Here's a subversive idea. Let's REALLY fix Social Security. And by that I don't mean some "grand bargain" which is code speak for the Democrats helping Republicans start dismantling the most successful American social program of all time. There's this idea that if the Democrats give them something, the Republicans will be satisfied and stop trying to take America back to the worst abuses of the Gilded Age.
Here's a clue: Ain't Gonna Happen. Republicans will never be satisfied until they have destroyed everything Democrats stand for, and anyone who thinks differently is whistling in the dark. Hunter spelled out the dynamics yesterday. The whole 'concern' about the deficit is nothing but a circus with no bread - save for the crumbs our corporate owners let fall from their tables. So, what to do?
We can't have an honest debate about Social Security - Zombie Lies dominate the conversation. I'll start by talking about what we're up against, and then I'll float an idea for going on the offensive. Much of this diary is derivative in that I'm synthesizing from some excellent recent diaries to provide the context. If you've already read them, feel free to cut to the chase way down below. If you haven't, I urge you to follow the links to the original posts and read them completely. Meanwhile, here's what we're up against and why we're fighting a defensive battle we can't win.
ZOMBIE LIES - The Myths That Keep Coming Back
Susan Gardner has been doing yeoman work laying out the Zombie Lies that have been propagated throughout the MSM, the Village, and the public consciousness by those with every incentive to take down Social Security for all time. Her posts are short and to the point - with talking points worth memorizing. Gardner is riffing off Nancy Altman's book The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble.
• Zombie Social Security lies: Retirement age must be raised because people are living longer
The short version is that Social Security age of retirement must be raised because people are living longer than the system was designed to support. NOT TRUE: As Gardner summarizes,
The fact is, men are living less than three years longer, women about five. Yes, there are more people living longer because they didn't die at age 3 of whooping cough or polio, but the life expectancy for an individual has not been extended very much at all once age 65 is reached. Disturbingly, pushing the retirement age out five years as is currently proposed actually means an individual male retiree today is at risk of being cheated of two years more retirement than our supposedly drastically shorter-lived forebears received more than half a century ago.
emphasis added.
• Zombie Social Security lie: Worker-to-beneficiary ratio will kill the system
Here's another one: There just aren't enough people paying into the system to support everyone who is going to retire, so benefits must be cut/retirement age must be raised. NOT TRUE. Gardner quotes Altman directly and has a number of points well worth memorizing. Fact is, the system was over-designed to deal with that ratio all the way back in the 30's. Here's the Altman quote:
Bob Myers watched Bush on television from his home right outside Washington and stared in disbelief. In 1934, not only could Myers foresee the world as it changed, he had forecast these changes with great specificity. He was the one who had crunched the numbers for Roosevelt's Social Security proposal. Myers and Otto Richter, the senior actuary with whom he had worked, had been extremely farsighted. Myers knew, in 1934, that people in the twenty-first century would live longer and draw benefits longer.
As it turned out, Myers and Richer were a shade too conservative in their projections, believing the percentage of the population that would be elderly in the future would actually be higher than it turned out to be. Specifically, in 1934, he and Richter projected that, in year 2000, 12.7 percent of the population would be age 65 or older. How accurate were they? According to the 2000 census figures, the percentage of those aged 65 and over was 12.4 percent of the population.
• Zombie Social Security lie: The system is going "bankrupt" If more money is going out than is coming in Social Security must be about to collapse, right? Again Gardner quotes Altman.
Bankruptcy is a meaningless concept when applied to the federal government as a whole or any of its programs. As long as the federal government has, under the Constitution, “Power To Lay and collect Taxes” and the authority to issue and sell Treasury bonds, it and its programs will not go bankrupt.
It is instructive to note that the reference to potential bankruptcy would be impossible to claim if Congress simply reinstated the authorization, present in the law from 1943 to 1950, to pay any shortfall in Social Security out of general revenue.
Out of all federal programs, Social Security was being singled out for alarmist claims about bankruptcy because it operated under the conservative principles of a balanced budget and long-range projections. No one ever pointed out that if deficit spending were the definition of bankruptcy in a federal program, then the entire federal government―other than Social Security―had been bankrupt for 20 years. During the prior two decades [to 1980], the government had run deficits every year with the exception of 1969.
emphasis added
These zombie lies keep coming back again and again. They're not supported by the facts, but they're pushed relentlessly by those who will gain politically and economically by deliberately distorting, demagoguing and outright lying about Social Security. Who are these people?
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
As linked in the intro, Hunter detailed how our government is being deliberately prevented from accomplishing anything. Zombie lies flourish when Politics is nothing more than No bread, but circuses.
Well, America is very good at circuses. Brilliant at them, in fact. Entertainment is our national core competence: we may no longer be a nation of manufacturing or of technological prowess, but circuses we can do. Now that our movies are in 3-D, every exploding robot counts for at least a dollar more than it once did. Now that HDTV has finally arrived in force we can finally see all the latest reality shows in their full, high-definition glory. Ironically, even our "reality" shows are faked, overproduced hokum. We can't even do reality. No, America, in "reality" people stranded on islands, or shuffled off to rented mansions, or marrying Olympians or ice skating with tigers or whatever the hell the latest variations are -- in "reality" people do not spend their days this way, much less while participating in game-show shenanigans designed to humiliate everyone involved in ever-more-inventive ways. That does not count as reality. That counts as circus.
Who is winning the Class War? Meteor Blades in The Rich Get Richer... lays out the charts and graphs that tell the tale - and describes how it has been a bipartisan effort.
The destruction of the middle class has not been the product of one party's machinations. One connived, the other - or rather a portion of it - acquiesced as it leaned ever more rightward. The current economic situation - the acute one in which corporate profits and cash hoarding stand side-by-side with intolerable odds for job seekers as well as the chronic one we see in these measures of inequality - didn't start yesterday. And neither of them can be instantly rolled back.
Meteor Blades is working off of a recent piece by Robert Reich in The Nation: Unjust Spoils.
Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.
Shirley Sherrod is dangerous to them and their property in both parties because she recognized it's not about race alone - it's about race being used to distract us from the realization that it's about the haves versus the have nots. There is a huge body of evidence that inequality is bad for everyone in society. BUt that's not what the arguments are about. It's about 'fiscal prudence', the horrors of "The Deficit" and how America just can't afford the "luxury" of entitlements any more (except for those at the top.)
So how do we change the conversation and kill the Zombie Lies? It's time to borrow a tactic from the propagandists of the Right Wing Echo Machine and make a truly outrageous proposal to shove the Overton Window on Social Security hard to the Left, back where it ought to be.
A MODEST PROPOSAL TO FIX SOCIAL SECURITY
- Lower full retirement age to 60.. While this seems like a crazy idea at first glance, there are a LOT of good consequences that could follow from this.
• It's no secret that older Americans have zero to no chance of getting hired in today's job market. Letting them retire earlier means they can get off the treadmill that much sooner while they still have enough health to enjoy their lives - and more.
• With a steady income from the Social Security system they've been paying into for decades, it will be a lot easier for them to pursue ideas for self-employment and new business ventures - and they'll still be young/healthy enough to put in a real effort to succeed.
• The money they get from Social Security is money that will get recycled into the economy almost immediately - and more should come if they can also tap into retirement plans sooner. The economy is desperate for people to start spending again - this is certainly one way to get there.
• It will help open up the job market. Young people will have a chance to get started on the economic ladder, both from jobs created by people retiring, and from the new business activity those retirees will be generating.
• It will help reverse the decades long trend which transfers the gains from the economy into the hands of the few, who have been destroying jobs with their relentless push to do more with fewer people at lower pay.
• It will restore the promise that the American government and the American economy should work for the benefit of everyone.
- Pay for it by removing the cap on income taxed for Social Security. This is the solution to 'fixing' Social Security nobody is allowed to talk about - because it makes sense. There's a number of ways to sell it, too.
• Call it a Flat Tax - Conservatives are always raving about simplifying the tax system. This is a way of giving them what they claim they want - a simple tax at a flat rate.
• Call it a Tax Cut - with a much larger pool of income to tax, the rate every dollar is taxed at should come down. while still collecting as much or more money for the system! What a deal!
• It's another Tax Cut! Instead of a cap, how about a floor? Establish some lower bound where people in the lowest wage levels don't have Social Security Taxes withheld until they reach some threshold. This will effectively raise the minimum wage without costing employers anything, get more money to people who really need it, and it's money that will go right back into the economy.
• Call it Recycling - Pensions and retirement plans have been evaporating for years as a job benefit - and to send more money to the CEOs and stockholders.. Retirement investments by many have been wiped out in the Stock Market. This is one way to get that money back to the people it came from originally. Social Security was originally created because the Private Sector had left too many people to starve. The Private Sector has failed again, so it's time for the government to step up again.
• Remind people that it's THEIR money after all (a favorite Wingnut complaint). The government has kept it safe and is giving it back when they really need it. (Unlike the banks, the corporations, or Wall Street.)
Look - the Right Wing is always coming up with crazy ideas that sound good and have a lot of popular appeal - even if there is no way in Hell to make them work. This is how they keep the pressure on to drive the political agenda relentlessly to the Right. This is what Tea Party rhetoric is all about.
Well, here's a crazy idea for the Left to push; it too sounds good, has a lot of popular appeal - and it's just crazy enough to work!
And even if it will never happen, pushing it hard and loud will still be a good thing.
• It changes the whole dynamic of the Social Security debate, away from a forlorn holding action.
• It will force people to take another look at the Zombie Lies - they can't attack this proposal without having to talk about the actual numbers and that gives us a chance to put the facts in play.
• It starts pushing the Overton Window back to the Left
• It's a Democratic idea that can't be pigeon-holed as just a gift for the 'Un-American" base of the party, the poor, minorities, unions, etc. This proposal would touch everyone - and it's a lot easier to sell/explain than Health Care Reform.
• Just watching Right Wing heads explode would make this fun as they try to respond. "What, you don't like tax cuts? You don't like flat taxes? You don't like helping small businesses create jobs?"
• It would give the Democrats some good exercise in pushing progressive ideas again - they need it!
C'mon - you know you want to.