The neocon dream of demolishing Social Security is near

[Rspaight]

So, last night Bush embraced the notion of progressive indexing for SS benefits. This, in a nutshell, destroys Social Security, transforming it from a egalitarian retirement/insurance safety net into an expensive welfare system. For most people, this will result in a loss of benefits *greater* than what is currently projected if nothing at all is done.

That's right, this is yet another Bush proposal to "save" Social Security that is actually worse that what he is supposedly "saving" us from.

The end result will be that everyone will get the same (small) benefit no matter how much they paid in. Details here (link courtesy of Atrios):

http://www.cbpp.org/3-21-05socsec.htm

Important quote from the above (emphasis mine):

If private accounts are added to the equation and are paid for by additional benefit reductions, the results become even more extreme. If progressive price indexing were combined with the President’s private accounts proposal, workers with average incomes of $90,000 or more would eventually receive no Social Security benefits at all. It is unlikely that a Social Security system structured in this manner would remain politically sustainable over time.

Make no mistake -- Bush's goal is to so profoundly cripple Social Security that we'll be forced to take it out behind the barn and shoot it. That would be his victory.

Ryan

[Dob]

And why stop there?

From today's column by Paul Krugman in the NY Times (bolding mine):

...America is ruled by conservatives...they believe that more privatization, not less, is always the answer.

...a particularly good illustration of ideology-induced obliviousness is the 2004 Economic Report of the President, which devotes a whole chapter to health care. The main message of that report is that U.S. health care is doing just fine. Never mind the huge expense, the low life expectancy, the high infant mortality; it's a market-based system, so it must be good.

The report even takes a Panglossian view of uninsured Americans -- suggesting that "many of them may remain uninsured as a matter of choice," perhaps because "they are young and healthy and do not see the need for insurance."

The president's economists had only one criticism of the system: insurance is too comprehensive, which encourages people to consume too much health care. As they see it, insurance covers too large a percentage of medical costs. The answer to this problem is the creation of, you guessed it, private accounts, which have now superseded tax cuts as the answer to all problems.

Indeed, a new paper by Martin Feldstein of Harvard, which clearly reflects the administration's views, suggests that Social Security privatization and health savings accounts...are only the beginning. "Investment-based personal accounts," he says, are the way to go for unemployment insurance and Medicare, too."

I'd only make one small alteration. Instead of "private accounts" being the answer to all problems, I would substitute "investing in the stock (maybe bond) market." That's what the Bushies are trying to sell -- the power of the markets to "create wealth." Hey, just think, if the entire country (including the government) had bought Microsoft stock in 1980, we'd all be rich and have a budget surplus!!!

Some people like to compare stock market investors to gamblers in a casino, but there are a couple of crucial differences. Some gamblers fully expect to lose more money than they win...and they all know that, in the long run, the house is the real winner.