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Recent
Stories
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
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April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
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Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
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Brush with the Law
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Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
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How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
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Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
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Bush's War Web Log 4/29
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Cassel
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Michel
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
8, 2003
Bush's Scare Tactics
May Backfire
The Coming Senior
Revolution
by DAVE LINDORFF
The Bush Administration has been developing the
concept of the Big Lie to an art form: Iraq is developing nuclear
weapons, Iraq is linked to Al Qaeda, unprecedented deficits will
create jobs, invasion is liberation, anti-missile missles actually
work, and so on. But the latest whopper is really something.
Over the next few months, American taxpayers
will be receiving their annual statements of account from the
Social Security Administration. Those are the letters you get
each year summarizing your wage-earning history and providing
you with an estimate of the monthly check you can expect to receive
when you retire and begin collecting Social Security.
Well, this year your statement will come
with a new statement--a disclaimer by the Social Security Administration
that the funds you expect to receive can not be relied upon.
Why? Because the Social Security Trust Fund will be dried up
by around 2040.
As the new statement reads: "For
more than 60 years, America has kept the promise of security
for its workers and their families. But now the Social Security
system faces serious future financial problems and action is
needed soon to make sure that the system is sound when today's
young workers are ready for retirement.
It goes on to say, "Unless action
is taken soon to strengthen Social Security, in just 15 years
we will begin paying more in benefits than we collect in taxes.
Without changes, by 2042, the Social Security Trust fund will
be exhausted. By then, the number of American 65 or older is
expected to have doubled.  There won't be enough
younger people to pay all the benefits owed to those who are
retiringSWe will need to resolve these issues soon to make sure
Social Security continues to provide a foundation of protection
for future generations as it has done in the past."
A spokesperson at the Social Security
Administration denies that the new statement is being alarmist.
"The purpose is to educate people about the future of the
program," he says. He claims that the changes from a prior
statement, in use through last year, are minor and "all
factual." In fact, the prior year's statement makes no reference
to there "not being enough" younger people to pay for
retirees' benefits. Rather, it states simply that "payroll
taxes collected will be enough to pay only 73 percent of the
benefits," and that "We'll need to resolve long-term
financial issues to make sure Social Security will provide a
foundation of protection for future generations as it has done
in the past."
The new, more alarmist warning, coming
right after tax time, is sure to worry and rile American workers,
who see nearly eight percent of each paycheck snatched away to
pay their Social Security tax each pay period.
It's bad enough you have to lose a tenth
of your wages off the top paying for Social Security and Medicare,
but if you're not even going to collect somedayS?
The note as currently written is, however,
a bald-faced lie. Social Security is not a pension, though the
right wing and the Bush Administration would like you to think
so. It will be there in 2042, and it will be paying whatever
benefits that Congress decides it should pay.
It's true that if present trends continue,
the trust fund will be exhausted in about 2040, but scary as
that sounds, it really doesn't mean anything, and the Social
Security Administration knows this. The trust fund is an accounting
fiction. It is actually just a part of the U.S. government, and
the U.S. government can't go bust.
Even today, although there is so much
money in the trust fund that the government routinely borrows
from it to finance the federal deficit (remember that dreadful
"lockbox" the insufferable Al Gore used to keep referring
to?), current Social Security beneficiaries get much of their
monthly check courtesy of current payments into the fund by current
workers.
All that happens come the arrival of
all those Baby Boomers at retirement age is that current workers,
who will be far fewer relative to retirees than at present, will
have to pay more in Social Security taxes than workers pay today--or
someone else will have to take up the slack. Since most workers
have parents on Social Security, even if future workers had to
pay 10 or 12 percent of wages as a Social Security tax, instead
of 7.5 percent, this is not the ugly generational battle that
conservatives love to warn against. Most people, if asked, would
rather see their parents supported decently on government payments
than have to support them out of their own pockets (how many
workers do you know who resent their parents' benefit checks?).
But here's where the plot thickens. Higher
taxes for workers are not the only cure for Social Security's
"problems."
At the same time as there will be nearly
twice as many elderly retirees pulling Social Security benefits
as the bulge of Baby Boomers begins to hit retirement (the first
Boomer retires in 2012, just seven years hence), the senior political
lobby--already extremely powerful--will be twice as large. And
it gets better (or more frightening, if you are a conservative
politician or a corporate titan): Whereas today's seniors came
of political age in the quiescent 1950s, tomorrow's retirees
will be people who came of age during the rebellious 1960s and
1970s.
In a few years, we will see a senior
lobby that knows how to organize politically, that knows how
to do street politics, and that has demonstrated its ability
to fight hard when its own interests are at stake (remember those
struggles for the vote and against the draft and the Indochina
War?). And once they near retirement, this group of Americans
will be seeing Social Security and Medicare as their number one
political issue. If Social Security is already the "third
rail" of electorial politics, not to be touched, in a few
years, it will be the molotov cocktail, blowing up the political
status quo.
Corporate America knows this. Those people
in the boardrooms and the right-wing thinktanks aren't worried
about 2040. If they were, they wouldn't be so cavalier about
the environment and global warming. They're worried about 2010,
because this new senior revolution is just around the corner.
That's why there is an increasingly panicky effort underway to
destroy Social Security before the Baby Boomer population realizes
where its real political interests lie. If Social Security is
effectively killed off before it becomes a core Boomer issue,
it will be much harder to re-establish it. Hence all the lies
about Social Security going bust, and this most recent scam in
the mail courtesy of Bush's Social Security Administrator Jo
Anne Barnhart, former Republican staff director of the Senate
Committee on Government Affairs.
Consider a moment. Doesn't all this feigned
concern in conservative and corporate circles about the fate
of Social Security seem a trifle out of character? When's the
last time you heard a company president or a Republican elected
official express concern about the fate of poor people on welfare?
Yet when you really come down to it, that's what Social Security
is really--a welfare program for the nation's elderly. The rich
don't need it--it's chump change for them. It's the poor and
working class who are dependent on those checks for their very
living.
The Right doesn't really have much time
on this one. It appears, to judge by the marketing folks at the
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which offers
memberships to everyone turning 50, that somewhere in their mid-50s,
people start to think seriously about retirement. Today's earliest
Baby Boomers are just hitting that milestone now.
When today's Boomers really start to
contemplate their retirement, the picture will not be pleasant.
Property values--where many have placed their faith and their
savings--are stagnating, not rising, and post-Enron, those 401K
pensions that the middle class was all excited about are now
smaller than they were five years ago. Meanwhile companies are
whittling away pension programs as fast as they can, doing away
with "defined benefit" plans that paid benefits based
upon set formulas in favor of plans that pay depending upon what
employees put in, and how well the investment portfolio performed--even
as those investments that have been made with workers' contributions
have been languishing or shrinking in value (if they weren't
being pilfered, as happened at Enron). What's left? Social Security
and Medicare. Given the sorry state of their private safety net,
it's a safe bet that it won't be long before a movement springs
up among the new elderly not just to "save" Social
Security, but to radically change it into a true retirement program.
Tomorrow's senior lobby won't feel constrained
by current law, which makes workers foot half the bill--a key
assumption behind the false threats of the Bush Adminstration
of looming trust fund bankruptcy. We can expect to see future
Congresses pressured into passing reforms that will remove the
income cap on the Social Securities tax, so millionaire investors
will be paying taxes on the full amount of their incomes, not
just the first $85,000 (this one reform alone, if made today,
would push the trust fund's demise off into the future well past
the Baby Boom retirement "crisis"). We can expect to
see private pensions made fully portable, so that employers can't
pocket years of contributions everytime the let go workers before
they are "vested." And we can expect new laws that
will shift the burden of Social Security taxes onto employers,
so that young workers won't be overwhelmed trying to pay the
benefits for their retired parents (there's nothing magic or
sacred after all, about a 50/50 split in payroll tax payments.
It could as easily be 25/75 or 10/90).
We can probably also expect to see a
movement to expand Medicare from a niggardly program that only
barely covers the medical care of the elderly, to a full-fledged
national healthcare program that covers everyone. Why?
Because it will be in the interest of
the much more powerful and radical senior lobby to give everyone
a vested interest in a real healthcare plan.
No wonder the Bush Administration and
the Right are turning to outright scare tactics in mass government
mailings.
There's a senior revolution brewing.
David Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Today's
Features
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
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