There are people out there who desperately want to keep you angry and afraid. Because it’s easy to manipulate angry people, and people who are afraid enough will repeat any stupid lie without stopping to think, even for a second.
Some Republican "pundits" do this. Pick the dumbest thing any Democrat has ever said (out of context if possible), and pretend it’s what every Democrat everywhere thinks. But MoveOn.org has to be the worst. They use the same tactics, but they’re organized like the Waffen SS and they’ve built an army of angry and afraid people to spread their lies. Take a look at this, just as an example.
Every penny that was collected for SS has been spent, or will be spent soon. You could get mad at the people who said they would put the money in a “lockbox” … but what’s the point? The bank’s done been robbed, and we ain’t gonna get any of that money back.
Is it wrong to tell someone who has paid for Social Security "insurance" their entire working life that we are going to have to cut benefits? Sure. But those people are adults, and the money was stolen right in front of everyone’s eyes. Anyone who paid attention knew what was happening, and if you DIDN’T pay any attention, then shame on you. Still, nobody wants to let old people be desperately poor – not even evil Republicans.
But most of that benefit money is going to come from people who are children now, or not even born yet. Is it wrong to force them to pay for a scam they had nothing to do with? You’re damn right it is. Saying that the money we take out of their pockets is an “insurance payment” doesn’t make it better – it makes it worse, because we all know that money has already been spent.
And it’s even worse because, one the average, tax payers in their 20s and 30s have far less wealth (and even less income) than people in their 50s, 60s, and beyond. So by taking social security “investments” from them, and giving the money to old folks, we are often taking from the poor and giving to the rich. (And blowing a staggering amount on fraud and waste in the process.) How is that right?
So we have two bad choices – cut benefits, or tax the innocent. And we will end up doing both. We’ll probably “means test” Social Security, so that people who worked hard and saved money will get less from their Social Security “investment” than everyone else. We’ll almost certainly raise the retirement age for people who are now in their 40s. (And people in their 20s and 30s will have to retire a LOT later.)
And generations of children will be born deep in debt to pay the bill – which will be gigantic.
The only difference of opinion is that some people lean towards bigger benefits for old people and a bigger bill for the innocent. Some people lean towards lower benefits and a lower bill. There are Democrats and Republicans on both sides of that argument. Honest people trying to find the least bad path when all the choices suck.
MoveOn.org and other "pundits" are in a third group – pretending that the entire problem is just an evil conspiracy by the tea baggers and lib’rals. If we listen to them, then we will continue to pay out huge benefits without taking in enough money. We’ll continue to spend the money that we claim is for old folks on gigantic and wasteful government programs. The only way to make up the difference will be to run the printing presses at the Treasury … until our money isn’t worth anything. That will hurt young and old alike, and far more than actually facing up to this problem.
3 comments:
This post is very confusing to me. I'm sure you're not saying that people who worked 40 years and receive Soc. Sec. and Medicare are "guilty." And, by implication, that the corporations and billionaires are "innocent." Or vice-versa. Or somewhere in between. What do the manipulators want us to do? To hell with them? To hell with us?
Is Social Security insurance? In real insurance, the money a group of people pay in is invested, and used to pay benefits. All benefits are covered by invested premiums. That's what insurance is.
But someone took all the money and spent it. That money is gone, replaced with an IOU. If an insurance company did that, then the people who ran the insurance company would go to jail. That's my problem with government run "insurance" - we can't sent the people who steal all the money to jail. They are the guilty ones - they spent all the money on wars and social engineering and farm subsidies and you name it, and left the system bankrupt.
So if we continue to pay out any benefits, we have to get the money from somewhere. We can continue to pretend that it's insurance, and force young people to pay "premiums" into Social Security. Then we take that money and give it to people on SS right now. That is NOT insurance - it's a Ponzi scheme. When the young people get old, they will have nothing, but the hope that they can pass the debt onto the next generation. They are the innocent people.
We can pretend that we can tax the billionaires and corporations as much as we want without any harm done, but eventually they will leave (and take the jobs they provide with them), or they will go out of business. They tried that in the Soviet Union - it does not work.
The manipulators want you to ignore where the money comes from, and insist on 100% benefits with no cuts ever, no means testing, no increases to the retirement age and (most importantly) no end to this lie, ever.
I'm just saying that it's wrong to call something insurance when it's a tax. It's wrong to pretend that everything's okay and that there are painless solutions, when trillions have been stolen and hard choices must be made. If we force young people to pay "premiums" that we give to old people, then, ON THE AVERAGE, we will be taking money from people with less and giving it to people with more. There are poor old people ... but on the average, old people have much more wealth than young people. And taxing the poor to give to the rich is wrong, in my opinion.
It's also wrong to cut benefits to poor people. So at some point, we have to decide who we are going to give benefits to. We have to decide where the money comes from. And we have to decide if we are going to keep lying about how this is "insurance," when it's just a Ponzi scheme. These are very hard decisions, and hating the people who disagree simply isn't going to help.
Sounds reasonable.
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