Be vewy, vewy quiet....we're hunting wabbits....

j.

Michael Perelman wrote:

The funds are in a lock box -- at an undisclosed location -- where Cheney and Scalia
are hunting.  relax.  The adults are in charge.

On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 06:43:10PM -0500, 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

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu




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