The Trillion Dollar Hustle . . .

[OneBlueSky]

here's a Harper's article from 2002 that I ran across while cleaning up my bookmarks . . . both perceptive and predictive, and worth the read . . .

the Trillion Dollar Hustle
Hello Wall Street, Goodbye Social Security

http://www.harpers.org/TrillionDollarHustle.html?pg=1

There is, first and most obviously, a stupendous windfall in the works for Wall Street if privatization actually takes place. Bush's commission has already ruled out the kind of semi-privatized system proposed to solve this non-problem during the Clinton years wherein the government would itself invest the Social Security Trust Fund in private securities. Such a strategy, it is thought, would “politicize the markets,” giving those never-to-be-trusted politicians too great a power over the companies in which the money is invested. The only option left, then, is individual accounts, hundreds of millions of them, each one generating the attendant commissions and fees for the nation's brokers.

Just as enticing are privatization's potential effects on the labor force. With Social Security's guaranteed benefits, workers are able to look forward to a time of leisure, to a time of complete freedom from the boss. Under privatization, all guarantees are off. Your retirement is tied solely to the size of your portfolio, which in turn is tied to your willingness to work-longer hours, and on the boss's terms. The new economics of retirement will thus pay dividends in increased workforce discipline and will also force millions to continue working well into their retirement years, enlarging the labor force and helping to keep wages down. “The response to higher-risk retirement income is more labor force participation,” economist Teresa Ghilarducci of the University of Notre Dame explains. “Women are already working, we're going to run out of immigrants, children are out of the question, so we have only one pool of labor remaining, and that's retirees.”

“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1932, and the idea clearly still shocks many. “That's the argument I'm hearing from Washington,” Ghilarducci continues. “'What does the working class want with retirement? They ought to work.'”

An even shinier reward also looms just over the privatization horizon. The Social Security reformers profess concern over the politicization of markets, but what they have in mind might be described as the marketization of our politics, the coronation of Wall Street as the nation's protector and benefactor. What the stock market has clearly failed to do on its own-establish itself as the reliable friend of the small investor and establish its political agenda as that of the common people-the commission now proposes to do by law. With our Social Security money entrusted to Wall Street, its priorities will become the nation's priorities; its demands for deregulation, de-unionization, low wages, and generous “stimulus” packages whenever the Dow looks a little weak will be recast as the demands of little old ladies in Beardstown and blue-collar workers in Providence. Who would dare to legislate for higher minimum wages, say, or stricter protections for arctic wildlife, when such a move could be construed as an attack on the nation's beloved retirees? Although we can only glimpse the possibilities now, this mind-boggling reconfiguration of economic politics is the real promise of privatization, the thing that makes it worth the insane gamble: instantly, privatization would reverse the polarity of the famous “third rail of American politics,” transforming Social Security from the bane of the business community into its most potent weapon, an argument-ending current that would crackle through the fingers of every P.R. man and corporate lobbyist. Touch Wall Street and you're dead.

- more . . .

http://www.harpers.org/TrillionDollarHustle.html?pg=1

[starroute]

1. This is extremely important

In fact, I was thinking about some of these points earlier today.

I believe it goes further than the corporations just wanting to have a veto over politics. I think they know that capitalism is a shuck and a cheat that is going to be found out in time and want to shore up their power to the point where people won't dare do anything about them even after the great disillusionment comes.

Or to put it another way, capitalism is like an abusive father who wants to make his wife and children so dependent on his goodwill that they become incapable of ever calling him on his abuses.

The real question is whether we break out of the codependency now, while we still have some remaining power, or whether we get pulled further and further into the black hole.