Social Insecurity

Social Insecurity
by Ted Mallory Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper Thurs. March 3, 2005

As a History Major, I believe that we can learn a lot from our predecessors. I believe that we can learn a lot from “the Greatest Generation” which can help us with today’s problems. Please consider what President Franklin Roosevelt State of the Union Address from January 6, 1941- a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew us into WWII:

“For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and
strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and
economic systems are simple.

They are:

● Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
● Jobs for those who can work.
● Security for those who need it.
● The ending of special privilege for the few.
● The preservation of civil liberties for all.
● The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and
constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.

We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.

I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.

A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.”

FDR believed in the old Midwestern, common sense axiom, “We’re all in this together,” but in George Bush’s “ownership society” it’s every man for himself. He got himself elected by telling us that we deserved a tax cut, he said that the budget surplus was our money so the government should give it back. Of course, 80% of the cut went to the riches 2% of Americans. That certainly wasn’t in line with FDR’s “principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay.”

In his last State of the Union, former President Clinton proposed that any budget surplus be reserved until Social Security is strengthened. You’d have thought that Bush would’ve rethought, even retracted his massive tax cuts immediately after 9/11 especially after considering how it affected the economy.

Now Bush wants to “privatize” Social Security. He makes it sound good by candy coating it with the notion that you will own your own Social Security in a personal “savings account.

First of all, Social Security isn’t in as much trouble as Bush wants to scare us into thinking it is. Even if we do nothing, Social Security will be safe until at least 2042. After that it will still be able to pay 75% of benefits. Thanks to a commission set up in 1983 by President Reagan and Alan Greenspan, Social Security has a reserve fund of nearly $ 1.6 Trillion. Those are in U.S. Treasury bonds, quite literally, the safest investment in the world.

Some Republicans have suggested one approach that hasn’t occurred to Bush- raising the ceiling on income subject to payroll taxes, which is now about $90,000 a year. Barely 6% of Americans earn more than $90,000 a year. Why should those of us in the middle and working classes have to pay for Social Security, but the wealthy don’t? That’s not fair. That’s morally wrong.

Imposing Social Security taxes on incomes of up to $200,000 would go a LONG way toward shoring up whatever weaknesses Social Security has. That would certainly be more in line with FDR’s “principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay.”

What Bush isn’t telling us is that it would cost as much as $3 Trillion to change Social Security from what we have now to what he proposes. What he also fails to tell us is that optional private accounts will siphon money out of Social Security. When you take your money out of the group insurance plan at work, the costs go up for everybody else in the plan. When you take money from a public school so that parents can use a voucher at a private school, the public school has less money- how can it be expected to improve itself? The people who know how to invest wisely and feel comfortable doing it are people who already have plenty of money. The people who depend on Social Security the most will have less funds to count on.

I propose that Millionaires waive their right to collect Social Security. That would be the fastest and easiest way to save it. So what if there are fewer workers paying in once the Baby Boomers retire? If none of the Millionaire Boomers are collecting, because they’ve got plenty of personal investments already, then those people who really need it won’t have to worry about losing it.

Just when you thought that the negative campaign ads ended with the election, last week, Bush supporters went so far as to accuse the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) of opposing troops in Iraq and supporting gay marriage. It’s a smear campaign led by a conservative lobbying group called “USA Next” who plan to spend $10 million on commercials attacking the AARP because it opposes privatization.

In his first inaugural address in March 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, FDR told us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. He also made it clear that we all have to help each other, because we’re all in this together:

“…We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good.”

Social Security was established because we felt a sense of social responsibility. Bush believes only in personal responsibility, in individual ownership, competition, and survival of the fittest (richest), the law of the jungle. So did the three Republican Presidents who preceded FDR-Harding, Coolidge and Hoover and it led to the Great Depression. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good idea to invest Social Security in the stock market.