Why Rs Want to Privatize Social Security

For some time now, Republicans have wanted to privatize Social Security and have used the growing wave of Baby Boomers aging into retirement as a fear factor to try and make changes they want. Republican VP pick Paul Ryan is one of these people and has recommended privitization.

My assumptions when hearing of these plans are that Republicans want to do this because:

1) They fundamentally believe that the government has no role in providing any saftey net to retirees and want to turn the clock back to pre-Great Depresion policy.

2) While doing so, they would make it so that their backers on Wall Street...the big banks and investment firms...benefit by forcing individuals to buy privately managed funds for retirement that lack any of the guarantees and risk reduction that the current Social Security System does.

I am still sure that both of these to thigns are true. However, I saw something online that adds depth to my point #2 that I thought worth sharing...

In 2016, the first of the Baby Boomers MUST begin withdrawing from the retirement accounts. This will begin years of withdrawals by Social Security recipients out of the stock market as, say what you will about the market, Social Security still parks its money on Wall Street in the Social Security Trust Fund. But a Baby Boom run there will leave the banks deficient of captial to make their nut on.

Wall Street bankers know this and that the only way to truly replace those withdrawals is with new money. So the push is on to replace those Baby Boomer withdrawals from the Trust Fund with Generation X, Y, and Millennial deposits of their retirement money in a new, privatized system that would not only infuse them with cash but free them much more than the Trust Fund to "be creative" with the money. Naturally, this would be far, far riskier than the current system.

This makes (evil) sense to me. It explains the real motivation for the push for privatization...the "why" behind my point #2. It's a policy recommendation of convenience. Republicans want to destroy Social Security in the name of their "small government" fantasies, but they're dependant on Wall Street backers to run and win elections. Wall Street knows the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleated, but also knows it has bought some serious access and pull in DC. So, together...the Rs and the Wall Streeters have found something that will help both.

What's scarier is that Democrats - while traditionally the defenders of Social Security - are almost as beholdent to Wall Street as the Republicans are. Will the stick to their guns or cave?

Prediction: Supreme Court Will Overturn Healthcare Law

Here is my prediction on the Supreme Court review of the national health care reform law...

They will overturn it. Or, more specifically, they will overturn portions of it...like the mandate that every individual has to buy insurance...such that the law is effectively negated. And thus will end, before it actually even was enacted (virtually none of the law's provisions have been enacted yet), the nation's most significant attempt at modernizing its health care system and making it more equitable and beneficial for more people. The infant law will be snuffed out in its cradle.

And if that happens? Well, we're back to where we were before the law was passed - a system predicated on earning maximum profit rather than one attempting to use the free market system to provide quality care for the maximum number of people.

Regardless of the outcome, I'll leave the bickering, taughting, celebrating and commiserating to others.

However, I will also point out something very ironic that I read today in an article about the healthcare law debate...

If the Supreme Court rules that the individual legal mandate in the health care law is not consitutional because Congress cannot compel an individual to buy private health insurance products (the law mandates you buy private insurance, not government run insurance), it will be simultaneously negating one of the primary pillars of conservative reform proposals for Social Security - namely, mandating that everyone buy commercial (private) pension funds.

Ooops.

As the article also points out, this does not mean it's likely that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will suddenly support the health care reform act now because they want to preserve the chances for Social Security privatization in the future. No, it likely just means that those conservative judges will find a way to both call the health care mandate unconstitutional and any future Social Security privatization mandate OK. With a heavy sigh, I have to agree with that assessment.

Oh, and one more irony pointed out...if if Obama and the Democratically led House and Senate had simply enacted a single payer program back in 2009-2010, it would have been beyond constitutional challenge -- because government has an unambiguous power to tax and to use the revenues for public purposes.

McMain: Bad Judgement on Social Security and Regulation

OK, here's one for you...

You know how the stock market has been in freefall this week?

What if Bush, McCain and other like-minded Republicans had been successful in privatizing Social Security back in 2005 and 2006 - moving assets of the program into the stock market as they wanted to do?

How many people across America would have seen their means of living evaporate in one week with no certainty it will be made back?

Luckily a more realistic coalition of Democrates and level headed Republicans prevented that from happening.

Here's another one for you...

What's the one thing that's turning things around starting today with the big market rally? Yes, governent regulation. And which of the two Presidential candidates is a lifelong proponent of extensive de-regulation of markets (including financial markets) that set the table for this big problem? Yes, John McCain.

Both of these situations are more clear examples of bad judgement by McCain - bad judgement that we can avoid by not voting for him in 2008.