Here is a brief blurb describing why Social Security is desirable to most people, offensive to wingers, and under attack, with a description of the attack. I think this is a decent forum for crafting a message like this, IF we keep in mind that the goal is to persuade the undecided, not the fanatical.
What you need to know about Social Security:
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Its Purpose: Ensuring that people who worked their whole life don't wind up in shacks eating dog food. It was invented because exactly this happened in the 1930's.
Its track record: Not too many elderly people who worked legally for most of their lives , live in shacks and eat dog food.
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Why the vast majority of Americans like Social Security:
- They want assurance that they can retire at some point and still live with dignity.
Why right wingers don't like Social Security, fought it 60 years ago, and want to, uhhhh, "save" it now:
- Social Security's ability to fulfill its purpose, its lack of bureaucracy, and resulting popularity are an embarassing rebuttal to right wing beliefs about government social programs.
- It allows old people to retire while still capable of work (or play). This increases the scarcity of labor.
- It increases labor costs by its payroll tax.
- It weakens the free market mentality by making the connection between work and receiving money less direct. Note that inherited wealth can also have this effect, but that escapes right wingers.
- Financially secure people can become less responsive workers if their main reason for working is to achieve financial security, reducing the utility of the labor force.
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For the first 40 or so years right wingers tried to make an honest argument against it involving appeals to individualism and free market principles. This case exists, and if you have a certain philosophy, is persuasive. Unfortunately for them, voters do not share their philosophies. The only way they could get elected was by shutting up about it.
Then they realized it is a lot easier to just fool the voters. The plan:
- Make people think of it as an investment plan instead of an insurance policy.(as shown here).
- Scare people into thinking they will lose their investment using the BIG SOCIAL SECURITY CRISIS and offer to "SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY".(as shown here).
The TRUTH about the BIG CRISIS: Beginning in 2018 or so, the system will begin to be a net seller of government debt instead of a net buyer. This is not the crisis, it is the trust fund working as it is supposed to. Between 2042 and 2052, depending on estimates, if there has been no reduction in benefits, the system will stop hoarding bonds and will have to revert to its pre-1983 structure of paying out the same amount it takes in every year. This would require a sudden benefits cut of about 20% about 45 years from now. This is the "big crisis" requiring "immediate action" to "save Social Security." Note that it is based on 40 year economic projections, when no one can get 5 year projections right.
- Whatever you do, DON'T actually release a specific plan (as shown here) until you have scared people to the point where they'll say yes to anything too fast to read the fine print and figure out that what you are actually offering is bound to basically be the same as...
- Mandatory 401K contributions! GREAT. The problem is that mandatory 401K contributions are forced investment rather than an annuity-style insurance policy, which is what people actually need in the first place. Appeal to the strange belief among people that despite knowing nothing about investing, and being in a marketplace dominated by people with better information and more capital, that they can grow their money faster than the economy grows as a whole. Promise them impossible returns on their investment by pretending that the stock market will somehow grow faster than the economy, forever.
- Sit back and watch the clueless small investor paying fees and commisions (hidden in taxes, maybe) and then holding the bag as usual. This is the part that the Wall Street Journal called the "bonanza" after privatization.
- Enjoy cocktails on the beach, brought to you (and paid for!) by some 74 year old fool earning minimum wage who thought he was going to beat Wall Street.