For George
Republican House members are pushing the old Savings Account For Every American Act again. It's gone through several incarnations since first rejected in 2005. It was rejected again in 2007. House Republicans keep using the same tired name for the bill that incrementally privatizes Social Security because it spells out SAFE (actually, it spells out SAFEA Act, but anti-education Republicans don't really get whan an A is anyway).
The point is that we're supposed to want to pull our Social Security tax contributions out of really safe US Treasury investments and put them into the much more risky Wall Street market of stocks and bonds. If we susupect it's not safe to do so, and no fiduciary would tell you that it's safe to do so, Congress tells us that these investments are safe by namign this ridiculous bill SAFE.
The reason we're supposed to want to abandon a regulated and protected Social Security trust fund to an anything goes Wall Street is because the government is untrustworthy, but Wall Street financiers and bankers are. Bob Dold is all for this bill and the privatization of Social Security. Go figure.
The bill's ongoing sponsor, Pete Sessions, justified the bill to The Hill by saying that "[o]ur nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate...."
The thing is that it's not. The Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at a rate that's only about four years off of original predictions. A lot of what caused the earlier depletion prediction has to do with low wages and joblessness that Republicans don't want to address. They pushed wealth up to a small group of already wealthy people, and those wealthy people's contribution to Social Security is capped at the low low discount price of $106,800, so there is less total contribution into the trust fund. The math is simple and the cap hasn't changed in a few years.
They could eliminate the cap and require the wealthy to pay in their fair share. They could tax the wealthy and use the funds to create jobs so the rest of us whose Social Security contribution is not capped pay in more. They don't because Republicans prefer to keep wealth at the top, cut retirement benefits to the rest of us and force us to risk the pittance that's left with their their wealthy banker friend/campaign contributors and their new and innovative investment products like...say... mortgage backed securities. That seems "SAFE" (if not safe) to me, doesn't it seem so to you?
7 comments:
The idea is to try to change people's perceptions of what Social Security is. Is it a retirement fund? If so, then I have no difficulty letting people choose to take risks with it. Is it a safety net for older people to depend upon, based upon prior earnings, but absolutely guaranteed? Then some sort of paternalism (restriction on choice of investment vehicle) is understandable.
I can't believe Sessions didn't learn anything from Bush's privatization failure the collapse of the stock market after Bush's failure and poll after poll showing Americans don't want to see their Social Security cut. Thanks for the post!
The constant bleating of the Trust Fund being a "bunch of I.O.U.'s",the result of thirty years of propaganda. It is invested in U.S.Treasury bonds, the safest investment in the world. IF they are not honored it is the end of the United States as we know it (debt ceiling blockers take note). The present economic crises is being exploited by the top two percent so they wont have to pay for the sick and elderly. They prefer the former Senator Alan Simpson's solution get a gun - or pills for the ladies- and do your duty as you have in the past. Not only do you want remove cap ,but also tax capital gains as ordinary income including payroll tax-perhaps with exemtions for the small investor. they only presently pay fifteen percent.
Well, I guess we can put a lot of disabled, old and sick people, and children, out in the streets to make sure they have the adequate amount of freedom. But, if it's freedom you want, then I'd suggest you look into police use of tasers, racial profiling, laws limiting marriage rights, proposed laws intended to limit voting rights, government surveillance, new laws limiting not only abortion, but simple women's health checkups and procedures, and how about this case of a SWAT team descending on some poor schnook whose wife owed on her student loan: http://bcove.me/tbq1yqhz
Freedom to enter into bad investments to make finance MBAs rich isn't in my top 10 list of freedoms worth protecting. And in any event, it wouldn't really be a "freedom" because the person would have few choices of where to invest (or even just put) the money.
More to think about when judging the SAFE investements of the SAFE Act. Wall Street pretty much makes up the valuations: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/06/08/social_media_bubble
Is it a safety net for older people to depend upon, based upon prior earnings, but absolutely guaranteed? Then some sort of paternalism (restriction on choice of investment vehicle) is understandable.
Not sure T-Bills are really all that safe these days.
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