I've been predicting a threat to Social Security/pensions globally for quite some time. Perhaps because of my age, I am more sensitive to the subtleties in the media.
I decided to do a little digging abroad. You can search for "any country news english" and read the papers of Europe. In each I searched for references to any reduction in pensions, services, etc.
Sure enough, the US debate regarding social security/pensions is taking place throughout Europe as well, regardless of how well an economy might be doing (Germany)
It's a neo-liberal dream coming true. And it's the workers nightmare.
It IS a global drive to reduce social security/pensions that seems to begin with raising the age of retirement. In Europe that can mean from 60 to 65. In the US there is talk of raising it to 70.
Mean Congressional bastards.
Why stop at 70?
Let's just skip all the nice little incremental adjustments. Let's just raise the social security tax to 50% and raise the age of retirement to 90. That way you can give your heartless arses big raises every year, buy that third home in the mountains, support your individual private security contractors, and finance your own private jet.
Let's stop pussy footing around. You, Congress, don't give a shit about us. You just want to bleed us dry to feather your perverse nests.
Oh, where was I. Oh yeah.
Here's how Europe is doing the same. I begin with Germany because it is amusing to have them tout their wonderful economic health while simultaneously attacking the long-standing social contracts they have with workers. What's their excuse?
GAWD, Congress is stinking with its persistant, heartless assholiness.
Germany
Apparently, Germany's economy is roaring these days. But that isn't stopping the German neo-liberals from chipping away at all those German workers perks. If the conservatives succeed, German's will lose. If German's can lose, then we are toast. Their people know how to protest.
Roaring growth figures released last week showed Germany's economy is firing on all cylinders. But voters aren't giving Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition any credit for the robust recovery.
http://www.thelocal.de/...
Two leading business associations recommended on Friday that Germany reduce holiday time for employees from six weeks to four or five, in order to bolster growth.
http://www.thelocal.de/...
Germany’s 20 million pensioners face an income drop under a push by government MPs to abolish the “pension guarantee,” reports said Tuesday.
http://www.thelocal.de/...
The two top Social Democrats, chairman Sigmar Gabriel and parliamentary leader Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have reached a compromise after months of battling over the question of raising the retirement age, media reported Wednesday.
http://www.thelocal.de/...
The Rest of Europe
Below is an overview of European countries that have introduced measures to increase the retirement age, or have expressed their intention to do so in coming years.
UK
With a slightly more favourable demographic development than the EU as a whole, the statutory retirement age is set at 65 for men and 60 for women.
Current reforms have slated a new retirement age for women from 60 to 65 by 2020 and 68 for both sexes by 2046.
SPAIN
Spain faces one of world’s most severe demographic challenges, with almost one in three Spaniards over 65 by 2049, according to government estimates.
The retirement age is currently 65 for both men and women. While early retirement is possible at 60, pension payments are substantially reduced in this case.
The ruling Socialist government has adopted legislation to raise the retirement age to 67, with the reform to be introduced gradually from 2013.
NETHERLANDS
The retirement age in the Netherlands is 65. The Dutch government has decided to raise it gradually to 67 by 2025.
ITALY
Italy’s current retirement age is 65 for men and 60 for women, but since the length of contribution also counts, actual exit ages can be considerably lower.
Legislation adopted in 2007 marks the minimum retirement age at 60 in 2011 and 61 in 2013.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), public pension expenditure will increase to almost 25 percent of Italian GDP by 2050, about twice as high as the value projected for the EU.
GREECE
The retirement age is 65 for men and 62 for women, but under significant pressure from the Eurozone group, Greece’s Socialist government has introduced changes to its pensions system to curb massive debt.
The retirement age for women will rise to 65 to match that of men, but women and men will still be able to retire earlier provided they have worked at least 37 years.
SWEDEN
French lawmakers have cited Sweden’s 1994 pension legislation as a model for future changes to its own system. Under Sweden’s reforms, which split retirement plans between private and public schemes, the minimum pension age is set at 61 for both men and women, with no maximum retirement age.
http://www.france24.com/...
There are five cardinal points of "neoliberal" economic agenda.
The supremacy of the free market.
The market was to rule supreme, unrestrained by the intervention of government, labor unions, or anything else (other than corporate monopoly power) that constrained the operation of market forces, regardless of how much social disorder, suffering or exploitation results.
Any undesirable effects are to be ascribed simply to "unidentified interventions" which, when they were identified, could be eliminated, and the problem solved thereby.
Monopolies were simply assumed, against all evidence, to be self-limiting (though no one ever managed to explain how DeBeers Consolidated Mines had managed to create and maintain a worldwide monopoly on the diamond business for more than a century).
Cutting, and eliminating when possible, expenditure for social services.
Again, in the name of reducing government interference in the market, it was not necessary for government to involve itself in social welfare programs.
To explain the obvious suffering that results, it is therefore claimed that when the poor suffer, it is due to their own laziness that they do not better themselves.
That the accumulation of money was equivalent to the accumulation of power, with its attendant distortion of the functionings of the market, was not a concern.
That this led inevitably to the disempowerment of the poor was not a concern - the poor were blamed for their condition by claiming their "inferiority" or "bad decisions." Social justice was a non-issue.
Deregulation.
If government is interfering in the market, it will only lead to a loss of profits, and therefore, government regulation had to be assumed to be bad.
Therefore, it has to be reduced or eliminated, even in monopolistic situations.
One neoliberal, Grover Norquist, an official in the George W. Bush administration commented that he wanted to reduce the size of government to the point where he "could drown it in the bathtub" - and then go on to do so.
Privatization.
Since government is assumed, as a given, to be inefficient, lazy, bloated and uneconomical in the provisioning of goods and services, it was only reasonable to presume that private enterprise could and would perform the delivery of services in a more efficient manner, and hence any activity that delivers goods or services to citizens should and must be privatized.
Never was an explanation offered for the contrary incentive of capitalism - that the capitalist's basic profit-driven incentive is to charge as much money as possible for providing as few goods and services as possible.
Elimination of the concept of "Community" or the "Common Good."
Since this is antithetical to the notion of privatization and "rugged individualism," the concept of the commons (the air we must all breathe, the water we must all drink, etc.) to them, reeks faintly of Communism, it is assumed to be bad, wrong, and hence is oppositional to the "neoliberal" agenda.
Such notions as public health, public education, etc., are to be replaced by private initiative, as anything else is simply considered to be a manifestation of lassitude, indolence and governmental dependence.
I believe the policies that eviscerated the quality of life for the Chilean workers are being applied in America today. You can read the Chilean story here, if you are so inclined to read history:
http://www.bidstrup.com/...
It's a shame that governments care so little for the people that FREAKING BUILT THEIR ECONOMIES.
Let's just skip all the nice little incremental adjustments. Let's just raise the social security tax to 50% and raise the age of retirement to 90. That way POLITICIANS can give THEIR heartless arses big raises every year, buy that third home in the mountains, support THEIR individual private security contractors, and finance THEIR own private jets.
Let's stop pussy footing around in DC. You, Congress, don't give a shit about us. You just want to bleed us dry to feather your perverse nests.