Joanna
Peter Hollings wrote:
OK, here's a comment: Since the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund are personally liable for the savings of the beneficiaries and Greenspan has now put us on notice that further lending of trust funds to the US Government is in jeopardy of not being repaid, we should put the Trustees on notice that we, the beneficiaries, will sue all present and future trustees personally for any reduction in our benefits.
Peter Hollings
-----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Ballard Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 6:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] any comments?
--- "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
March 2, 2004/New York TIMES NEWS ANALYSIS Medicare and Social Security Challenge By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
In theory, the two giant trust funds are accumulating huge surpluses that can be used to pay for benefits when the baby boomers retire and the systems start taking in less than they are paying out. In practice, those surpluses are being spent, and the government will probably have to borrow enormous sums to meet its obligations to retirees.
The wages system is the greatest robbery in history. The amount of wealth which is stored away for wage-slaves once they retire is being squandered.
"It is time to start telling people the truth," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University and a longtime analyst of the issue. "Suggesting that some minor adjustments to Social Security will solve the problem is doing a disservice."
I doubt whether the good professor will be telling the truth about how the working class has increased its productivity many times over during the decades when the baby boomers were creating wealth for the capitalist class and that the major adjustment that needs to be made is to siphon off a portion of that wealth (by taxation--who care really how it's done) and put it into social security. After all, that would be silly and besides he's got his tenure to think of.
Mr. Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, provoked a political tempest when he told members of the House Budget Committee last week that Congress needed to trim future Social Security and Medicare benefits to head off a fiscal calamity in decades to come.
It's the same old tired song of the ruling class: workers must sacrifice so that WE the deserving can lap up the cream.
Mr. Greenspan proposed adjustments in how the government increases benefits to keep up with inflation and suggested pushing back retirement ages to better reflect increased life expectancy.
Actually, just the opposite should happen. Workers should retire earlier so that reserve army of labour shrinks, solving both the unemployment problem and the miserably low wages which the lower strata of the working class receive for services rendered. The adjustments which should be made have to do with adjusting the rate of surplus value extracted from the ever more productive working class.
Democrats immediately attacked the proposed cuts, saying they would be unnecessary if President Bush had not been running up large annual budget deficits just before millions of baby boomers reach retirement age.
"Cutting Social Security benefits is not the way to rein in the irresponsible Bush budget deficit,'' chided Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate Democratic leader.
A correct observation from the left-wing of the capitalist bird.
President Bush and Republican lawmakers distanced themselves as well, saying that much of the problem could be averted by setting up private savings accounts.
A ridiculous proposal which plays to the ignorance of the working class about who actually produces the wealth and who retains the lion's share.
But as precarious and uncertain as long-range forecasts are, most experts agree that the combined challenges of Social Security and Medicare are too big to be addressed without politically painful remedies.
The bourgeois are ever ready to sacrifice to the last proletarian. The workers should return the favour. Unfortunately, the constant drum beat coming from their ever turned on TVs will fill their poor open minds with bourgeois arguments. After all, Jesus suffered, so you must suffer. The Bible and the TV tell us so.
The number of retirees is expected to soar from about 40 million today to more than 76 million by 2030, which means that fewer dollars will be coming in from payroll taxes and many more dollars will be going out in retirement and medical benefits.
Like I said, take out of the suplus value which is being created. It's bloody simple.
The oldest baby boomers turn 65 in 2011, and by one estimate a husband and wife who retire that year are likely to collect $700,000 in benefits before they die.
I can see the pundits favouring new Federally funded euthanasia programs.
Trustees of the Medicare and Social Security funds predict that the two programs will run surpluses of more than $200 billion a year for at least the next decade. But the Medicare trust fund will start running deficits in 2013 and run out of money by 2026. Starting in 2018, the Social Security System starts paying out more than it takes in and will have to dip into its trust fund. By 2044, the trust fund will be exhausted.
This bourgeois claptrap is exhausting me.
Most experts say the problems of Social Security are much smaller and more predictable than those of Medicare, because retirement formulas are fairly simple and the cost of benefits depends primarily on demographic trends that are quite predictable.
Look, maybe the medicare part is overestimated too. Maybe people will live healthier lives. In any event, perhaps economic historians will ponder the question of why an impovershed country like Cuba could provide free healthcare while a rich country like the USA couldn't seem to afford it.
But Medicare's condition is more ominous, because medical costs have been rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation and the demand for health care is expected to soar as the baby boomers retire.
Here's a market solution for ya, although I'm loathe to provide them: increase the supply of doctors and thereby lower the prices they charge.
The Bush administration estimated last year that Medicare's obligations would be more than $10 trillion over the next 75 years. But that was before President Bush signed the law that will add prescription drug benefits to Medicare - which the administration now predicts will cost $540 billion over the next 10 years. The costs would climb rapidly after that, as the number of elderly people soars. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the new program could cost as much as $2 trillion in its second decade.
All workers do is "cost" the system. After all, they are just consumers. Right. They're selling bridges here.
Mr. Bush and many administration officials contend that much of Social Security's problems could be solved by letting people divert some of their payroll contributions to private investment accounts they might manage for themselves.
These people are relentless in their quest for more and more wealth. Now, they want the working class to put their meagre wages into corporate stocks and bonds. Let's ask the bamboozled workers at United how "employee stock owership" of the company worked out. This is just ridiculous!
But some experts say that the government would have to borrow as much as $1 trillion over the next several decades to make up for the lost revenues and pay retirees benefits earned under the old system.
Oh my god! They'd have to issue bonds!
And the Congressional Budget Office, in a report on privatization plans last year, said none of the proposals would have much effect.
"Using government resources to buy stocks and bonds, without other spending and tax changes, would not automatically lead to an increase in the nation's pool of investment resources,'' the budget office concluded. "There is no such thing as a free lunch.''
Right. The only people getting the free lunch around here are the parasites who already own most of the wealth we produce.
Some experts contend that even the administration's chilling projections about the looming problems of Social Security seriously understate the problem.
The problem is the wages system.
In 2002, two senior economists at the Treasury Department were asked by Paul H. O'Neill, then the Treasury secretary, to come up with a comprehensive estimate of the federal government's long-term fiscal problems. The total, calculated Kent Smetters, then a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagadessh Gokhale, an economist on loan to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, was an almost unthinkable $44 trillion.
My gods! The workers who will have created trillons more than this, might actually need to consume more than WE'D planned for.
That projection was swiftly disavowed by the administration. Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the White House never intended to use the study in its official budget forecast. "They were doing what they called an independent paper,'' he said.
Mr. Gokhale, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a policy research group in Washington, recalled matters differently. "At some point, late in the game, it was decided that it wouldn't be in the budget,'' he said. "In my opinion, if they had reported these numbers, they would have gotten a lot of credit.''
These right-wing geeks would like nothing better than to sell more suffering to the working class by giving even more of the pie the workers create to the capitalist class. That's their "job".
Professor Kotlikoff of Boston University has devised a "menu of pain'' to lay out different ways of bridging the gap. The choices range from an immediate increase in federal income taxes of 69 percent to an immediate cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits of 45 percent.
Plans, plans. A million will be proposed. It all boils down to the division of wealth created by the working class and owned by the capitalist class.
And those numbers may be too low, he said, because even the disavowed Treasury estimate for the shortfall may be too low. Adding in the new prescription drug program, he said, the imbalance is closer to $51 trillion.
More astounding figures. HOw much wealth will be produced while this astounding figure is being consumed by the greedy workers in retirement?
Whether one accepts the administration's forecast or that of the disavowed study, everyone agrees that the potential problems with Social Security and Medicare dwarf the short-term problems of balancing the budget.
These people are sick and they are defending a sick society.
"The issue is entitlements,'' said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "That is a huge challenge, but it would be a challenge even if we had a balanced budget today.''
Labour is entitled to all it creates. The problem is lickspittles like Mankiw.
Bosses...who needs 'em, Mike B)
===== **************************************************************** You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. --Mark Twain
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