|
|
| Michigan Greens Call on Congressional Delegation to Reject Bush Privatization Schemes That Would Destroy Social Security. |
|
Green Party of Michigan January 20, 2005 For More Information, Contact: The Green Party of Michigan (GPMI) is calling on all 17 members of Michigan's Congressional delegation to defend Social Security from the privatization schemes of the Bush administration which would destroy the poverty-fighting program. GPMI's platform opposes privatization in general. It says, in part, that privatization "weakens democracy not just by corrupting the political process but by removing resources from the control of public bodies and turning them over to corporate management." But Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security is even worse, declares Platform Committee Chair Arthur Myatt. "Bush is flat-out planning to destroy Social Security under the guise of saving it, in the same way our military has destroyed cities in Vietnam -- and Iraq -- in order to save them." Chuck Loucks of the Huron Valley Greens says, "For the Neoconservatives, the problem with Social Security is not that it is broken, but that it works too well. What Social Security does is provide protection to working people from market forces. "For plutocrats like Bush, paying the peasants to not work is anathema. He and his cronies want people to work until the day they die. Any public policy that gives the little person a leg up has to be killed. The fact is, when people can retire from work at a reasonable age, it puts upward pressure on wages across the board -- and young people benefit from this." New GPMI chair Sylvia Inwood is reminded of a time last year when Barbara Bush was out stumping for her baby boy in Florida, and told an audience: "Do you think we'd let our son destroy Medicare and Social Security?" Inwood thought, "Of course! What difference would it make to obscenely rich people like you who don't need Medicare and Social Security benefits?" Douglas Campbell, GPMI candidate for governor, comments, "It's interesting how the Publican spinmeisters can take the most successful anti-poverty program in history and assail it for 'failing' as a retirement investment program. You may question their ethics, but you have to admire their effectiveness. It's almost as though I built a better mousetrap and people beat a path to my door to scream that it isn't a very good vacuum cleaner." Myatt agrees. "The Social Security system is not now and never has been an investment fund. Nobody has ever paid in money that is reserved for his or her own retirement. Money paid in now goes to people who are retired now, and drawing benefits, with any surplus used to purchase United States Treasury Bills, as required by law." John La Pietra of Marshall hopes new 7th District Congressman Joe Schwarz will be less bent on privatization than the man he replaced, Nick Smith. But it's thanks to Smith, he adds, that he knows now why the Social Security "crisis" keeps being put off: because the economy keeps growing faster than the "intermediate" projection of 1.6% a year . . . for 70 years in a row. "Growth that slow hasn't gone on for a whole decade since the Panic of 1917. And, if the economy were that stagnant for 70 years, the stock market would find it hard to grow at the 'historical' 7% rate." La Pietra concludes, "The SEC requires every stock-investment prospectus to remind potential investors that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Maybe the same warning should be required before every pie-in-the-sky profit promise of the Social Security privateers." Looking from the Green economic and political perspective, Alan Kaufman of the West Oakland Watershed Greens also sees "a quite remarkable disconnect" between the Bush administration's "justification" for privatizing Social Security -- that magic 7% return workers would supposedly be sure to get if only they could take money "out" of the SS system and invest it themselves -- and their underlying presumption that economic growth over the long haul will not exceed 2%. "Perhaps the most significant 'drain' or brake on the US economy," Kaufman adds, "is the continued huge military budget. Pursuing a 'peace' foreign policy should allow the economy to grow more rapidly (and, not trivially, more 'sustainably') than it would grow if the huge military expense remains a 'given'." Campbell suggests other real reforms that would be on the table with Greens in the US Senate and House. "Let's start with making Social Security a flat tax -- and no, it's not one now. Right now, working people pay a FICA tax of 6.2% on their wages -- but only on the first $90,000 of wages, for a total of $5,520. Anybody whose wages are more than that pays *nothing* on the higher wages. And the same 0% rate applies to unearned income -- all of it, from the very first dollar of interest, dividends, and so forth. "If a flat tax is the right thing to do for income taxes, why not for FICA? This one change would assure the solvency of the Social Security system until the next Big Bang, and would probably enable it to remain solvent with reduced tax rates." Next, Campbell would add means-testing. "If you're collecting a million-dollar pension, you shouldn't be collecting Social Security, too." He also makes a few other points: * A Federal Social Security program is a good thing. ------------------------------------------------ * There have always been private investment options. ------------------------------------------------- "The reason people rely on Social Security instead of putting their own money into their own private retirement portfolios is simply that most of us don't have any money. Wages in America don't permit you to both live and plan for the future. That, and periodically seeing it wiped out -- wasn't it only a few years ago that we were all joking that our 401(k)s had become 104(k)s? Neglecting to set aside some of your discretionary income for the future is not a moral failing when you have negative discretionary income." If that opens up the dialogue for a Living Wage, says Campbell, so be it. "It is not possible to set aside large amounts of cash for the future and expect it to grow or even keep pace with inflation. A bank or other financial institution can't pay you interest without investing the cash in something. (If I recall correctly, there's an ancient parable about idled talents that says the same thing.) Likewise, you will need more than cash when you get old and gray; you'll need water, food, clothing, shelter, medical care and transportation, none of which will exist if we don't invest in it now. "Not having cash in the Social Security lockbox is a good thing if it's appropriately invested -- say, in medical-school tuition or keeping public water systems public. That, and it is essential that we have an economic and monetary policy which relies on sustainability, not growth, and keeps interest rates down. Probably nothing else makes poor people poorer and rich people richer than high interest rates do." It's Not Broke -- So Don't Break It Trying to "Fix" It ====================================================== Myatt points out the fallacy on the other end of the financial equation. "There's no other part of the Federal budget that is guaranteed sound for at least the next decade, as the Social Security fund is. Medicaid/Medicare is in crisis now. The military budget is wildly out of control; so is the budget for the Department of Homeland Insecurity and Secret Prisons. "We spend billions for a 'missile defense' system that is not needed and wouldn't work if it were needed, while the public health system is losing what ability it had to protect us against the flu and other infectious diseases." Myatt cites a New Year's Day article in the New York _Times_ by Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winner for the 1997 book _Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_, for offering one reason why some societies have failed: A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape. Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security, and public schools. Myatt and his fellow Michigan Greens note that the President and Congress don't depend on the Social Security system for their retirement. They have a parallel, more richly endowed system of government pensions that will not be affected by Bush's privatization proposals. They are personally insulated from any effects their meddling would have on the rest of us. "We call on the new 109th Congress to combine their retirement pensions with Social Security, and create a common retirement system for government officials and ordinary citizens alike, instead of undermining our retirement security. We ask them to remember that if any person now paying into Social Security can afford to invest a portion of their wages into a private retirement account, they are free to do so now. 401(k) accounts and Individual Retirement Accounts of various types are available. If the stock market is such a good investment, it will not need the subsidy Bush would borrow billions to finance. "We ask the public to understand the stupidity of the argument that the system will fail in the future when there will not be as many workers for each Social Security recipient. More workers were paying into Social Security per recipient in the 1950s than today. The average worker of today is far more productive than the average worker of the 1950s, and workers several decades in the future can be expected to be still more productive. The simple truth is that we don't need as many workers today to support a recipient as we needed in the past. And we won't need as many in the future as we do now." [=============================================] GPMI Platform: I. Grassroots Democracy / 5. Privatization . . . Privateers are ever vigilant in their search for new ways to make a profit by taking over some function or asset of government. They buy the services of lobbyists, lawyers, and legislators to help them do so. The Republican and Democratic Parties long ago became servants of the corporate economy. Privatization weakens democracy not just by corrupting the political process but by removing resources from the control of public bodies and turning them over to corporate management. There, the first purpose of the resources is to turn a profit; the public good becomes secondary at best. . . . The Green Party is against all the forms of privatization mentioned above, and is opposed to the corruption of democracy that results from privatization as it is practiced today. We believe that public resources should be used for the public good as determined by democratic institutions. Social, natural and physical capital now controlled by city, county, state and federal governments should not be turned over to corporations; those previously turned over should be taken back. ___
|
