Travellinguist's Musings

Social Security Privatisation is corruption and fraud.

I am basically going to say what many of us who've looked at the issue have said. There is no "CRISIS" in social security any more than there was a crisis in Iraq until President Bush lied about it often enough that his "Big Lie" became a sort of social truth.

Let's look at what this plan to save us from this fictional crisis would do. It would take the money that we workers would pay now to support our retired parents and grandparents and invests it in the stock market. The problem is who then would pay for the retirement of our parents and grandparents? They paid into social security for their entire careers with an expectation that they would receive a benefit when they retired, so we'd be denying it to them. Of course we could borrow money to pay for it which is what Bush is proposing.

Borrow money, huh? So much for Bush and his Republican party being "Fiscal Conservatives." What they really are is selfish ideologues more concerned with destroying the legacy of the New Deal than balancing the budget. Borrowing to pay the benefits would add trillions more to a debt that they have already run up to its highest level in US history. How come Republican administrations like Reagan, Bush and Bush II always rack up these extensive debts and yet we let them call themselves fiscal conservatives? It is such bullshit, but meanwhile the so-called "Tax and Spend" Democrats like Bill Clinton end up sitting on balanced budgets. Basically propaganda overwhelms our reality. So anyway, Bush's plan would crush our government under debt and help turn us into an Argentina, Bolivia or Brasil, countries with massive debt loads and perpetual instability, though those three are turning it around so I guess there is even hope for the North American "banana republic" in which we now live.

But it is even worse. If we had had our social security invested in the stock market in 2001 we would have lost some 20% of our retirement money when the market lost some 20% of its value. Sure we are recovering now, but having no money for four years could very well have been the end for many seniors with medication and other expenses to pay (especially since the prescription drug plan has led to inflation in drug prices). No thanks, I would rather have a set retirement figure from social security around which I can plan than a random fluctuating market place that can crash and burn just as I need it strong.... Incidentally one of the reasons for the market's volatility the last couple of years has been the massive government debt, a debt that would go up considerably with privatization.... So you see privatizing would basically add to the very destabilizing forces that make privatization a bad idea in the first place!

But let us go further.... We get this money so we can invest it right? Well we can't invest it wherever we want because though they say they "trust" us with our money they don't trust us enough to make our own investment decisions. The government will decide in which companies and bonds we can invest.... Excuse me.... These Republicans who are so big on government not telling the people what to do, and selling this social security thing as a giving back of money to increase our freedom is going to tell us in which companies we can and can't invest.... How would the government decide which companies are "safe" investments? Would it depend upon how much they spent for the Inaugural Ball? Would they have told us Enron was a safe investment? I mean after all Enron contributed might loads of bucks to the Bush campaign as did Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling personally.... Bush cited them as an example of a good company. Well good thing this particular government pick didn't contain my social security money since it would completely be gone now. So we would have a system where government officials, already too cozy with a Big Business community that basically funds their elections, inaugural balls and other things, decide which of these Big Businesses could receive our social security investment money..... hmmm that seems a little fishy don't you think?!

Let us turn from the problems of the government to the problems of the business. The fictive person that is a "corporation" is a sociopath concerned about profit only while disregarding morals, ethics and human interest. We depend upon fallible humans to restrain the sociopathic tendencies of the corporation, and as we know these fallible humans FAIL to do this fairly often. Furthermore, given the way companies get their favors by essentially bribing government officials it is safe to say the more sociopathic companies would be those that get status as Social Security dollar recipients. In other words we'd be investing in companies who would have demonstrated their ability to profit at the expense of people, so our public money, money given for the public good would actually go towards investments in companies which LEAST have the public good in mind but more the profit margin.

This plan basically take billions of dollars of the public money (money we thought we were putting away in some sort of lock box for the future) and invests it in private companies who have only their own interests at stake (at least in Communism the supposedly "public" money went to supposedly "public" companies) , who have no interest in looking out for us and who are susceptible to corruption and shoddy business practices so that we can have a "secure" retirement. Worse still it does so by increasing our already overbloated debt load, pushing us towards a status analogous with South American oligarchies, and taking away the guarantee of security that this program promised to today's retirees.

Let us hope this program dies a violent and horrendous death for if not, unable to pay our health care in old age, living in a nation which defaulted on its debt, many of us surely would.

posted by travellinguist @ 8:26 AM