master to exploit the Slave.
Our pockets are being picked, ladies and gentlemen. Again. :(
|