We learn why they hate social security
Lifted from an e-mail from coberly
We learn why they hate social security:
NCPSSM e-mail (update)
Apparently, these are the “good-old days” our nation’s fiscal hawks relish. The Peterson Foundation’s David Walker co-hosted CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning (personally, we yearn for the good-old days when so-called “news” shows were hosted by journalists—not partisan advocates—but that’s another debate).
The discussion followed the classic Peterson Foundation talking points—government bad, ‘business’ good—but ultimately led to a nostalgic reminiscence for the good old days when Americans faced debtors prisons and had no sense of “entitlement” (presumably to the Social Security and Medicare benefits workers already paid for their entire working lives):
“The fact of the matter is we have to change how we do things. We are on an imprudent and unsustainable path in a number of ways. You talk about debtors prisons, we used to have debtors prisons, now bankruptcy is no taint. Bankruptcy is an exit strategy. Our society and our culture have changed. We need to get back to opportunity and move away from entitlement. We need to be able to provide reasonable risk but hold people accountable when they do imprudent things…it’s pretty fundamental.”…David Walker, Peterson Foundation, CNBC Jun 10, 2010
Rdan here: I also refer you to Yves Smith’s piece on Peterson, and the part 2 of The Nation’s ‘Looting Social Security’.
Updare 2: And the NCPSSM e-mail.
Actually, I lifted it from an email from NCPSSM.
What Walker is telling us is that old time religion: The rich are enforcing the virtue of the poor. They dont want us to go to hell because we don’t work hard enough, or worry enough about starving.
We used to think this was something that “religious” people thought up out of their religious morals. More likely it is something that seriously neurotic people hijacked the popular religion to enforce their own fear that their father would hate them if they slacked off, or that their kids would grow up ne’er do wells unless they were “disciplined” properly.
I think (as a father) that there is an element of truth in the idea that you have to teach kids to be fiscally responsible… though you don’t actually have to beat them or starve them to do this. But like a lot of things to which there is an element of truth, it is possible to go completely insane about it. Especially when it reinforces your own financial position. And the economy does not in fact provide a reasonable way for the poor to provide for themselves their daily bread or a decent retirement.
We need to be able to provide reasonable risk but hold people accountable when they do imprudent things…
I’m all for it! Let’s start with Goldman-Sachs …
I wonder if he’d apply this to corporate bankruptcy too… I doubt it.
There are two things that have been lost in the last 30 years or so, prudence on the part of individuals and restraint on the part of corporations. Prudence on the part of individuals was a result of the depression and WWII and are not a normal part of human behavior. Loss of prudence was reversion to the mean of human existence.
Restraint on the part of corporations was lost too, and any balance they achieved between shareholders, community, and employees was rapaciously destroyed for the last few tenths of percent of profit.
Peterson has chosen to focus on individual lack of prudence, which is indeed a true problem; he conveniently ignores corporate rapaciousness, which is a true problem as well. Personally, I vote for the party that I think is going to tackle corporate rapaciousness (their power to destroy, create war, ruin the environment, destroy the economy) because I think those issues are bigger than lack of individual prudence. Conservatives do the opposite.
You need to read a little history. Corporations were far more rapacious in the 19th and early 20th century than they are now. To the extent they were restrained in the aftermath of the New Deal, it was due to a combination of factors which are no longer operating: fear of public opinion, opportunities for profits without being rapacious.
As for Walker, I say give the man a pulpit on national TV and let him talk and talk until the middle-class idiots finally hear what he is saying. Namely, that he wants to get rid of social security and medicare and make people work until they drop. Combine that sort of talk (and talk is all it will ever amount to) with another drop in stock and house prices and the Republican hold on the middle class mind will finally be broken.
Made my point. Corporations after the depression were more circumspect and less hubristic and less rapacious. The period after the depression until, say, 30 years ago had new personal and corporate behaviors that have been lost. Both individual imprudence and corporate predation need to be addressed. Both also needed to be addressed in the 1920’s, and were – the depression was the vehicle.
We are having another near depression to make this same point to us, but all sorts of government action are tamping down movement toward prudence on the part of individuals and more modest conduct on the behavior of corporations.
This is a general message I think most Americans would agree with. Peterson addresses only half.
Debtor’s prisons, workhouses and poorhouses were actually more like what we would call homeless shelters today. Orwell travelled through England with the travelling people, and he spent many nights in workhouses. If those were the good old days, the bad new days must be dreadful.
geez; let me know when businesses stop using bankruptcy, then maybe I’ll care. When a CEO goes to debtors prison, give me a ring.
This just confirms my label on the group Neo Federalists. They espose the policies of the Federalist parties, including property qualifications to vote (if you don’t pay income tax you should not vote), debtors prisons etc. It would sound very good to the Federalists of the 1800s. IT seems part of a general move against the Jacksonian revolution in the US.
Hello, I’m Pete Peterson and I’m here to talk to you about reducing your Social Security benefits. Trust me, you’ll be better off without it. You’ll work harder, save your money, never have a minutes’ rest from scrimping and saving, and be a better person for it. It’s for your own good. True, you paid for your SS in advance. But, hey, I borrowed the money and spent it and paid less in taxes than I would have otherwise. And, I’m not going to pay you back! Let this be a lesson to you. You have to take responsibility for yourself!
Just so you know, don’t let me near your money next time, because I’ll steal you blind in a NY minute. What’s that whining about never being able to retire? People like you don’t get to retire! So, work til you drop, you devils. It’s for your own good!
/snark attack Nancy Ortiz
Well
a movie made in the fifties “Sabrina” with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn made that point. I have no idea what was going on behind the scences, but back then the corps certainly talked the talk. Anymore they still talk the talk, but their politicians all talk “personal virtue”.
as for “prudence,” there is nothing more prudent than Social Security. They want you to believe it’s welfare… and there are some highly educated idiots on the left who would like to turn it into welfare… but the fact is it is the workers paying for their own retirement, using the government only to insure their savings against inflation.
And no, I don’t need to hear from some uneducated idiots on the right who think that “pay as you go” means that you “really” are paying for someone else’s grandmother, because, god knows, you will never get old yourself, and when you do you will be rich, and you will love your job too much to ever want to retire.
snark?
i dunno, nancy. clean that up a bit. obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate, and it’ll do for a republican stump speech.
the dems just don’t like to talk about it.
I don’t see where anyone but the author of the post mentions social security. Claiming that individuals in this country feel entitled to too much is a far cry from demanding we do away with social security. Everyone is pretty creative in their anger but I don’t see that it is related to the discussion.
we used to have debtors prisons, now bankruptcy is no taint
An astounding statement. If you want to see demand for credit fall off a cliff and die, replace bankruptcy with a much more punitive process. Go ahead and keep pushing your “opportunity” speech during the ensuing depression.
Credit losses are part of the business model of those who issue credit, and the normalcy of bankruptcy probably stems at least as much from that model as from societal and legislative treatment of debtors who cannot pay their debts.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Goldman: Give the Money Back
The Young Turks protest Goldman Sachs taking 13 billion dollars in unnecessary bailout funds and ask Geithner at the Federal Reserve to get it back.
http://tinyurl.com/2d4zgxf
Pete Peterson’ advocates the privatization of Social Security both personally and through his various foundations. The author of the post assumes that AB readers and posters are aware of his activities. See the following link for a sample of his positions.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/05/10/obama-packs-debt-committee-with-supportes-of-social-security-benefit-cuts-and-privatization/
Let’s bring back the good old days…
Stop allowing bankruptcies for business and see how fast they change their tune.
How about removing limited liability in corporations?
Damned straight we should bring back the good ole’ days of individual responsibility. For starters, how’s abouts we get rid of corporations. That’s right, no more corporate shield. You want to join up with your fellow plutocrats and finance something, you do it as a partnership. You’re all on the hook for the damages your creation does. If you can’t afford to lose the money, you’d better go looking for some other investment with your billions. Don’t think for a minute that if scum like Peterson were on the hook themselves personally for the damages done by something like, oh say BP in the Gulf of Mexico, that operation would be run a whole bunch differently, like maybe even ethically and morally correctly. The same goes for every other scam and fraud the corporations have perpetrated over the last thirty years. And, a la Peterson’s desire to make these changes so that the average citizen won’t have a chance to adapt to them over their lifetime, we outlaw corporations immediately. No wiggle room for you, weasel.
Hell, I’ll even take what I heard is the bankruptcy system in Britian. A business can go bankrupt but the owners can never own a business again. I’m not sure how that works for a large corporation, but lets just make it that that means the largest shareholder and the CEO can never hold an ownership stake or head a corporation again.
Somehow I think Peterson and his moral scolds will change their tune damn fast. And asses like Trump won’t be able to continue their serial bankruptcy filings to short his suppliers again, an added bonus
matt
you’d have to have been there.
David Walker goes around the country giving a speech called “we are doomed. deficits are going to eat your children. when people ask him about defense spending, he says, no, no, it’s all because of entitlements. he means Social Security.
which, since you don’t seem to know, doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the deficits. it is fully paid for by the people who will get the benefits.
praha
oh, i think he’ll let us adapt. you can adapt to living without social security. hell, you can adapt to kidney dialysis, but you don’t have your kidneys removed just because.
social security works fine. painlessly. performs a needed function in the cheapest, sanest, most secure way possible. why change it at all. why “adapt” to somethng that is no where near as good?
What Social Security? I worked all my life and now I’m 66 and get $675/mo + 162 in Food Stamps + Medicare/Medicaid. When my nearly 90 year old mother can no longer keep me indoors in the fashion to which I am accustomed I could be on the street.
[Note: Don’t take up a collection. After 10 months of hard work I am finally getting a handle on online poker: earned 44 cents today in only 1 1/2 hours. There is a catch 22 that keeps poker less than excessively profitable: a good player by definition folds most hands pre-flop, more at the flop; more at the turn, loses often at the river, mostly doesn’t make much when he wins — often enough gets the perfect hand and everybody just happens to fold. That’s why pro grinders [my future?] two and four table: they have to combine dribbles to make a few bucks. By Christmas that hopefully will be me. If not, I can exercise my option for Irish citizenship [5 Irish grandparents counting my mother’s stepmother] and go to Europe and get on the dole — anywhere in Europe.)
Back on topic. When I started cab driving it paid enough to live on but not to pay taxes on. Good for everybody else: they pay us less for a ride now and nothing for our retirement later. As should be plain from my “good jobs” post that was back when I started. It quickly went downhill so you couldn’t make a living now (maybe compared to that steel mill in Pakistan). Ended up moving 2000 miles to San Francisco — giving up free rent, cable and use of my brother’s Towncar — to make a living driving a cab (San Francisco is so liberal they treat you like you have a union even if you don’t have one — maintain a 1968 minimum wage level too!).
Like just about every other problem discussed in this and other progressive forums, it all goes back to unconscious American labor and the resulting distorted labor market and political arena. Wake America up and wage America up. (i was a poet and I didn’t know it.)
There are some real simple, things that Americans could grok at the common sense level without a Ph.D. in economics (the reason America listens to Gingrich and company on complicated things like the economy and health care is that the know the Dems and the media are lying to them — or at least acting like there is only one-liberal-side — on all the social issues; issue which they can understand at the common sense level).
Tell Americans just a couple of too plain facts like the federal minimum wage is now 75 cents below what it was in the Eisenhower administration (not to mention $2.75 below LBJ’s!) and that sector-wide labor agreements work just fine all over the world to fairly balance labor markets. Let loose a couple of simple truths and let the market for ideas sort out the result.
Did I say: what Social Security?
I’m not sure of the laws regarding business bankruptcy in Europe, but there is tremendous stigma associated with it in many countries. One you go bankrupt, you have “loser” branded on you, so to speak and no one will lend to you and only grudgingly will they do business with you, rent you office space, work for you, etc. The result is a tremendous fear of failure. Instead of starting businesses, young people all aspire to work in a flunky government job where they can never be fired. I think this attitude is most prevalent in southern Europe (like Spain, which I have the most familiarity with) and thinks are more liberal in northern Europe, especially Britain and Sweden (I have a hard time believing what Pat says regarding bankruptcy in Britain). While I was in Spain and people there were discussing how to get out of their mess, various entrepreneurs mentioned that when they had been in the United States, no one wants to lend to or associate with an entrepreneur until AFTER he has failed at least once. Two bankruptcies is supposedly ideal for American bankers–enough that you have learned to be cautious, but not so much that it is clear you are a hopeless incompetent. With no bankruptcies on your record, American lenders supposedly figure you haven’t yet learned to be be careful and you’ll end up learning this lesson on their nickel. “Come back after you go bankrupt once or twice,” they say to beginners. That is how Spainish entrepreneurs who have worked in both the United States and Spain see things, at least, and they think Spain should change in that direction. And I agree. Spaniards have a very hard time jumping from small business (with less than 10 employees) to mid-sized business, with 10 to 100 employees, precisely because they are terrified of failing during this growth, and this terror is justified due to the high price of failure in Spain.
ddrew
you are doing okay on social security considering you didn’t pay the tax… or much of it.
i could live on your 675 dollars, never mind the food stamps. hate that old government proctologist.
but then, i don’t play cards.
and since matt brings up why i hate david walker
i watched him once tell the elite business and political people in my fair city that “every baby born in this country is born owing a 150 thousand dollar debt.
i watched the people gasp, as if they’d been kicked in the stomach. they were all imagining their little two year old girl having to get a paper route to pay off her debt before she could go to school.
and it was a lie. the national debt was at that time closer to 10,000 dollars per capita, and its not a debt that has to be paid off. it’s like any business, it borrows as a matter of routine. as long as you can make more profit on the borrowed money than the cost of interest, you are doing fine.
or, if you have a five milion dollar home and borrow a hundred fifty thousand against it, and die… have you left your kids a horrible debt? or an asset.
Walker is too smart not to know all of this. But he counts on you being too dumb to think about it.
Don’t be offended by me… that kind of dumb is a description of all of us. we may be smart in our own field, but we are all dumb about stuff we don’t know about. That’s what carnies and con men like Walker count on. You should be offended by him… the man who says “you look like a smart young feller to me.”
In is interesting in the historical political trends this movement seems to have a lot of anti Jacksonian points of view, yet on deficits they have Andys point of view (debt bad pay it off). Note that Jackson did pay off the national debt during his term. The interesting question is where these folks come down on central banks, which of course Jackson hated with a purple passion (actually all banks were evil in his mind since he got cheated by them)
coberly
$675 a month wont pay the rent in what my brother calls a “derelict hotel” in San Francisco. In case you can’t read — this is really annoying — we didn’t get paid enough to pay tax. Know any cab drivers driving a nice car — I mean when we got paid barely enough to live 30 years ago? — for 60 hours work! NYC and Chicago drivers don’t get paid enough to live BEFORE retirement these days.
In 1974, the NYC taxi meter was $2.25/mile (in 2005 dollars I think — for whatever year I worked this out). By 2005 (if I remember the year right) the meter had dropped to $1.50/mile in constant dollars. The way drivers are paid today — the daily lease and gas — they keep only the back end. Ergo their pay was more than halved. This as average US income grew 60%. THIS IN THE ONLY PLACE ON EARTH WHERE WEALTH IS A PLATEAU NOT A PINNACLE, MIDTOWN MANHATTAN. Today, I think they get the same $2/mile they got in 2005 and can look forward to another increase — any decade?
ddrew
i can read, and i generally like your comments enough to not want to fight with you,so don’t pick one. i said -I- could live on 675. I didn’t say you could. And I managed to pay my payroll tax out of some pretty skinny jobs even when i had kids. not that i had any choice about it. that’s the lovely thing about it’s being a “tax.” people make bad choices.
coberly
I think the story is with the bigger picture: the completely disfunctional American labor market. Why should I feel any moral obligation whatsoever to to have paid taxes in an economy (in a country if you will) that barely paid me enough to live when I start out and then as 30 years went by and average income increased almost 60% would not even pay enough to live anymore — for the same work. Tell me I’m wrong about that rape of my working life — the only one I will ever get — and then worry about what was squeezed out of you.
Ditto for minimum wage jobs. Back when raising the fed min under Bush the First was under discussion, Business reported McDonalds employee turnover at 70% every 90 days. Been looking at the same happy Mexican (in SF, Chinese) faces behind the counter for a decade now. Americans wont even show up for minimum wage jobs anymore — condemned to selling crack on the corner or working for free (in today’s overall income terms).
Sorry if I sound testy with you — it was our crazy labor market that raped me.
lyle
way i heard it, he paid off the national debt and started the first depression.
Matt
i agree about the labor market. and if you never had a chance to get a better job, i agree about that. it is one of the big ways we as a country let ourselves down. back in the old old days, the village elders would have found something useful for you to do and you would have shared in the general welfare. and never thought anything of it.
but you need to be a little careful about sounding like you feel sorry for yourself, or, worse, feeling sorry for yourself. okay, you had a hard life and didn’t make much money. but you, hopefully still breathe the air and walk in the sun. it doesn’t take a lot of money to be happy. if you have your health, make a friend. see what you can do on $675. don’t rent a room in a cheap hotel.
meanwhile social security did the best it could for you. it can’t do everything.
as for the “moral obligation to pay taxes.” it’s not a question of moral obligation. with social security your benefits are based on what you paid in. if you had paid your payroll tax you would most likely have a good deal more than $675 to live on today.
I am not talking just about me. I am talking about 30%* of American families who would be below the poverty line without government helps today — 18%* with — double the average income since LBJ began his war on poverty. Michael Harrington wrote a book back then called “The Other America”. 40 years later we have met the other America — and we most incongruously and surprisingly see it in the mirror.
[* http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/07/imaginary-conversation-with-my-family.html ]
This gives me an immense sense of excitement: “We are on an imprudent and unsustainable path in a number of ways.”
This “imprudent and unsustainable path” is ruining the US because the US is run by militarists wasting 8% of GDP per year that should be better spent.
That is because the ownership society has nothing better to do with their untaxed money than lend it back to the USG.
That is not because the US economy is in a liquidity trap with zero percent interest rates and still no productive projects for the money to go to except lending to Uncle Sam.
This guy is bent on blither and like David Brooks today utterrly unsupported by any logic or concern for reality.
That said MSMBC is concerned that keeping Grandma from starving might get in the way of militarism, the medical industrial complex and lending instead of paying taxes with money that has no better use.
Greenspan was correct if obfuscatory: deficits cannot end or the rich won’t have AAA places to invest the money they have no other use for.
The issue with the US economy, and entitlement, is the USG is the investment of last choice because of tax cuts by Bush!
This is because tax cut, WTO slavery, the war machine and corporate welfare have destroyed US productivity.
ddrew
i agree with you about that.
David Walker: “The fact of the matter is we have to change how we do things. We are on an imprudent and unsustainable path in a number of ways. You talk about debtors prisons, we used to have debtors prisons, now bankruptcy is no taint. Bankruptcy is an exit strategy.”
And while we’re at it, let’s do away with limited liability corporations and socialization of the costs and risks of business.
Note to readers: read Orwell’s essays, entertaining, informative and as fresh as when their ink was still wet. The essay Bill refers to is here:”The Spike” http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part1 The spikes were overnight food and shelter for the indigent. By policy, during the week no tramp could spend more than one night in a particular spike, but had to walk to the next.
An excerpt from this essay relates to our discussion:
To occupy the time I talked with a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter who wore a collar and tie, and was on the road, he said, for lack of a set of tools. He kept a little aloof from the other tramps, and held himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary tastes, too, and carried one of Scott’s novels on all his wanderings…
We talked of life on the road. He criticized the system which makes a tramp spend fourteen hours a day in the spike, and the other ten in walking and dodging the police. He spoke of his own case–six months at the public charge for want of three pounds’ worth of tools. It was idiotic, he said.
Then I told him about the wastage of food in the workhouse kitchen, [“five dustbins filled with the leftover beef and vegetables”] and what I thought of it. And at that he changed his tune immediately. I saw that I had awakened the pew-renter who sleeps in every English workman.
Though he had been famished, along with the rest, he at once saw reasons why the food should have been thrown away rather than given to the tramps. He admonished me quite severely.
‘They have to do it,’ he said. ‘If they made these places too pleasant you’d have all the scum of the country flocking into them. It’s only the bad food as keeps all that scum away. These tramps are too lazy to work, that’s all that’s wrong with them. You don’t want to go encouraging of them. They’re scum.’
I produced arguments to prove him wrong, but he would not listen. He kept repeating:
‘You don’t want to have any pity on these tramps–scum, they are. You don’t want to judge them by the same standards as men like you and me. They’re scum, just scum.’
It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes.
To call the “Spikes” homeless shelters is to insult the comfort, warmth and safety of today’s homeless shelters. But I guess we have become spoiled.
“5 Irish grandparents counting my mother’s stepmother] and go to Europe and get on the dole — anywhere in Europe”
I wouldnt count on that. Europe is going bankrupt.
American tycoon Donald Trump has gone bankrupt twice. He has figured out how to do it, and you to can do it, if your rich. Shield your own assets by using a corporation, and then stick the dumb stockholders. Meanwhile, you are the CEO and get all the entitlements due of that elevated positon. The media annoints you as a genius, Pete thinks your wonderful. And then you both can rail about entitlements and personal responsiblilty.
One consistent aspect of Walker’s and Perterson’s thesis is that “entitlement” spending must be reduced. The fact that Social Security benefits come from a dedicated funding stream does not interfer with their focus. In the same manner the fact that other more discretionary spending such as the military budget are said to be either inviolable or not of sufficient consequence to make a difference if reduced. A strange point of view. But above all else it seems note worthy that none of their suggestions would have any consequence on their personal financial situations, at least no negative consequence.
In trying to understand the position of someone in the public with whom I disagree I try to know where they came from so that I have a better sence of where they are coming from. Peterson’s career arc is reasonably well documented from his rise from middle management to executive to appointed government manipulator back back to investment banker. None of which qualifies him to decide on a working person’s financial future.
David M Walker is another matter. His early career seems to be a blank slate. He gets a degree in accounting from a Florida school, Jacksonville Univ.n and the next noted position is that of partner at Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm at the age of 37. The most detailed description I could find of his private professional career was this: “Before his time at Arthur Andersen, Walker worked for Source Finance, a human resources and recruiting firm, and before that was with Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse & Co.” which comes from one of his books.
That’s scant information about a person who climbed so fast and is making decision recommendations that may be so consequential to the rest of us.
well
i did read that he was a democrat before nixon’s southern strategy made it prudent to become a republican in florida.
that’s how he got to be bipartisan.
This is wrong. I’m not sure what figures you’re looking at. The present value of all future benefits is greater than the present value of all future income. It isn’t paid for. It’s insolvent by definition.