I think I've mentioned on this blog that when I got an invitation to the 45th anniversary reunion of my high school graduating class, along with it was a link to the Dead List from that class. And when I checked it, I was shocked (really) to see the names of at least half the graduating seniors from my class listed as already dead. It was a small class, less than a hundred, and I counted fifty three names, though I knew at least two of them were still alive, so there may have been more errors.
None of the dead ones made it to age 65. I noticed that a lot of those who passed away did so suddenly in their forties or early fifties from heart attacks or lingeringly from congestive heart failure. A lot of deaths were from accidents -- either traffic fatalities or otherwise, or in one case a gun accident. Three that I knew of died of AIDS. There may have been more. Three were killed in Vietnam when they were... young. But a whole raft of guys I hung out with in high school were dead from unlisted causes. Four of their names were alphabetically sequential, and so they all knew each other from the time they'd been in elementary school, they were good friends with one another and their families were close. I was the New Kid, came into the district in 9th grade, and I got to be friends with all of them. After high school, I went to college and they didn't so we lost touch, yet it was a real blow to find out they were all dead. Good doG.
The list went on and on. Practically everyone I considered a close friend in high school was on it. That was hard to take. The handful of friends from those days who had not passed were people whose whereabouts I was pretty sure of and whose contact information I probably had in some address book in the desk in the dining room since I had last seen them no more than ten years before. I noted that some of them were on the "do you know what happened to...?" list and laughed because a couple of them were very well known about town, got their names and faces in the papers all the time, and it struck me as silly that the Reunion Committee didn't know where they were. Oh really?
Given that I knew what had become of the four or five high school chums who were still alive, and none of the rest of the people I'd want to see from my high school class had survived, I skipped that reunion. In fact, I haven't been to one since the 10th, whenever that was. The 50th will be coming up in a couple of years, and I have a hard time imagining I'd go -- or that literally anyone I'd want to see would live to show up at it!
I still have a link to the Dead List, and I checked it yesterday to find another half-dozen or so names added since last I checked, a couple of whom I knew had died, but others surprising me. There was also now a list of Dead Faculty and Staff. Yes, well. Practically all of them are no longer with us, wouldn't you know. But many seemed to have made it well into their eighties before passing. Good for them!
Then I looked up a post-high school buddy, my closest off-campus friend during early college years, someone I lost touch with for years, then briefly reconnected with about 15 years ago through his adult daughter who was part of the crew for a play I produced, but then I lost touch with him again, as our lives didn't really intersect anymore. Now that we were both in our dottage, I was curious to see if he was still working or had retired or whatever. What did I find but his obit.
Oh, Jeebus.
He died nearly three years ago, it turned out, from what was described as "a brief illness." No, he didn't make it to 65, either. I couldn't imagine what kind of "brief illness" might have killed him, as he was sturdy as an ox, but I could well imagine that if he had to be hospitalized something could have gone terribly wrong. There was a picture of him with the obit that was taken fairly recently -- I'd say within the last five years -- and I was struck with how well he'd aged, looking mature, yes, but not really old as so many of my age-group do. His death hit me hard when I saw his picture. It's still upsetting.
The passing of so many of these people I knew, all of them dying before they reached age 65, more than half of my high school graduating class for example, should have an effect on the canard that's become conventional wisdom that "people are living longer" and "life expectancy has increased" since the establishment of Social Security back in the Dark Ages.
Some people are living longer, to be sure. And some people's life expectancies have increased. But for many, it just ain't so. Some people's life expectancies have actually been in decline for years. I'd like to see a statistical analysis of the life-spans of those Boomers in my high school graduating class, because if so many are dead now -- more than half -- then the average life expectancy can't be all that much beyond 65 -- if that, depending on how young the dead ones were when they passed and how much longer the rest of us geezers are going to hang on before we, too, shuffle off this mortal coil.
While it's possible there is a distinct anomaly in the high number of pre-age-65 deaths in my particular high school class and among my friends, I'm dubious. So far as I know, there is no special risk factor among them, though I could be wrong.
We were all living in middle class (white) suburban neighborhoods; there was no perceptible crime, certainly none of violence, and no gangs or widespread drug use (there was some, though, that I can recall from before graduation but far less than the routine use of alcohol.) We were near an Air Force base, however, and lot of the households were military. A lot. The base has since been closed by the Air Force, and it took years to clean up the pollutants before it could re-open for civilian use, so I'm wondering if pollution might be an anomalous risk factor.
Vietnam took three from my class, AIDS another three, accidents
perhaps ten, heart attack or heart failure another fifteen or so. I only
counted two or three listed as cancer deaths, but I know several who
survived bouts with cancer and -- so far as I know -- are still alive.
As for the rest of the deaths most have no cause listed.
My post high school buddy didn't live near the base, but he had grown up near -- and his father had worked for -- the railroad yards, which was/is even more contaminated than the base was. Which might have been a factor. He worked in construction for 40 years, specializing in drywall installation later on, had his own company and such, and he was very busy during the construction/real estate boom. That was probably a more immediate factor in his death, but I don't know specifics, so I can't say for sure.
My own parents died relatively young, but not that young -- my father of cancer at age 69, my mother of emphysema/lung failure leading to heart failure at 74. My sister, however, died at age 61 from a blood clot following surgery to repair knee injuries she sustained in a prisoner take-down; my brother died at age 40 or 41 of unspecified causes.
So even in my own family, a relatively small sample to be sure, the average age of the dead ones is 61. (If we threw in the twins that died at birth, the number would be much lower.)
What I'm getting at is that the "longer lifespan" argument for cutting Social Security benefits and making Medicare access more difficult and expensive is simply bogus for larger and larger numbers of people. A few people -- mostly the very rich with access to more expensive and higher quality medical care -- are living longer (and longer) which may be driving up statistical averages (much as their income does), but the vast majority are not living longer and most have no chance of living longer; too many will have shorter lifespans than those of their parents. The panic over "longer lifespans" has been whipped up by the media (in the pay of certain billionaires it would appear) and it is nothing but propaganda.
Breaking through this propaganda barrage is essential on many levels. It seems to me that what passes for the "left" in this country is very late to the game, letting the propaganda go essentially unchallenged until fairly recently, too recently to be able to counter it effectively. Unfortunately, a sizable percentage of the leftish commentariat has bought the bogus "longer lifespan" argument, and while not openly supportive of cuts to Social Security and Medicare, will not substantively argue against them nor indeed will they argue the correct policies of expanding rather than restricting these and other social programs, increasing Social Security benefits, lowering retirement ages, and instituting something like Medicare For All.
What passes for the "left" in this country is among our many failed institutions since the turn of the millennium. Somehow, the People have to take control for their future and their own sakes.
Showing posts with label Social Security Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Security Reform. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
The Freakout Continues, cont'd....
 |
| His Serenity Back In The Day |
Now that His Serenity's Budget has been released, shrunk wrapped and all, and yes, indeed, it contains cuts to Social Security (scheduled benefit increases are to be based on the Infamous Chained-CPI instead of current COLA formulae and expected inflation rates; it's complex) and Medicare (scheduled payments to providers are slated for cuts and beneficiaries contributions are scheduled to increase), all heck has broken loose, at least among "progressives."
Who insist that there be "NO CUTS!!!"
Well. Fine. That's not going to help much, though, when All The Serious People insist that these aren't "really" cuts, at least not from current benefits, they merely slow the rate of increase "to more closely reflect the actual impact of inflation." Yeah, right. Lies and damned lies, but whatever.
The issue, as I've said before, is that maintaining the status quo -- which is all that "NO CUTS!!!" does -- is actually a step backwards because current COLA formulae don't reflect actual cost of living increases for anyone, let alone elders. Consequently the only serious progressive position should be to increase SS benefits by substantially more than current COLA formulae do.
Duh.
But of course, that's not the "progressive" position.
Not even Bernie Sanders'.
If "NO CUTS!!!" is the opposition position and only "progressives" are expressing this position, then the game is already lost no matter what the outcome.
Young Ezra may have actually written a column with charts and graphs and stuff that show -- or suggest -- that increasing benefits is better for the economy than reducing them or their rate of growth, but so what? Who is claiming that the economy will be better for these cuts? Who is claiming that the intent of these cuts is to improve the economy? Ha ha ha.
The intent is obvious: ensure that the High and the Mighty will never be required to pay one dime in taxes to support other people's old folk or to pay back any of the trillions of dollars in tax reductions they've received due to the trillions in surplus SS taxes already paid for their own and their parents' retirements.
It's been obvious for years.
Cutting scheduled Social Security benefits has been on the political agenda of the Highest of the Mighty ever since the failure to privatize the system under the Busheviks. This doesn't mean they are giving up on their ultimate goal of stealing the entire SS money pot. In fact, the payroll tax "holiday" and the White House's open advocacy for Chained CPI are almost as obviously means toward that end. Privatization of the program can then be hailed as the means to increase benefits, and I'll bet you even Bernie Sanders supports it.
Sometimes it's so easy to read these entrails.
Monday, April 8, 2013
The Freakout Continues...
This might be interesting. I don't know how to read these beads, though, so it might turn into a big, fat nothing burger, too. We'll see.
On Wednesday, the White House will present its budget, one widely presumed to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits "going forward" and to do who knows what all damage to remaining social programs -- which have already been severely impacted by state and local budget cuts since the advent of the Permanent Recession, and have not in any way kept pace with the social needs of the American People as they are forced further and further into poverty and destitution.
Many people have pointed out that even Granny Starver Paul Ryan's budget doesn't (directly) harm the old, the halt, the blind and the lame. Obama's does. Or at least it's reported to in advance of its anxiously awaited release.
"Nixon goes to China" and all that.
There's not a lot that We the People can do about these machinations of the High and the Mighty. We can do almost nothing about them through elections. The political/electoral process in this country -- a process which was never amenable to the public interest or the public good -- has reached what looks like a terminal phase. It has become fundamentally useless as a means for accomplishing public interest ends. Only special interests can be accommodated. There are plenty of signs there is no chance for recovery from this condition. Both the major political parties are beholden to the richest players at the table, both do their bidding; neither is more than marginally conscious of the People and the public interest.
When the People become restless, the state cracks down with ever greater cruelty and violence. We live in what is effectively a police state set up and operated on behalf of a relative handful of vastly wealthy individuals and institutions.
The so-called "progressive" position under the current circumstances is to preserve what can be preserved of what remains of the New Deal social programs and to advance "cultural values" issues, such as same-sex marriage and so on.
In other words, preserve the status quo on vital issues -- to the extent that's possible -- and make incremental advances on the cultural margins, apparently so that generations to come will be culturally capable of and conditioned to doing the right thing on those vital matters.
In my view, there's nothing truly progressive about these positions at all. There's nothing progressive because there is nothing new in holding on to the tattered remnants of a more and more irrelevant social program status quo, nor is there anything new in extending rights to smaller and smaller segments of previously marginalized population segments. They may be desirable on their own account, but they are not "progress." One is quite self-consciously standing still.
So we now have a media frenzy and internet freakout over the White House's proposed "reforms" -- ie: cuts -- to Social Security and Medicare and doG-knows what other abominations the new federal budget contains.
But is it a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing?
Wouldn't surprise me.
On Wednesday, the White House will present its budget, one widely presumed to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits "going forward" and to do who knows what all damage to remaining social programs -- which have already been severely impacted by state and local budget cuts since the advent of the Permanent Recession, and have not in any way kept pace with the social needs of the American People as they are forced further and further into poverty and destitution.
Many people have pointed out that even Granny Starver Paul Ryan's budget doesn't (directly) harm the old, the halt, the blind and the lame. Obama's does. Or at least it's reported to in advance of its anxiously awaited release.
"Nixon goes to China" and all that.
There's not a lot that We the People can do about these machinations of the High and the Mighty. We can do almost nothing about them through elections. The political/electoral process in this country -- a process which was never amenable to the public interest or the public good -- has reached what looks like a terminal phase. It has become fundamentally useless as a means for accomplishing public interest ends. Only special interests can be accommodated. There are plenty of signs there is no chance for recovery from this condition. Both the major political parties are beholden to the richest players at the table, both do their bidding; neither is more than marginally conscious of the People and the public interest.
When the People become restless, the state cracks down with ever greater cruelty and violence. We live in what is effectively a police state set up and operated on behalf of a relative handful of vastly wealthy individuals and institutions.
The so-called "progressive" position under the current circumstances is to preserve what can be preserved of what remains of the New Deal social programs and to advance "cultural values" issues, such as same-sex marriage and so on.
In other words, preserve the status quo on vital issues -- to the extent that's possible -- and make incremental advances on the cultural margins, apparently so that generations to come will be culturally capable of and conditioned to doing the right thing on those vital matters.
In my view, there's nothing truly progressive about these positions at all. There's nothing progressive because there is nothing new in holding on to the tattered remnants of a more and more irrelevant social program status quo, nor is there anything new in extending rights to smaller and smaller segments of previously marginalized population segments. They may be desirable on their own account, but they are not "progress." One is quite self-consciously standing still.
So we now have a media frenzy and internet freakout over the White House's proposed "reforms" -- ie: cuts -- to Social Security and Medicare and doG-knows what other abominations the new federal budget contains.
But is it a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing?
Wouldn't surprise me.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The Freakout Over "Chained CPI"
For years now, I've advocated increasing Social Security benefits -- by doubling or even tripling low-end benefits, 50% increase at the mid-range, maybe even a 25% increase at the top. This is not rocket science, it's basic consumer economics.
Social Security benefits are cripplingly low for many retirees as well as for many of those who would retire, except they can't afford to.
It's a ridiculous situation that any rational society would not have allowed to occur, especially not during the worst economic depression since the 1930's. A rational society would have pumped up retirement benefits promptly and would have made retirement possible for many more people at an earlier age. I've advocated 55 or 60 as the proper retirement age for full benefits, rather than 66 or 67 as is now the case, and of course, I advocated something like "Medicare for All" as opposed to the titanic insurance company and medical-industrial subsidy that is Obamacare.
Doing those things: substantially increasing SS benefit amounts, reducing the retirement age, and instituting single payer health care/Medicare for All would have made a huge difference in the course of the now-Permanent Recession and would have alleviated a lot of suffering.
Instead we get cuts and talk of more cuts to come.
This is insane.
Apparently the White House is really, really pushing to institute "Chained CPI" for calculating COLAs for all kinds of benefits, especially Social Security. The beauty part, according to those who have looked into it, is that Chained CPI also functions as a mid- and lower-class tax increase because it adjusts tax brackets ever so subtly, gradually forcing lower income people into higher tax brackets while leaving those already in the highest brackets where they are. Brilliant!
With the specter of raising Medicare eligibility age to 67, the impoverishment of ordinary working Americans is set to continue until Doomsday.
This is absurd.
There is now a full-blown freakout on the so-called 'left' over the Chained CPI proposal out of the White House, and all leftish internet effort is being marshaled to put a stop to it. Yes, well. Good luck with that. It's not that it is impossible to do; it's that it's the wrong crusade.
The effort should be focused on increasing benefits, lowering the retirement age and instituting single payer/Medicare for All.
All the Freakout does is try to maintain the status quo. It doesn't advance anything. It simply tries to keep things as they are for as long as possible.
I've made this criticism of Digby more than anyone, but the tendency on the so-called 'left' is almost universally to preserve the civilized status quo against the assaults by the barbarian 'right.' Typically, it fails. And the 'left' falls back to the next barricade until it, too, fails, and so, backwards we slide, constantly. The nation becomes more and more rightist because the rightists are the ones who keep pushing against the status quo, while the defenders of the status quo are the supposed 'left.'
Didn't anybody learn anything from the failure and fall of the Soviet Union? The tragedy of the Supreme Soviet making its last stand against Yeltsin's tanks was not that they were wrong. They weren't -- at least they wouldn't have been if things weren't so out of whack. The tragedy wasn't even that they failed. The tragedy was that they had nothing to offer beyond preserving the status quo, and they were incapable of recognizing that the status quo... sucked. (Well, it could have been worse, and it got worse, but that's another issue.)
So now the American 'left' uses all its energy to preserve what it can of the status quo and calls it "Victory!" -- and that's just crazy, especially as the status quo keeps moving rightwards. Preventing Chained CPI doesn't stop the impoverishment. It's not at all certain that Chained CPI can be stopped at this juncture. So if it is instituted, the impoverishment of the American People will be accelerated somewhat, but that impoverishment will take place anyway if the current COLA formula is maintained.
Do people realize that there were no COLA adjustments for two years during the darkest period of the Permanent Recession, despite the fact that the basic cost of living was skyrocketing at that time? Food, housing, utilities, medical prices etc. were all going up, some at double digit rates, and people on fixed incomes were being battered by these increases, but they were ignored by those calculating COLAs, one of the excuses being that beneficiaries had received a large COLA previously due to fuel cost increases, and since the cost of fuel was (temporarily) lower, they didn't need COLA increases to cover other rising costs.
Maintaining the current COLA formula, in other words, is effectively backsliding. Shifting to Chained CPI calculations accelerates the backsliding.
Neither is an improvement, neither stops the impoverishment of the People for the benefit of Our Betters.
It's part of what drives me nuts about what passes for the 'left' in this country.
Those who actually want to and try to make like better for the masses are dismissed as crackpots and worse, while those who are singlemindedly focused on preserving things as they are are hailed or condemned as some kind of 'leftist' heroes or villains (depending on ideological perspective), and the rightists claim the "center."
There's an uncompromising level of cruelty among Our Betters and an utter lack of empathy for the victims of their policies that could be highlighted much more -- and much better -- than it is. A real Left might do that, but given the lack of enthusiasm for using terms like "cruelty" to describe the policies being inflicted on the rest of us by those in power (for fear of offending?) it's going to be an ever lengthening row to hoe to enlighten the suffering and reverse the cruelties of the High and the Mighty.
Of course the entire political culture is complicit and both major political parties are deeply involved in demonizing and impoverishing the masses. There is no better solution from either party, merely a pendulum swing from bad to somewhat less bad. Nor is there is a chance of forcing "change" by either boycotting elections or voting third party. We've already seen how -- and how effectively -- authority and "interests" will interfere with any election that doesn't produce acceptable results. If you doubt just how far Our Betters will go, look to the astonishing replacement of elected prime ministers in Europe with compliant technocrats whenever the austerity interests declare it desirable.
We mustn't allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that elections will get us anywhere. They won't. They will not be allowed to.
Chained CPI may or may not be implemented. We the People will have no effective say in the matter. But by ensuring there is a complete freakout over it among the so-called 'left', Our Betters ensure that there is little effective opposition to their overall scheme. It works beautifully. For them.
---------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Young Ezra has cogitated the matter and decided not to get too worked up about Chained CPI, it's the whole damned thing that's too mingy as it is, and behold: increasing SS benefits and instituting a public option or Medicare for All actually -- wait for it -- benefits the economy.
Who. Duh. Thunk?
Maybe. Everyone knows Young Ezra is a complete and total tool of powerful interests (particularly in the White House, doesn't matter who's occupying said House) and he doesn't take stands or advocate policies on his ownself. What he does is push whatever line his most recent Power Contact pitched to him. In this case, it appears there is someone at the White House who's had a dawning, a come to Jesus moment. A realization: the economic policy makers are going about everything backwards, no wonder it doesn't work! Ah ha! Yes, well.
Having the realization and doing anything about it are two different things. Ezra is just a vessel, much as Brooksie is; a great deal of their work in the media is designed to palliate the masses, quiet their grumblings, by declaring that this or that position that the People may (or may not) favor is being discussed by the High and the Mighty, who are considering every possible argument before inflicting a policy on the rest of us. You see. That is why they are called Our Betters.
I would go so far as to suggest that Young Ezra has had no dawning at all. He'll cheerfully put the notion out there that, say, maybe it would be cool to increase rather than shrink benefits and put in place a rational public health care system. There. It's been said.
Now let's get on with the screwage.
I am so cynical.
Social Security benefits are cripplingly low for many retirees as well as for many of those who would retire, except they can't afford to.
It's a ridiculous situation that any rational society would not have allowed to occur, especially not during the worst economic depression since the 1930's. A rational society would have pumped up retirement benefits promptly and would have made retirement possible for many more people at an earlier age. I've advocated 55 or 60 as the proper retirement age for full benefits, rather than 66 or 67 as is now the case, and of course, I advocated something like "Medicare for All" as opposed to the titanic insurance company and medical-industrial subsidy that is Obamacare.
Doing those things: substantially increasing SS benefit amounts, reducing the retirement age, and instituting single payer health care/Medicare for All would have made a huge difference in the course of the now-Permanent Recession and would have alleviated a lot of suffering.
Instead we get cuts and talk of more cuts to come.
This is insane.
Apparently the White House is really, really pushing to institute "Chained CPI" for calculating COLAs for all kinds of benefits, especially Social Security. The beauty part, according to those who have looked into it, is that Chained CPI also functions as a mid- and lower-class tax increase because it adjusts tax brackets ever so subtly, gradually forcing lower income people into higher tax brackets while leaving those already in the highest brackets where they are. Brilliant!
With the specter of raising Medicare eligibility age to 67, the impoverishment of ordinary working Americans is set to continue until Doomsday.
This is absurd.
There is now a full-blown freakout on the so-called 'left' over the Chained CPI proposal out of the White House, and all leftish internet effort is being marshaled to put a stop to it. Yes, well. Good luck with that. It's not that it is impossible to do; it's that it's the wrong crusade.
The effort should be focused on increasing benefits, lowering the retirement age and instituting single payer/Medicare for All.
All the Freakout does is try to maintain the status quo. It doesn't advance anything. It simply tries to keep things as they are for as long as possible.
I've made this criticism of Digby more than anyone, but the tendency on the so-called 'left' is almost universally to preserve the civilized status quo against the assaults by the barbarian 'right.' Typically, it fails. And the 'left' falls back to the next barricade until it, too, fails, and so, backwards we slide, constantly. The nation becomes more and more rightist because the rightists are the ones who keep pushing against the status quo, while the defenders of the status quo are the supposed 'left.'
Didn't anybody learn anything from the failure and fall of the Soviet Union? The tragedy of the Supreme Soviet making its last stand against Yeltsin's tanks was not that they were wrong. They weren't -- at least they wouldn't have been if things weren't so out of whack. The tragedy wasn't even that they failed. The tragedy was that they had nothing to offer beyond preserving the status quo, and they were incapable of recognizing that the status quo... sucked. (Well, it could have been worse, and it got worse, but that's another issue.)
So now the American 'left' uses all its energy to preserve what it can of the status quo and calls it "Victory!" -- and that's just crazy, especially as the status quo keeps moving rightwards. Preventing Chained CPI doesn't stop the impoverishment. It's not at all certain that Chained CPI can be stopped at this juncture. So if it is instituted, the impoverishment of the American People will be accelerated somewhat, but that impoverishment will take place anyway if the current COLA formula is maintained.
Do people realize that there were no COLA adjustments for two years during the darkest period of the Permanent Recession, despite the fact that the basic cost of living was skyrocketing at that time? Food, housing, utilities, medical prices etc. were all going up, some at double digit rates, and people on fixed incomes were being battered by these increases, but they were ignored by those calculating COLAs, one of the excuses being that beneficiaries had received a large COLA previously due to fuel cost increases, and since the cost of fuel was (temporarily) lower, they didn't need COLA increases to cover other rising costs.
Maintaining the current COLA formula, in other words, is effectively backsliding. Shifting to Chained CPI calculations accelerates the backsliding.
Neither is an improvement, neither stops the impoverishment of the People for the benefit of Our Betters.
It's part of what drives me nuts about what passes for the 'left' in this country.
Those who actually want to and try to make like better for the masses are dismissed as crackpots and worse, while those who are singlemindedly focused on preserving things as they are are hailed or condemned as some kind of 'leftist' heroes or villains (depending on ideological perspective), and the rightists claim the "center."
There's an uncompromising level of cruelty among Our Betters and an utter lack of empathy for the victims of their policies that could be highlighted much more -- and much better -- than it is. A real Left might do that, but given the lack of enthusiasm for using terms like "cruelty" to describe the policies being inflicted on the rest of us by those in power (for fear of offending?) it's going to be an ever lengthening row to hoe to enlighten the suffering and reverse the cruelties of the High and the Mighty.
Of course the entire political culture is complicit and both major political parties are deeply involved in demonizing and impoverishing the masses. There is no better solution from either party, merely a pendulum swing from bad to somewhat less bad. Nor is there is a chance of forcing "change" by either boycotting elections or voting third party. We've already seen how -- and how effectively -- authority and "interests" will interfere with any election that doesn't produce acceptable results. If you doubt just how far Our Betters will go, look to the astonishing replacement of elected prime ministers in Europe with compliant technocrats whenever the austerity interests declare it desirable.
We mustn't allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that elections will get us anywhere. They won't. They will not be allowed to.
Chained CPI may or may not be implemented. We the People will have no effective say in the matter. But by ensuring there is a complete freakout over it among the so-called 'left', Our Betters ensure that there is little effective opposition to their overall scheme. It works beautifully. For them.
---------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Young Ezra has cogitated the matter and decided not to get too worked up about Chained CPI, it's the whole damned thing that's too mingy as it is, and behold: increasing SS benefits and instituting a public option or Medicare for All actually -- wait for it -- benefits the economy.
Who. Duh. Thunk?
Maybe. Everyone knows Young Ezra is a complete and total tool of powerful interests (particularly in the White House, doesn't matter who's occupying said House) and he doesn't take stands or advocate policies on his ownself. What he does is push whatever line his most recent Power Contact pitched to him. In this case, it appears there is someone at the White House who's had a dawning, a come to Jesus moment. A realization: the economic policy makers are going about everything backwards, no wonder it doesn't work! Ah ha! Yes, well.
Having the realization and doing anything about it are two different things. Ezra is just a vessel, much as Brooksie is; a great deal of their work in the media is designed to palliate the masses, quiet their grumblings, by declaring that this or that position that the People may (or may not) favor is being discussed by the High and the Mighty, who are considering every possible argument before inflicting a policy on the rest of us. You see. That is why they are called Our Betters.
I would go so far as to suggest that Young Ezra has had no dawning at all. He'll cheerfully put the notion out there that, say, maybe it would be cool to increase rather than shrink benefits and put in place a rational public health care system. There. It's been said.
Now let's get on with the screwage.
I am so cynical.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Austerity for Thee
More and more people seem to be coming to the realization that Our Betters in Washington are selling us a bill of goods regarding the viability of various social programs, specifically Social Security ("if we don't do something right now, now, now! we're all gonna die!"), that is plenty familiar -- and wrong.
Of course it will still be a while before many of those who are opposed to -- say -- pilfering Social Security revenues for -- say -- yet more tax cuts for the rich, but even they'll come around after many more years of pounding.
Social Security is not really off-budget like Our Glorious Wars, not at all. As I understand it, until the recent payroll tax "holiday," it was paying out about as much as it brought in, so it was at least revenue neutral. Prior to The Permanent Recession (which happened simultaneously with the start of Baby Boomer retirements, isn'tthatinterestingthough) Social Security was collecting a substantial surplus, all of which was secured by (I wouldn't say "invested in...") special Treasury bonds.
Since the payroll tax "holiday," however, and even now with full payroll taxes being collected in incomes once again (which amounts to a 2% tax hike on working people) Social Security has been paying out somewhat less than (or quite a bit less than, depending on your point of view) it has been receiving in revenues.
This has meant "tapping the Trust Fund" -- except it doesn't really. The people who say the Trust Fund isn't real are right in that sense. There is no special place where the Trust Fund Trillions are stored for safekeeping. Payments from the Trust Fund come out of the government's General Fund -- which means they are either taxed or borrowed into being.
Because of the incessant jiggering that's been done to the Fund and the budgets and such, it ultimately means that all the money that's being paid out to Social Security beneficiaries comes from the General Fund, though SS continues to maintain nominal independence, what with its dedicated revenue stream and so on and so forth (the law, as it were).
Social Security is no more "going broke" than the Government itself is "going broke" or the Imperial Storm Troopers are "going broke." The Federal Government has a highly creative ability to keep itself from "going broke," as well as the ability to determine who will actually go broke in the Casino of Life.
Thus all the yakking and yabbering about Social Security being unsustainable or what have you is really little more than rhetoric for the yobs and entertainment for the Higher Ups as they decide (on Our Behalf, of course) who will and will not benefit from this or that decision or action they take and implement.
In the case of Social Security, the High and the Mighty have decided they want to cut Social Security payments to beneficiaries "going forward." And they have decided they will do it, no matter what the People think about it, though they will sell it as a "strengthening" or "improvement" or what have you, "to ensure that Social Security is there for the next generations, yadda yadda," as if they actually care one way or another about you and yours. (For the record, they don't.)
They have decided in their Wisdom to re-prioritize Government spending; they don't want to spend so much on the old, the halt, the blind, and the lame as they would otherwise be spending given the priorities set a generation or so ago. They aren't seeking to reduce the amount of Government spending in the aggregate -- no, they'll increase it into the dim mists of the Future Unknown. They just don't want to spend as much on you for the well being of you and yours.
This is still somewhat abstract for Americans, because it's not altogether obvious how this re-prioritization is supposed to work. A lot of people seem not to realize that many benefit payments have been severely cut as it is, that eligibility for benefits has been restricted, and that millions and millions of people have been cut off from benefits altogether. This has come at the cost of a stunning increase in poverty, hunger and homelessness in this country -- yet it's largely invisible or goes unrecognized.
It's happening not because of any "lack of money" -- there's plenty of money. It's happening because Our Betters see their opportunity and they are taking their opportunity to ensure their perpetual happiness while incrementally enmiserating everyone else. What could be better -- for them.
If they are not actually going to reduce aggregate government spending (don't be silly, they won't) but they are insistent on reducing the amount spent for "benefits" -- or anything else that doesn't provide an immediate bottom line enhancement to them and their cronies -- what do they want to spend the money on?
Well, wars, for one thing. Another one -- could get nasty -- brewing on the Pacific horizon involving Korea. Oh, that's the ticket. Let's blow things up Over There, and let's use some Nukes, too, eh? But see, that's how Our Betters think. If you take a moment to ponder what's going on Over There, it's hard to escape the notion that L'il Kim the Bad Boy got his ideas about How To Deal with the Rest of the World not from Mao or Stalin or his Old Man but from Gee Dubya and the ilk he surrounded himself with -- whose ideas and ideals still infest the Government. (Of course, my theory has long been that the Busheviks were the very subversives we, as little ones, were incessantly warned about in the routine Anti-Communist Propaganda lectures we were exposed to. But that's another topic for another day...)
Wars can be extremely profitable for certain connected interests, as was demonstrated in breathtaking fashion in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, it was partly a matter of literally looting the people and the country of anything of value and destroying the rest, and partly it was a matter of looting the American Treasury, some of it in the form of billions of dollars (shrink-wrapped $100 bills) airlifted over on pallets, never accounted for. Endless defense spending for warriors and materiel, endless no-bid contracts, amounting to trillions more in money for nothin' -- not to pay for anything blown up or killed or conquered, not for repairs and maintenance, not for anything at all, except for the contractor's being. The closest parallel to what was happening might have been during the American Indian Wars in the 19th Century, an extraordinary period of handing out favors and payments -- often for nothing at all in concrete terms -- indeed ensuring that favored recipients would enjoy endless Government rewards for... being. All charged to War. What a racket.
The bloated National Security State has proved immensely profitable to certain connected interests -- sometimes the same ones who profit from War, sometimes others -- and they want to see those profits continue and increase until hell freezes over if they have their way. State security is a byproduct, if it occurs at all. The point, after all, is not to secure the state, it is to secure the profits of connected interests, and Americans have only the slightest glimmer of recognition that these enormous profits are actually coming at the People's expense. But that's the point.
One of the cleverest favored interests is the Medical-Industrial Complex that profits in myriad ways and seeks to ensure the perpetuation of that profit through the tender mercies of Obamacare and the forced extractions from The People that go along with it. It's not just a matter of ensuring profits for the insurance industry forever, oh no. There is more, much more, including all the many ways the Complex can profit directly from the many extractions yet to come, such as higher (and ever-higher) Medicare co-pays, premiums, and potentially the privatization of the entire program. There is no thought -- at all -- of reducing the scandalously high medical care prices in this country (another source of looting and profit). No. All the thinking among policy makers is about how to get more money out of the pockets of the old, the halt, the blind and the lame to pay for ever-growing medical costs. Clearly, the M-I Complex is one of The Most Favored Interests.
Of course the Banking Interests seem to be the most favored of all. Whereas War, the National Security State, and the Medical-Industrial interests have managed to extract trillions from the People during the last decade and a half or so, the Banking Interests managed a heist of hundreds of trillions practically overnight. Nothing like that has happened before in human history. It's a stunning achievement. Even Enron couldn't do it.
One of the little noticed factors of both the boom and the bust that has led to the current Permanent Recession (for the rest of us, not for Our Betters) was that there was an enormous amount of theft going on (much of it out in the open) and that the bulk of this theft was by the rich from the rich. That's where the money was after all, and in some ways, it was surprisingly easy for clever dicks to get.
Once that easy money was "redistributed" (among the rich) however, many of those who lost in the game wanted -- demanded -- their losses be made good from you and me. In other words, "austerity" for the rest of us, profits without end for the High and the Mighty.
The banks were the first in line, and their banditry was and is stark and stunningly successful. Not only were they made whole for their casino losses, they were apparently granted what amounts to a permanent subsidy to not only cover any future losses but to ensure an endlessly growing profit stream.
"Austerity" is perhaps the purest form of theft from the People to enhance the revenues and profits of favored interests, but in the United States, as I mentioned earlier, "austerity" is still something of an abstraction. The connections between cuts in benefits and services that have already been enacted, together with those to come, and the concomitant rise in poverty, hunger, homelessness among all sectors of the Lower Orders, along with the decimation of the middle class, aren't yet clear enough for widespread recognition.
But overseas, in Europe and Britain, those connections couldn't be clearer, as one after another, the peripheral countries and marginal population segments are quite openly looted and impoverished for the benefit of the "core" -- but more specifically for the benefit of the rising European Bankers and the Neo-Aristocracy. Parasites, in other words.
The already too meager benefits of Social Security in this country must be further reduced in order to ensure that the favored few receive the endless profits they believe they are entitled to.
But as we've seen with the banks most clearly, nothing -- at all -- need be reduced to provide the Entitled Class with endless profits. No pallets of $100 bills need be airlifted, no extractions need be taken from the pockets of workers and the elderly. All it takes is jiggering a few numbers on a screen, and Voilà: beaucoups de bucks! It's magic!
Wars and the National Security State, all the social benefits one could want, infrastructure spending out the wahzoo, all of it and more can be funded and more, with merely a jiggering of the numbers on a screen.
This tells us that the point of all the benefit cuts and austerity measures is simple: to inflict pain and suffering sadistically, because it can be done and the victims can do nothing about it.
Power.
For the sake of it.
Monstrous.
Of course it will still be a while before many of those who are opposed to -- say -- pilfering Social Security revenues for -- say -- yet more tax cuts for the rich, but even they'll come around after many more years of pounding.
Social Security is not really off-budget like Our Glorious Wars, not at all. As I understand it, until the recent payroll tax "holiday," it was paying out about as much as it brought in, so it was at least revenue neutral. Prior to The Permanent Recession (which happened simultaneously with the start of Baby Boomer retirements, isn'tthatinterestingthough) Social Security was collecting a substantial surplus, all of which was secured by (I wouldn't say "invested in...") special Treasury bonds.
Since the payroll tax "holiday," however, and even now with full payroll taxes being collected in incomes once again (which amounts to a 2% tax hike on working people) Social Security has been paying out somewhat less than (or quite a bit less than, depending on your point of view) it has been receiving in revenues.
This has meant "tapping the Trust Fund" -- except it doesn't really. The people who say the Trust Fund isn't real are right in that sense. There is no special place where the Trust Fund Trillions are stored for safekeeping. Payments from the Trust Fund come out of the government's General Fund -- which means they are either taxed or borrowed into being.
Because of the incessant jiggering that's been done to the Fund and the budgets and such, it ultimately means that all the money that's being paid out to Social Security beneficiaries comes from the General Fund, though SS continues to maintain nominal independence, what with its dedicated revenue stream and so on and so forth (the law, as it were).
Social Security is no more "going broke" than the Government itself is "going broke" or the Imperial Storm Troopers are "going broke." The Federal Government has a highly creative ability to keep itself from "going broke," as well as the ability to determine who will actually go broke in the Casino of Life.
Thus all the yakking and yabbering about Social Security being unsustainable or what have you is really little more than rhetoric for the yobs and entertainment for the Higher Ups as they decide (on Our Behalf, of course) who will and will not benefit from this or that decision or action they take and implement.
In the case of Social Security, the High and the Mighty have decided they want to cut Social Security payments to beneficiaries "going forward." And they have decided they will do it, no matter what the People think about it, though they will sell it as a "strengthening" or "improvement" or what have you, "to ensure that Social Security is there for the next generations, yadda yadda," as if they actually care one way or another about you and yours. (For the record, they don't.)
They have decided in their Wisdom to re-prioritize Government spending; they don't want to spend so much on the old, the halt, the blind, and the lame as they would otherwise be spending given the priorities set a generation or so ago. They aren't seeking to reduce the amount of Government spending in the aggregate -- no, they'll increase it into the dim mists of the Future Unknown. They just don't want to spend as much on you for the well being of you and yours.
This is still somewhat abstract for Americans, because it's not altogether obvious how this re-prioritization is supposed to work. A lot of people seem not to realize that many benefit payments have been severely cut as it is, that eligibility for benefits has been restricted, and that millions and millions of people have been cut off from benefits altogether. This has come at the cost of a stunning increase in poverty, hunger and homelessness in this country -- yet it's largely invisible or goes unrecognized.
It's happening not because of any "lack of money" -- there's plenty of money. It's happening because Our Betters see their opportunity and they are taking their opportunity to ensure their perpetual happiness while incrementally enmiserating everyone else. What could be better -- for them.
If they are not actually going to reduce aggregate government spending (don't be silly, they won't) but they are insistent on reducing the amount spent for "benefits" -- or anything else that doesn't provide an immediate bottom line enhancement to them and their cronies -- what do they want to spend the money on?
Well, wars, for one thing. Another one -- could get nasty -- brewing on the Pacific horizon involving Korea. Oh, that's the ticket. Let's blow things up Over There, and let's use some Nukes, too, eh? But see, that's how Our Betters think. If you take a moment to ponder what's going on Over There, it's hard to escape the notion that L'il Kim the Bad Boy got his ideas about How To Deal with the Rest of the World not from Mao or Stalin or his Old Man but from Gee Dubya and the ilk he surrounded himself with -- whose ideas and ideals still infest the Government. (Of course, my theory has long been that the Busheviks were the very subversives we, as little ones, were incessantly warned about in the routine Anti-Communist Propaganda lectures we were exposed to. But that's another topic for another day...)
Wars can be extremely profitable for certain connected interests, as was demonstrated in breathtaking fashion in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, it was partly a matter of literally looting the people and the country of anything of value and destroying the rest, and partly it was a matter of looting the American Treasury, some of it in the form of billions of dollars (shrink-wrapped $100 bills) airlifted over on pallets, never accounted for. Endless defense spending for warriors and materiel, endless no-bid contracts, amounting to trillions more in money for nothin' -- not to pay for anything blown up or killed or conquered, not for repairs and maintenance, not for anything at all, except for the contractor's being. The closest parallel to what was happening might have been during the American Indian Wars in the 19th Century, an extraordinary period of handing out favors and payments -- often for nothing at all in concrete terms -- indeed ensuring that favored recipients would enjoy endless Government rewards for... being. All charged to War. What a racket.
The bloated National Security State has proved immensely profitable to certain connected interests -- sometimes the same ones who profit from War, sometimes others -- and they want to see those profits continue and increase until hell freezes over if they have their way. State security is a byproduct, if it occurs at all. The point, after all, is not to secure the state, it is to secure the profits of connected interests, and Americans have only the slightest glimmer of recognition that these enormous profits are actually coming at the People's expense. But that's the point.
One of the cleverest favored interests is the Medical-Industrial Complex that profits in myriad ways and seeks to ensure the perpetuation of that profit through the tender mercies of Obamacare and the forced extractions from The People that go along with it. It's not just a matter of ensuring profits for the insurance industry forever, oh no. There is more, much more, including all the many ways the Complex can profit directly from the many extractions yet to come, such as higher (and ever-higher) Medicare co-pays, premiums, and potentially the privatization of the entire program. There is no thought -- at all -- of reducing the scandalously high medical care prices in this country (another source of looting and profit). No. All the thinking among policy makers is about how to get more money out of the pockets of the old, the halt, the blind and the lame to pay for ever-growing medical costs. Clearly, the M-I Complex is one of The Most Favored Interests.
Of course the Banking Interests seem to be the most favored of all. Whereas War, the National Security State, and the Medical-Industrial interests have managed to extract trillions from the People during the last decade and a half or so, the Banking Interests managed a heist of hundreds of trillions practically overnight. Nothing like that has happened before in human history. It's a stunning achievement. Even Enron couldn't do it.
One of the little noticed factors of both the boom and the bust that has led to the current Permanent Recession (for the rest of us, not for Our Betters) was that there was an enormous amount of theft going on (much of it out in the open) and that the bulk of this theft was by the rich from the rich. That's where the money was after all, and in some ways, it was surprisingly easy for clever dicks to get.
Once that easy money was "redistributed" (among the rich) however, many of those who lost in the game wanted -- demanded -- their losses be made good from you and me. In other words, "austerity" for the rest of us, profits without end for the High and the Mighty.
The banks were the first in line, and their banditry was and is stark and stunningly successful. Not only were they made whole for their casino losses, they were apparently granted what amounts to a permanent subsidy to not only cover any future losses but to ensure an endlessly growing profit stream.
"Austerity" is perhaps the purest form of theft from the People to enhance the revenues and profits of favored interests, but in the United States, as I mentioned earlier, "austerity" is still something of an abstraction. The connections between cuts in benefits and services that have already been enacted, together with those to come, and the concomitant rise in poverty, hunger, homelessness among all sectors of the Lower Orders, along with the decimation of the middle class, aren't yet clear enough for widespread recognition.
But overseas, in Europe and Britain, those connections couldn't be clearer, as one after another, the peripheral countries and marginal population segments are quite openly looted and impoverished for the benefit of the "core" -- but more specifically for the benefit of the rising European Bankers and the Neo-Aristocracy. Parasites, in other words.
The already too meager benefits of Social Security in this country must be further reduced in order to ensure that the favored few receive the endless profits they believe they are entitled to.
But as we've seen with the banks most clearly, nothing -- at all -- need be reduced to provide the Entitled Class with endless profits. No pallets of $100 bills need be airlifted, no extractions need be taken from the pockets of workers and the elderly. All it takes is jiggering a few numbers on a screen, and Voilà: beaucoups de bucks! It's magic!
Wars and the National Security State, all the social benefits one could want, infrastructure spending out the wahzoo, all of it and more can be funded and more, with merely a jiggering of the numbers on a screen.
This tells us that the point of all the benefit cuts and austerity measures is simple: to inflict pain and suffering sadistically, because it can be done and the victims can do nothing about it.
Power.
For the sake of it.
Monstrous.
Monday, January 7, 2013
I'm Old Enough to Remember When They Were Panicking About the Young
 |
| American Bandstand was on the teevee every afternoon; it was, all by itself, creating a generation of Juvenile Delinquents! |
Damb, I'm old enough to remember JDs and DA haircuts and all the panic and fear that was being raised in the media practically every day about young folks running wild.
Now, of course, fear and panic are being ginned up about the Old Folks* getting older, retiring, and sucking up all the Good that should be going to the young, or if not to them, at least to someone more deserving.
This propaganda campaign against the Old Farts and their nasty pensions and their over-abundant Social Security and their icky illnesses has been going on for years nonstop, relentlessly, pretty much daily in all the major media -- and in a lot of the new media, too. The propaganda has been ratcheted up recently, what with the Doom of the Fiscal Cliff and the Disaster of the Debt Limit to keep the pot stirred and the panic at a fever pitch. The Old, the Sick, the Halt and the Lame cost too much. We cannot sustain the expense! We must Do Something NOW!!!!
Yes, well... isn't that always the case?
Actually, what's really going on is that the rich people who have been getting massively richer over the past few decades of tax cuts, corporate welfare, wars of aggression, lifestyle subsidies, bankster bailouts and what have you, see that in the near term future -- if something isn't done! -- they will have to pay some of their ill-gotten gains back to the public treasury, and they are adamant about refusing to do so, especially if it means that even a dime of revenue from them goes to pay for some geezer in a nursing home. They. Will. Not. Pay. Period. End of discussion.
They will not pay. So far, no one dares to go up against them mano a mano. And there is absolutely no one among them who will break ranks and say for the record that those who have benefited the most from the economic policies that are producing so much disaster for so many have an obligation and a responsibility to anyone beyond their own circle and those they choose to assist. There is no sense of the overall Public Interest whatsoever. It's been abandoned completely.
All they want is to ensure that those pitchforks, torches, tumbrils and guillotines they keep hearing about from their spies among the rabble are kept at bay.
They will pay, in other words, for a massive and quite mad National Security State which can and does project its power globally. That is worth it to them. But almost nothing else is. Well, that and whatever bailouts and welfare they can suck up. Priorities, after all.
Generally, all the relentless propaganda that accuses the old of living too long and costing too much is little more than projection. Isn't it really the rich and their running dogs that live too long and cost too much? Do we even have to debate this? Look on your teevee any Sunday, and you'll see exactly what's meant: all these cranky, rich, and often elderly mouthpieces yammering endlessly about how other old folks are taking all the Good, and of course threatening the very existence of the Republic in the process.
We should know the truth: those who complain the loudest on the teevee (and in the rest of the media) are typically the ones who are living the longest and costing the rest of us the most.
The only thing they really want -- and will pay for -- is the ability to suppress, repress, and oppress the seething multitudes. Propaganda works wonders in preparing the battle space as they say, and we have been drowning in anti-old-fart propaganda for years.
It's tracking closely with the Anti-Iraq (mutated now into Anti-Iran) propaganda that led to the Mesopotamian debacle of unpleasant memory. Hm, it appears Our Betters are not only innately stupid, they are incapable of learning. Well, I shouldn't say that. They do learn -- in the sense of learning how better to manipulate and suppress dissent -- but they don't learn the lessons they need to about how to live in the world.
The way to deal with this nonsense is to recognize the propaganda and immunize oneself and one another against it, to state clearly and relentlessly what needs to be done, and to accept nothing at face value from the media or the institutions that supposedly serve the Public Interest.
Recognize the lies.
Resist.
[Meant to say that today's Old Farts are the same people as the JDs and the Hippies of yore. In other words, the panic and fear has been a factor of the Boomer generation from the beginning...]
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Here We Go
Noises out of the White House and Congress, funneled through their ever reliable water-boy Ezra Klein (as well as many others), tell us that a Fiscal Cliff Deal is nigh, and one of its components is the adoption of the so-called "chained CPI" for calculating Social Security benefits (and possibly other Federal benefits) going forward.
In other words, a cut in future benefits.
It's not a trivial cut, either, as Social Security recipients have already felt the economic blow of low or no COLAs since the advent of the Permanent Recession (for you), while prices of goods and services used by seniors have continued to rise at a smart clip and profits to providers have never been higher.
The chained CPI assumes seniors can just substitute lower priced goods and services, and will do so, when their accustomed goods and services become more expensive, as they will. Ergo, the cost of living index need not reflect the full cost increases faced by older people. It can be jiggered in such a way that COLAs are diminished year by year, cumulatively, such that old folks will receive an ever lower monthly benefit than they would under the current, let alone an appropriate, cost of living index -- which is itself wholly inadequate.
Of course the tragedy in Newtown has consumed most of the attention lately, and with Christmas coming up shortly, there will be little opportunity for the public to consider and digest, let alone oppose, this move to put even more of the forever economic burden on the old, the sick, the halt, the lame and most especially the poor.
Oh, and supposedly, the White House is prepared to agree to the expiration of the payroll tax cut on workers come January. Now, the payroll tax cut was not a very good idea to begin with, but once it was instituted, the the $60-100 a month it provided to households for immediate spending rather than for future retirement became the difference between getting by for the moment and falling off the household fiscal cliff. Millions of households are being forced into poverty every year as it is; the moves to cut benefits and raise taxes for those least able to absorb further economic blows simply ensures more poverty and suffering in America in the future.
Of course, the correct approach is to raise benefits -- substantially at the lower end, not so much at the higher end -- lower the retirement age (55 or lower), provide Medicare for All (eliminating private profit health insurance companies), and establishing a full employment policy, putting everyone who can work to work in peacetime endeavors to repair and rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure while transforming America's energy regime.
All of this and more is doable, should have been started years ago, and as time passes is farther away than ever. Our Ruling Class simply has no intention of allowing any such thing in the near future, either.
We are locked in a political prison with no apparent escape...
But at least we're not Greece! Yay!
In other words, a cut in future benefits.
It's not a trivial cut, either, as Social Security recipients have already felt the economic blow of low or no COLAs since the advent of the Permanent Recession (for you), while prices of goods and services used by seniors have continued to rise at a smart clip and profits to providers have never been higher.
The chained CPI assumes seniors can just substitute lower priced goods and services, and will do so, when their accustomed goods and services become more expensive, as they will. Ergo, the cost of living index need not reflect the full cost increases faced by older people. It can be jiggered in such a way that COLAs are diminished year by year, cumulatively, such that old folks will receive an ever lower monthly benefit than they would under the current, let alone an appropriate, cost of living index -- which is itself wholly inadequate.
Of course the tragedy in Newtown has consumed most of the attention lately, and with Christmas coming up shortly, there will be little opportunity for the public to consider and digest, let alone oppose, this move to put even more of the forever economic burden on the old, the sick, the halt, the lame and most especially the poor.
Oh, and supposedly, the White House is prepared to agree to the expiration of the payroll tax cut on workers come January. Now, the payroll tax cut was not a very good idea to begin with, but once it was instituted, the the $60-100 a month it provided to households for immediate spending rather than for future retirement became the difference between getting by for the moment and falling off the household fiscal cliff. Millions of households are being forced into poverty every year as it is; the moves to cut benefits and raise taxes for those least able to absorb further economic blows simply ensures more poverty and suffering in America in the future.
Of course, the correct approach is to raise benefits -- substantially at the lower end, not so much at the higher end -- lower the retirement age (55 or lower), provide Medicare for All (eliminating private profit health insurance companies), and establishing a full employment policy, putting everyone who can work to work in peacetime endeavors to repair and rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure while transforming America's energy regime.
All of this and more is doable, should have been started years ago, and as time passes is farther away than ever. Our Ruling Class simply has no intention of allowing any such thing in the near future, either.
We are locked in a political prison with no apparent escape...
But at least we're not Greece! Yay!
Friday, December 7, 2012
On Cutting the Social Safety Nets
As we know, Our Rulers set an objective to cut the social safety nets some time ago, and they have been relentless in pursuit of their goals. Such safety nets as were put in place during the FDR/WWII/Cold War Eras have been cut back since the advent of the Reagan Revolution, and many are coming down.
The idea is marketed as Liberationist -- see, Freedom! To starve! Yay! -- but of course the upshot is authoritarian. These things always work out that way for some reason. And here you thought you were Free.
And it is literally Freedom to Starve, let's make no mistake about it. Poverty in America has been growing at a smart clip and there is no sign at all that the trends will reverse. The likelier scenario is that poverty will keep growing and -- gosh! -- no one will have a clue what to do about it; gee, it's just one of those things, you know... As poverty grows, so does hunger -- abject hunger, starvation -- something that has been stalking the land for many years, but you don't really notice or hear about it because most of those who are starving have long been so marginalized (primarily among the homeless mentally ill) that their fate -- whether to starve or to freeze or whatever, get run over or to be shot by the police for being odd -- isn't even noted by most people. That's how far we have come from the days when we actually thought we were on the way to a comprehensively caring society. The closer we got to it in the '60's especially, the farther from it a faction of our ruling class moved themselves and eventually the rest of us.
Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward wrote a book back in the day called "Regulating the Poor," and it was remarkably influential among a certain element of the Liberal Elites in the 1970's and '80's. Eventually, it would give rise to the enabling faction of those same elites. Which is to say that the shredding of the social safety net has been largely accomplished under the liberal -- and liberationist -- guise, rather than as an ongoing aspect of increasingly radical and reactionary rule of the neo-liberal/neo-conservative nexus at the core of post-modern governmental theory and practice.
I doubt that Piven and Cloward had any idea that their examination of Poor Laws over the centuries, and their application of Liberationist notions to the expansion of the Welfare State in America during the '60's and '70's would actually provide the justification for and lead to its destruction, but there you are. After all Piven and Cloward are liberals, and they wrote to celebrate the more humane and liberating features of the social safety net then being implemented... didn't they?
At this point, I honestly don't know. Witnessing the shocking growth of poverty in this country over the last five years and more and the neglect of even basic provisions for those least able to care for themselves as a consequence of public policy decision made by representatives of all political stripes -- every one of whom seems to be under the thrall of a tiny minority of extremely wealthy and inordinately selfish and socially irresponsible individuals and corporate interests -- it's difficult to tell.
Americans have ceded responsibility for social well-being to this handful of moral cretins, and so we have the results we see -- results which ought to be appalling to anyone with a conscience. Poverty, hunger, homelessness, disease, and death. That's the result. It's all around us.
And so a concerted effort is under way to further reduce or eliminate such minor provisions for the well-being of the American People as have survived to date. This means that Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block, and the Democratic denizens of the White House and Senate are eager to do the chopping -- much as the Democratic denizens of an earlier White House cheerfully ended "welfare as we know it."
At one time, of course, the United States got without much of a social safety net at all, certainly there was nothing to speak of provided from the Federal Government on behalf of the poor and destitute -- which in those days constituted a shockingly high percentage of the American population. People fret that the United States is becoming a Third World country, little realizing that it was one back in the day. Until relatively recently, Americans were by and large poor, and there was little or no succor for the impoverished masses.
What there was, however, was a kind of escape hatch: the Frontier.
Escape to the Frontier was the means Americans chose to deal with the crushing poverty of the masses, especially the poor urban masses.
But the Frontier closed toward the end of the 19th Century. There was no longer any place to escape to. Free land on which you might be able to make a living was no longer available, and many of those who had gone out earlier to the Frontier were facing ever increasing exploitation and hardship, not the prosperity and freedom they were promised.
I've written a bit about how members of my own family escaped poverty by heading west, and how -- at least for a time -- some of them waxed prosperous. Yet prosperity by itself is an evanescent thing for most Americans. As the middle class shrinks and the supposed wealth of middle class Americans evaporates, "prosperity" for many is now something of a cruel joke.
What is the answer from Our Rulers and the social scientists who serve them? Why shrink the middle further of course! Relieve them of all wealth. Increase poverty. And cut back or destroy whatever is left of the shredded safety net. Freedom demands no less!
Our Rulers agree this must be done. They disagree on how fast and how harshly it must be done.
The People of course object, but their objections are not heard nor are they considered. "Painful choices" must be made, and they will be made, with or without the concurrence and agreement of the People.
"Entitlements" are to be "trimmed." The People be damned, and bless the increasing poverty that will result.
For the poverty of the many is believed to be necessary for the ever-expansion of the wealth of the few.
As we know, with the collapse of Communism, there are no longer any intellectual or moral barriers to the impoverishment of your Granny or your children's early deaths from preventable diseases. These are instead considered tonics to the moocher and dependent classes, goads to get them off their lazy asses and into some productive toil.
That the employment market has collapsed along with the bubbles that had been inflated over and over again is beside the point. Oh, there is plenty of work to be done, to be sure. Simply rebuilding a portion of our corroded and collapsing infrastructure would lead to full employment in a trice, but it wouldn't necessarily benefit Our Betters sufficiently to be worthwhile -- to them-- so it isn't done. Doing something globally about global warming and climate change could easily employ the entire population of the Earth and then some, but if Our Betters can't see sufficient profit for themselves in the endeavor, it won't be done. And "sufficient" unto themselves is Everything, much as the entire profit from the productivity increase over the last 40 years has gone into the pockets of the Overclass.
Social Security must be "trimmed" -- not because of any deficit in the program or in government finances, but because it benefits the Unworthy. That is the sole reason to cut Social Security benefits. Much as Medicare benefits those who Don't Deserve It, and so Medicare eligibility must be restricted (by raising the age of eligibility, much as Social Security eligibility has been restricted via raising the age of eligibility to collect full benefits. As an aside, commentators may want to get up to date on that age: it is not 65 for current retirees. It is 66 and some months. Soon enough it will be 67. It hasn't been 65 for years.)
Medicaid of course solely benefits the Unworthy and should therefore be slated for elimination.
All because of Moochers.
It's long past time to jettison this paradigm.
Overwhelming majorities of the American People oppose further cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Yet Our Rulers are poised to cut them anyway -- and perhaps they are even more inclined to do so because of public opposition. Governing contrary to the will of the People has become institutionalized in American government, and the more public opposition there is to neo-liberal programs (such as cuts to the social safety nets) the more the Ruling Class feels emboldened to pursue and enact policies contrary to the public interest and the public will. (Cf: Greece for a grotesque example.)
Apparently the only way to stop this is to... put a stop to it. So far, the People haven't figured out how to do that.
But the People will. They always do...
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
"No Cuts" vs The Correct Approach
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| Heels for Digging In |
So Dems have "dug in their heels" regarding the issue du jour, "entitlement reform" -- ie: cutting benefits to the old, the sick, the lame and the halt, right along with further savage cuts to benefits for the poors.
"No cuts!" declare the Dems, not quite in unison, but with somewhat more vigor than they have managed in the recent past.
The problem they are avoiding, of course, is that Social Security benefit levels simultaneously too low for most recipients to begin with, and Medicare and Medicaid benefits often go where they are least needed rather than where they will do the most good.
We have a screwy benefit system, one that is designed to keep people on edge and uncertain during what will be the most difficult period of their lives. Rs are desperate to make the situation worse for most people, while Dems don't want to make it too much worse too fast for the majority.
The People have no say in the matter.
Except that they do, to a very limited extent, and they had their say in the "election" by confirming Obama in the White House, a Republican controlled House and a Democratic controlled Senate.
Of course we can point out how bizarre and anachronistic the whole electoral system in this country is, and we can specifically point out that Republican control of the House was assured by the gerrymandering engineered in State House after State House following the debacle of the 2010 election in which the Dems conceded the House of Representatives as well as state houses all over the country -- knowing full well what would happen.
I've pointed to this stunning political failure many times, but note of it is rarely made outside the fringes of Blogtopia (h/t Skippy).
This screwed up electoral system has assured the Powers That Be that the People's Voice will be forever muted in the halls and corridors of Power.
So the Powerful sit around deciding just how far they wish to push their programs of impoverishment for the masses, untold wealth for the few. They don't worry about the clamor outside the gates because they can't hear it. Even if they could, they wouldn't care. According to the institutional theory of Power, there is nothing the People can do -- or more importantly will do -- that the Powerful need pay any attention to.
It has been this way for many a long year.
They sit around deciding how much to cut the benefits of the masses and how fast to do it. There is no other discussion or consideration at all. The decision to cut has already been made, long since. The Dems say "No cuts!" but that isn't what they mean, and we know that because there have already been cuts, substantial cuts, to all three "entitlement" programs, cuts that "nobody noticed." Medicaid has taken the most savage hit, but Medicare and Social Security have both seen reductions due to "payment adjustments" in the case of Medicare, and failures to provide COLAs or only tiny COLAs in the case of Social Security.
"No cuts!" means "Cuts yes!" -- only slower and more subtly than they might otherwise be.
Ah, the language of salesmanship and politics!
And no one notices.
Well, that's the operating theory. As long as it is done slowly and subtly, no one will notice, the lid will stay on the boiling cauldron of popular discontent and the hyper-rich and powerful will sleep soundly and safely on top of their absurd and obscene piles of money. Forever and ever, amen!
The lessons of Europe are not lost on Our Betters. The prime lesson, of course, is that those in power can get away with almost anything they want, no matter how badly engineered and managed, no matter the popular clamor against it, because the People will never do anything that will seriously interfere. There are running street battles between police and protesters all over Europe, but it doesn't make a bit of difference to the High and the Mighty. In fact, they may enjoy the show. In election after election, those who are most responsible for the economic suffering of the People are returned to parliaments in their droves. Even when so-called "Socialists" are installed, as happened in France, the economic policies coming out of governments are the same. It doesn't matter who is elected, in other words, the policies don't change.
That's true in the United States as well, though the situation is a bit different because of our anachronistic system. It's easier to mask what's really going on under our system, and to make believe that the tiniest "difference" between policies is somehow earthshattering.
Americans are currently facing "austerity lite," but every sign suggests that our government will plunge head-long into Euro-style Austerity Heavy any day now.
The correct approach, of course, is just the opposite. Under current economic conditions, policies should be tailored to increasing employment, benefits, rebuilding, and more. None of that is being done, none of it will be done. No government that I know of is approaching current conditions appropriately. None.
Global Revolution is then made inevitable.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Actually Benefits Should Be Increased Not Reduced
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| This is the only "progressive" policy position out there. "No Cuts" sounds nice, but what does it really mean? |
Of course, I've been saying benefits should be increased for years and years, but no one who matters has ever listened. It's the way these things go.
Social Security and other benefits that people receive -- regardless of whether they are earned entitlements such as pensions or they are welfare benefits for the poor and disabled -- are simply too low, scandalously low given that we (the People) are in a perpetual -- and now a totally engineered -- recession.
Social Security benefits should have been doubled or even tripled at the lower end and increased by 25% or more at the upper end at the very outset of the Endless Recession. Instead, benefits were cut. Oh they were, were they? comes the rejoinder. Yes, they were. There was no COLA for two years, and COLAs since then do not reflect -- at all -- the steep increases in costs for food, housing, transportation, and utilities, not to mention medical care not covered by Medicare, that recipients have had to endure. These cuts have had a profound economic effect, both among the elderly who depend on Social Security as their main income in retirement, and critically among the poorest Americans who often receive nothing in benefits.
Benefits for the poor and disabled not on Social Security or SSI have all but disappeared with the exception of food stamps and completely inadequate private charity.
This is due to stupid and self-defeating policies at the very top of the political ladder, policies that appear to be institutionalized as the nation races to the artificial deadline of the vastly puffed up "fiscal cliff."
When the gasbags insist that the only way to avoid said "cliff" is to cut benefits even more (under the rubric of "entitlement reform") you should know what's coming: benefits will be further cut. And there is nothing, supposedly, the peasantry can do about it. Haw. Double. Haw.
There might -- or might not -- be a tiny uptick in revenues in exchange for cutting benefits further, but don't count on it. The more that can be taken away from the poor, the old, the hungry, the sick, the infirm and the unable, the more accrues to the highest of the mighty in any case. Everyone knows that.
Taking to the streets is a good tactic but it isn't a strategy that will put the brakes on this madness. Cf: Europe for an example. All the street demonstrations over there haven't even momentarily halted the idiotic slide of Europe's leaders into fiscal and economic paralysis. There is no sign whatever that demonstrations by themselves will ever affect the Powerful.
Monster Meetings and Mass Demonstrations rarely affect the Powerful in any case. What does move them, sometimes with amazing speed, is a nudge from within their own ranks ("class betrayal", cf Roosevelt -- either one) something we have not seen any of during our recent unpleasantness, or sometimes an external intervention is necessary, such as the near-success of the Populist Movement in this country at the end of the 19th Century, or the advent of the Global Communist Conspiracy following the Soviet Revolution of 1917.
Domestic demonstrations by themselves don't accomplish much, nor can they, nor do scholars of protest movements expect them to. They serve as consciousness-raising actions more than anything. But that's another discussion.
Our problem is that no one among the Ruling Classes is willing to be the voice of conscience that we so badly need in order to halt the madness. Anyone who tries is booted from the fold promptly, and all his or her goods and chattel are forfeit. A certain Al Gore comes to mind. Remember him? No? Well, there you are then.
The decision was made years ago at the highest levels that the least among us would be made to pay proportionately the most for the sins and failures of the Highest. Nothing has acted to change or even influence that decision.
In the current "debate" there is no thought or consideration whatsoever if increasing benefits for any but the very richest and most powerful (how about eliminating the estate tax altogether, for example? That is on the table; increasing Social Security and other benefits for the People absolutely is not). The posture of nearly all so-called "progressives" is to maintain SS and some other benefits at current levels, not cut them.
Well, maybe cut them a little bit. OK? Deal?
Madness.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
The Blankfein Thing
This has gotten much play in the Haute Blogosphere for many days now:
BLANKFEIN: You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations — the entitlements and what people think that they’re going to get, because it’s not going to — they’re not going to get it.
PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?
BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. … So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.
PELLEY: Because we can’t afford them going forward?
BLANKFEIN: Because we can’t afford them.
Jeebus what a freak.
The notion that this mook should be lecturing anyone on matters of what we can "afford" and "fiscal cliffs" and so forth is surreal and insulting. His own sense of entitlement (and his bone ignorance) is unlimited.
Perhaps he would do well to contemplate just how close he and his ilk are to a ride in a tumbril before he and they mouth off again.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Well...
It isn't over till it's over, but clearly the Fat Lady is tuning up.
The Debt Limit/Deficit issue is near some kind of Grand Bargain resolution, no matter the posturing of the players to suggest otherwise.
And the Simpson-Bowles report will be the framework for the resolution.
A New Commission will be formed to detail the alterations to the Entitlements that Simpson-Bowles left to be filled in later, but we can be sure that most of the rest of their report will be adopted pretty much as is.
This will mean, for example, that the tax base will be "broadened," by limiting deductions and tax "expenditures" (can anybody say "EITC?") and making "everyone" eligible to pay income taxes instead of just the 47% who do so now. Simultaneously, tax rates on the rich will go down, significantly. The poor, who never had to pay income taxes -- and were never meant to -- will now be "eligible" to put their skin in the game, lucky duckies, so as to make up for the tax losses at the top. Genius.
Entitlements (odd that that word has come to have a pejorative connotation among so many these days; it was never a curse word before) will be "adjusted" so as to reflect the "New Normal Times" we're living in. Back when the Soviet Union collapsed, pensioners took it in the shorts, and many of the survivors are still in dire straits. What we're being prepared for here doesn't look like it will be quite that bad, but it won't be good.
Social Security increases will be slowed, and the retirement age will be raised, but probably not substantially or quickly. It took thirty years to get it from 65 to 67, and it quite possibly will take 30 years to get it up to 70. Semi-Privatizing the program for younger workers is still a possibility, but probably not as much of one as was once the case; the Government needs SS funds for current operations, wars, and benefits for the rich, and at this point, it is hard to see a way for the Government to sacrifice any revenue source, but you never know.
It will become more and more difficult for oldsters to get by on their meager pensions, though. This will cause some distress -- but not nearly enough to do anything about it.
Medicare/Medicaid is going to be where the really nasty entitlement cuts are made, we can be almost certain of it.
Of course Medicaid has already been cut to the bone in state after bankrupt state. From a recipient's point of view, further cuts are almost inconceivable. But they're coming just the same. If you think Granny is being warehoused now, you ain't seen nothing yet. As for access to health care for the poor: Ha. In your dreams.
What will be happening with Medicaid recipients will be a preview of what is going to happen with just about everyone under the ACA, including Medicare recipients.
The signs are that the Ryan Plan will -- with some adjustments -- be implemented for seniors. It will be essentially the same as the ACA for everyone else. Apart from the confusion of the transition, there won't necessarily be any startling changes immediately, but ultimately, it will mean that everyone is paying more for less and less access to health care. That's the key to saving money in Medicaid -- make it difficult or impossible to access the health care system -- and that's what's going to happen with the rest of the health care industry. It will still be there; it may not necessarily even cost you any more than you already pay. You just won't have such "easy" access to care. Genius!
All this and much more is part of the neo-liberal Grand Bargain Obama is intent on. Whether or not he has a second term in the White House could not matter less to him, so all the fancy threats never to vote for him -- or any Democrat -- again!!!!® are pretty meaningless. So? Something about nose and spite comes to mind.
This is what it looks like from here.
Still developing, of course.
And from a political -- not a policy -- standpoint, Obama has played it masterfully.
Monday, July 11, 2011
The Attacks on Social Security and Medicare (and Medicaid, which is something else) are Relentless
As I've been pointing out in other fora, Social Security has already been effectively cut for most seniors through the administrative refusal to allow any COLA this year or last year, and by proposing a tiny COLA for next year that would be immediately gobbled up by higher Medicare premiums.
Social Security administrators insist that no COLA is due to recipients because "there has been no inflation," which is absurd. In fact, costs for basics and necessities -- like food, shelter, heat, transportation, non-prescription drugs and other off-Medicare health care, and so forth have been going up exponentially during this period of Endless Recession. The purchasing power of Social Security benefits have declined substantially in the last two years, as they will continue to do so long as COLAs are denied.
A trial balloon was floated by Our Rulers to see how changing the COLA inflation formula would fly. The idea was to reduce COLAs even further by assuming that as costs for one basic or necessary good or service go up, seniors will substitute cheaper goods or services (even though many are already at the rock bottom price point) and therefore they won't "need" such a generous COLA. Fucking genius! Why wasn't this plan instituted long ago?
The idea was to save a few hundred billion dollars in Social Security payouts -- so as to have the wherewithal to conduct more and ever more imperial wars of aggression while continuing to provide handsome emoluments and tax breaks to the High and the Mighty.
Supposedly, this idea has been shot down -- for now -- but we can bet (and win) that it will come back with a vengeance.
Today there comes news that His Serenity is proposing to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Not immediately. He'd wait till after the election next year, but still. And to think, it wasn't that long ago many of us thought, gee, eligibility for Medicare might just be lowered to 55.
I'm so old, I remember when it was taken for granted that "by the year 2000" (what a milestone that was intended to be!) the usual retirement age would be 55, if not actually 50. Now it is 66 for people of my cohort, and it is going up to 67 for those coming after -- this "reform" agreed-to in the 1983 overhaul of Social Security, along with doubling the OASDI tax rate. Obviously, that's not old enough though because people who will never have to worry about their own retirement security are now proposing to raise the retirement age to 70 for those now in the 40's. This is insane.
Meanwhile the assault on public employee pensions continues unabated as well; private sector defined benefit pensions were largely done away with long ago -- except, of course, for the top executives, many of whom leave with super-generous pensions of almost unbelievable amounts. Because ordinary workers in the private sector may not have any pension provisions at all, and they may not have enough income to set aside money for retirement, the thinking among the Ruling Class is that public sector workers -- who have bargained for and have contracts ensuring certain defined benefit pension provisions -- should be forced to sacrifice their pensions "because workers in the private sector don't get pensions..."
Well, some private sector workers do. If they're on the top of the heap, that is.
Meanwhile, savage cuts to Medicaid have been underway since the Endless Recession began, yet even now, this simply fact is widely unrecognized. Of course, most people don't use Medicaid (and most will never be eligible for it) so they don't know -- and for the most part, they don't care -- what's been happening to those on Medicaid. They don't know that eligibility is more and more restricted, that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, have been pushed off the Medicaid rolls, even as poverty has skyrocketed in this country. They don't know that fee reimbursements have been repeatedly cut for providers. They don't know that the people who are still able to access Medicaid services have to pay more and more out of pocket for the services they receive. They don't know that the services provided by Medicaid have been reduced, that mental health and dental services are as rare and unavailable to Medicaid recipients as hidden diamonds. On and on and on.
These are things that most Americans have no conception of.
Meanwhile, unemployment benefits are being time restricted in state after state -- even though there are no jobs -- and unemployment benefit amounts are being reduced (even as costs for basics and necessities continue to climb.) This as more and more people wind up not only out of a job, but ineligible for any unemployment compensation at all.
This is what is going on, what has been going on for years, and this is part of what is ensuring that more and more millions of Americans are forced into poverty every year.
It's almost as if it is planned to be that way. Gee. Ya think?
Friday, June 17, 2011
Hysteria Redux
Jeebus.
The entire left-o-sphere is in a hysterical frenzy about AARP based on a story in the Wall Street Journal that implies the venerable old-folks insurance and lobbying outfit is now OK with cutting Social Security benefits -- as long as the AARP gets a seat at the table and helps in the decision making process about who gets cut, how and when.
Somehow, everyone has forgotten that the Wall Street Journal is a Murdoch paper now, and its "news" is more and more inclined -- shall we say -- toward what's favorable to Murdoch's interests in taking over the world.
In fact, AARP has not said, and apparently has not agreed to, what the WSJ article implies.
But that doesn't matter. What matter are perceptions, and in this case, Murdoch and his tools have come up with a doozy of a perception: AARP is OK with cutting Social Security benefits, and with that domino falling, cuts are inevitable. Hahahahah.
Murdoch and his tools have been fiercely attacking AARP from the right for years; now, apparently they have decided it's time to go after AARP from the left. And it is working beautifully. There hasn't been this much unholy hollering on the left since the last time some libertarian or rightist tool stirred that pot.
AARP's statement is that its position on SS has not changed, and apart from the implied change in the WSJ piece, there is no evidence that it has.
Take issue with AARP's position, by all means, but don't do it based on the kinds of innuendo and misdirection that all Murdoch rags (including the WSJ) are notorious for.
Please.
Breitbart is laughing at you.
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Lessons of 1935
Hazy memories of the Great Depression are often in the forefront of consideration during this seemingly endless and profoundly destructive Great Recession. What would Roosevelt have done, and why isn't Obama doing that now? Why is he making things worse?
I've fallen into that pattern of thought myself from time to time, pointing out with malicious glee that Obama's economic policies are essentially the same as Hoover's -- which I know is not entirely accurate, but the point is to emphasize the contrast between how Hoover dealt with the Great Depression and how Roosevelt would deal with it, and then to note that Obama's economic policies are more aligned with Hoover's than with Roosevelt's.
It's time to revise and extend my remarks.
Things were not quite the way we think they were during the Great Depression. While Roosevelt's administration came up with all kinds of innovative programs and efforts to deal with the suffering of the People, these efforts were quite anemic considering the need.
Republicans and Conservodems fought even modest provisions for the poor and unemployed, and to a great extent, they won the day.
David Cushman Coyle is my source for much of what follows. He is described in the Virginia Quarterly Review as:
An esteemed engineer and economist, Cushman designed the Washington State Capital and sold over a million pamphlets espousing persuasive economic theories. He is best known for his books "The United States Political System and How it Works," "The United Nations and How It Works," and "Uncommon Sense."
He's also considered to be quite an eccentric, even a crank. Yet his insights into what was going on during the Depression, and his considerations about why conditions really weren't improving for the poor and working classes of the day resonate strongly today. Some of the very same factors were aligned against the poor and the working class during the '30s as we see today, and with very similar results.
The takeaway is that Roosevelt was more like Hoover than we know, and Congress was always loathe to tax the rich to pay for programs that would benefit the lower orders.
Hm.
This is from Coyle in 1938; the essay is "Inefficient Efficiency":
Somewhere in the national picture there should be an understanding of the overhead efficiency or inefficiency of the whole system in which the engineers build their machines. Someone besides a simple mountaineer needs to observe that while industries improve their methods, industry as a whole flourishes only for a few years and then withers away, leaving the fine new machines idle and the personnel management with no one to manage. Why should Americans who are thrifty and have saved up a little money so often find themselves destitute? Why should factories stand unused? Why should a great oil field have twenty times as many expensive wells as are necessary for getting out the oil? Why should ten million workers go on for years without producing any valuable thing whatever?
The United States as a producing organization is about as efficient as a factory that has half its machines broken down and half its workers playing pinochle. How does it happen that a poor farmer, whose father made a bare living with a mule, can buy a tractor from Mr. Ford and raise his efficiency to the point where the sheriff takes the farm? There is an island on the Maine coast that supported a fine stone house in the old primitive days when lobster fishermen tended their traps in a dory, standing up and rowing patiently from one trap to the next. But now, in an age of motor boats and ten traps to a buoy, the house is falling to ruin, the farm has grown up to weeds, and the fisherman grows poorer year by year. It doesn't make sense.
Indeed.
In a certain sense, that same sort of thing is happening all over again.
We are right back where we started from; for some of the country, it's been like this for decade upon weary decade, but for most Americans, this sense of being trapped in an ongoing economic decline and debacle is something new. As workers are "shed" and manufacturing declines nationwide or is off-shored, as the public sector withers, as the safety net is shredded, the more the upper 1% flourishes -- as much of it did back in the day.
According to Coyle in 1935 [Harper's Magazine, January, 1935, subscription needed], the great public works programs of the Roosevelt Administration weren't actually doing what they were supposed to do -- jumpstart the economy from its stall and depression and most especially get the unemployment rate down. They weren't doing it because the way they were designed they couldn't do more than provide temporary, stop-gap employment for a declining percentage of workers. That deficiency was built in to the programs due to the concept of "self-liquidation." The programs had to be "self-liquidating." In other words they had to pay for themselves through fees and assessments on their "customers", ie: the poor and the working classes themselves, and on the municipalities and localities that benefited from infrastructure and other improvements provided by public works programs.
And they had to be "self-liquidating" because it was an article of faith that income taxes on the rich could not be raised to pay for what was necessary. Income taxes on the rich could not be raised at all.
Where have we heard that before?
This is not to say that the programs were useless. They just couldn't kill the Depression.
Coyle in Harpers, January, 1935:
By a partial relief of unemployment,
by creating an organization capable of
administering a public works program
of a more adequate type at some future
date, and by initiating two important
agencies for an intelligent treatment of
our national resources, the three billion
dollar fund has more than justified
itself. But it did not kill the depression.
The reasons for its failure to
accomplish its main objective were to
be found not in the administration of
the Act, but in a whole series of economic
misconceptions that were written
into the Act itself. The program
was foredoomed because the elements
of a successful attack on the depression
along this line were not well understood
at the time when the Act was under
consideration.
The most vital error in the public
works program was the idea that self liquidating
public works are a "sound"
instrument of recovery.
In fact, they're not, as Coyle would show.
The theory of self-liquidation springs
from the general assumption on which
the policies of the previous Administration
were based-that expenses must
be chiefly borne by the people with
small incomes, so as to avoidthe necessity
of taxing further the people with
large incomes. A "sound self-liquidating"
project is one that is so arranged
that charges can be laid directly
upon the consumer, so that no expense
will fall on the Federal treasury (and
the income tax). The logic is quite
simple, except for the joker. Major
premise: the Government cannot spend
money indefinitely without getting any
back. (Silent axiom: the income tax
is unthinkable.) Minor premise: the
most direct way to get the money
back, without rousing any dangerous
thoughts about taxation, is by charging
fees to the consumer. Conclusion:
self-liquidating projects are the soundest
projects. The name "self-liquidating,"
like so many other relics of
the New Era, has that fine nutty flavor
that characterized the period. The
idea was that such projects paid for
themselves, because the people who
paid for them were not visible, to the
conservative eye. The consumer, however,
though microscopic in size, is all the business man has to live on.
A bit dense, to be sure, but strikingly familiar, no?
But not all public works can be
made self-liquidating. Schoolhouses
and streets can hardly be made "selfsupporting"
by stationing a policeman
to collect one cent from everybody who
passes a given point. However, there
is more than one way to levy upon the
consumer. Local projects can be paid
for by local taxes or assessments on real
estate, mainly borne directly by the
people with small incomes, or indirectly
by the same people through
higher rents and prices. Under the
late Administration this principle was
called "local self-help," and meant simply
that those taxing bodies that cannot
effectively levy income taxes ought
to be the ones to carry the costs of work
relief, rather than the Federal Government
which might possibly tax the
higher brackets.
There is a piquancy and sadness in these paragraphs, especially so given the current economic situation, and the apparent fact that policy-makers were stuck in the same or a similar frame of mind back then.
Coyle was well aware that the economic policies and the thinking behind those policies were doomed to fail because they could not do what was necessary to break or kill the Depression. In many ways, they would prolong it.
Coyle again:
But not all public works can be
either self-liquidating or local. About
ten per cent of the public works in the
past have been done directly by the
Federal Government. Here the problem
can be quite easily solved by the use
of special Federal sales taxes. Roads
can be financed by gasoline taxes.
Someone has suggested that grade crossings
can be financed by a combination
of taxes on railroad tickets and on automobiles.
Thus the consumer can be
made to take up the forgotten man's
burden, and any risk of having to think
the unthinkable can be avoided. This
was called, under the late Administration,
"broadening the base of taxation,"
and was considered a highly
satisfactory solution not only by conservative
Republicans but also by such
distinguished Democrats as Mr. Hearst.
Note the Hooverite concept of "broadening the base of taxation." And we are right back to that today. Don't raise taxes on the rich, broaden the base of taxation instead. This is practically a universal article of faith among the high and the mighty who rule us.
Broaden the base of taxation instead.
That was a prime objective of the Catfood Commission. Lowering tax rates at the upper end of the income scale has long been a core principle of our rulers. The way to do it, without further reducing revenues, is to decree that more people pay the income tax, and that other taxes (such as a value added tax) be assessed on all, on top of "broadened" income tax assessments. And we will soon see how it works in practice.
Lucky us.
These two concepts, that public works and other Depression fighting projects had to be self-liquidating, and that income taxes on the rich could not be raised to pay for programs and projects to fight the Depression stalled recovery in the 1930's and they're among the factors stalling recovery now.
Yes but, Social Security passed, and Unemployment Insurance was instituted. So there was that.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
In Real News
From The Real News Network
This story is really the central issue throughout the Western world. "Billionaires for Social Insecurity" as the folks over at Campaign for America's Future put it.
In the United States, right now, as we speak, millions of Americans are being forced into poverty by the demands of the banksters and looters of Wall Street and Our Ruling Class -- some of whom are featured in the videos above. Vampires like Alan Greenspan, Bob Rubin, and of course the Devil Himself, Peter G. Peterson.
Millions of Americans are being forced out of work, and many of them will never hold a job again. They won't pay into Social Security, and even without the Billionaires' ministrations, their benefits, if they receive any at all, will be substantially lower than if they were able to keep working. Millions are forced into bankruptcy every year, but in many cases they still have to pay off their credit card debts, which, thanks to Joe Biden's "bankruptcy reform act" is a protected form of debt which can be collected essentially in perpetuity.
And here we see our Billionaires quite openly conspiring to cut Social Security and Medicare further for one very simple reason: they don't want to have to pay taxes to make up for the shortfalls in the funds that have resulted from their various forms of corporate and finance sector welfare and their astonishing levels of tax cuts over the years.
In essence, they are openly refusing to be taxed, and they are daring anybody to do anything about it. They will, however, be delighted to consider taxing the lower orders sufficiently to pay for their ever expanding need for wars of aggression.
It's not just happening in Washington, it's happening all over the Western world -- and in many other places as well.
The recently announced bailout of the EuroZone is a plan to pay off the EuroCreditors at 100% of loan value, at the full expense of the People of Europe. They will suffer, as the billionaires think they should, for being profligate and complacent. The banksters who are demanding payment -- extortion, really -- will lose nothing, in fact they will be rewarded for their efforts to loot the treasuries of all of Europe.
And while all this and more is going on, we see continuing focus on Elena Kagan and her inadequacy.
It's sad, really. There are some people on the left-er side of the alternative media who are actually paying attention to this robbery in plain sight. Digby has been covering it extensively for years; it -- like the proliferation of Tasers in this country -- is her own private bailiwick. The mainstream media will only cover it to the extent that they are able to reinforce the faulty premises that underlie the crusade to cut already minimal benefits for millions. Most of the mainstream media is fully behind the Peterson crusade, and they cannot imagine that anyone would disagree.
But the sad thing is that much of the alternative media seems to agree with the deficit scolds and can't figure out that maybe the Petersons and the other billionaires who are pushing this line are wrong. Even if they did figure it out, they wouldn't know what to do about it.
The fact that the Obama White House and Congress apparently agree with Peterson, and practically the entire ruling class of Europe agrees as well -- in the face, of course, of having their own credit restricted -- is a tough nut to crack for many people who might otherwise be bold. The fact that the masses in Europe, but not here, are informed enough about the fraud, the pillage, and the sleight of hand that's being performed to rise up and protest is a hopeful sign.
But there is still no organized resistance.
We have fallen far down the cliff-face; many have already reached the bottom.
What will it take for Americans to say, "Enough!"
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