Social Security Overhaul is Long-Standing Conservative Dream

[liberal N proud]

I would like to call your attention to this article about the long term goal of the repukes. I have felt for a long time that they have just been waiting for the right time to say it must go and they have finally found their stooge.
They have been building up to this since 1983 when they started to spread through the grass roots telling younger workers at that time, that Social Security will not be around, don't rely on Social Security for retirement that it probably will be bankrupt then.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0205-05.htm


Published on Saturday, February 5, 2005 by Knight-Ridder
Social Security Overhaul is Long-Standing Conservative Dream
by Steven Thomma

WASHINGTON - The argument for dramatic change in Social Security is clear:

The promise of secure retirements is a "hoax." Taxes paid by workers are "wasted" by the government rather than prudently invested. And "the so-called reserve fund ... is no reserve at all" because it contains nothing but government IOUs.

President Bush? No, Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon and his party's platform in 1936.

Bush's proposal to overhaul Social Security wasn't born with the new forecasts of looming financial problems. It's the product of a conservative dream to undo the system that's as old as the program itself.

Conservatives started complaining that the system was a big-government boondoggle doomed to insolvency before the first check was sent out in January 1937. Their indictment has been part of conservative ideology ever since Barry Goldwater, whose doomed but defiant 1964 presidential campaign made him the father of the modern conservative movement, through Bush.


"A lot of conservatives thought Social Security was an unjustified invasion into the private sector," said Peter Ferrera, who wrote a detailed paper proposing private accounts that was published by a libertarian research center, the Cato Institute, in 1980.

"But they weren't getting anywhere because that was all negative politics," Ferrera said. "Personal accounts would work because that's positive politics. It's all positive and populist. That's the way something can be accomplished."

Influenced by Ferrera, Cato published a second paper in 1983 that served as a political manifesto for turning over at least some of Social Security to the private sector.

It recommended:


Consistent criticism of Social Security to undermine confidence in it.
Building a coalition of supporters for private accounts, including banks and other financial institutions that would benefit from them.
Assuring "those already retired or nearing retirement that their benefits will be paid in full."
Legislation making private savings plans such as individual retirement accounts more available and thus more familiar.
Whether conservatives are on the verge of success at last in their quest remains to be seen. In 1936, they had no idea how long it might take. By 1983, they knew it would take time.

"We must be prepared for a long campaign," Butler and Germanis wrote. "It could be many years before the conditions are such that a radical reform of Social Security is possible.



http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0205-05.htm

[wtmusic]

1. It's deja vu all over again

there are more parallels to the "Social Darwinism" of the late 1800s

[Tux]

2. Except...

Of Social Darwinism based on science, it's based on Christianity. God favors those that succeed and hats those that don't. Evangicals like to remind us that disease is caused by god to punish those who sinned. If SS is destroyed, banks would rape the "accounts" for profit, we'd be taxed to provide welfare for corporations that didn't meet expected profits, and we'll lose the middle class. Back to feudalism again but with stocks instead of land as a source of power.