Letters, they get letters

I sent four letter to the editor of our local paper today on Social Security. Want to bet that any of them get published? Here they are:


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President Bush’s calls to privatize Social Security are a scam. He uses poor economic growth models to create a false “crisis” for the program, but under those same models, his private accounts perform horribly as well. He uses rosy, robust economic growth models to emphasize the wonderful potential returns of private accounts, but under those same models, the current program does just as well if not better. People in this country need to ask themselves why the GOP suddenly seems to care about whether Social Security will provide for the poor or infirm in the future. They have never cared before.

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President Bush’s calls to privatize Social Security are a scam, and look exactly the same as the way he scammed this country into an unnecessary, illegal war in Iraq. First, he gets everyone worked up about a phony crisis (“Social Security is about to crash!” “Saddam’s evil death machines will be arriving within the hour! 9/11!”). The press provides coverage of Bush’s wild, fear-inducing claims, but does no research into how false they really are. Bush presents a neoconservative “solution” to the “crisis” (“Let’s create private funds that will allow Wall Street to fleece the working class!”, “Let’s invade Iraq, even though it is an international war crime!”). He proceeds without a real plan. There is still no plan for Iraq, and still no plan on the table for privatization, even six years after he first proposed it in his run for the white house in 2000.



No doubt the outcomes will be similar as well. He will create a national disaster, claim that everything is going great, promise to “stay the course”, accept no responsibility, and leave American taxpayers to clean up the mess.

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President Bush’s calls to privatize Social Security are a scam. It is well known that elements in the GOP have long wished to kill Social Security, and that is precisely what they are setting about to do. Having the government speculate on the stock market with workers’ wages is incredibly risky, and is guaranteed to provide smaller returns than the current system. The current system pays about 1% for administrative costs. “Privatized” retirement plans in other countries like the one in Chile pay 20% or more in administrative costs, and you can bet Wall Street will take much more than 1% for “handling” all of that Social Security money.

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President Bush’s calls to privatize Social Security are a scam. In 1983, Alan Greenspan and Ronald Reagan raised wage taxes to fund Social Security and preserve the program through the retirement of the baby boom, even as they simultaneously lowered income taxes for the wealthy. The working class in this country has been laboring under those increased wage taxes for over 20 years now, creating a huge surplus of Social Security revenues which is now projected to keep the program fully funded, depending on economic growth, until sometime between 2042 and 2052. Even after that point, the program could be continued indefinitely at an 80% benefit level. Very small adjustments to the program’s income (equivalent to just ¼ of George W. Bush’s tax cuts!) would keep the program fully funded for many more decades.



That Alan Greenspan has now blessed Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and is also trying to stampede Americans into Social Security “privatization” by citing the impending non-crisis indicates that he has been playing a shell game with our wage taxes for the last 21 years. This effort to rip off working people who have been sacrificing all this time to save Social Security is filthy and shameless.

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