Dear Paul Krugman (from Angry Bear): Please Read This About Social Security

Sometimes President Obama upsets me. Especially when he follows the illegitimate framing of the issues surrounding our budget, deficit, and debt. It is worth noting that Social Security DOES NOT contribute to the deficit, the debt, nor any real (or manufactured) budget/debt crises. If we want  to cut government spending, we need to cut UNFUNDED government spending (which is largely the cuts called out in sequestration: You know, the major cuts to the military and pentagon budgets) not FUNDED spending...

So, I particularly enjoy when real economists take the time to write it up, like this blog by Dale Coberly of Angry Bear writing about Social Security, with the hopes that it will be cross-posted by Paul Krugman who has a much wider audience. A very well supported post that shows that Social Security shouldn't even be in the discussions about budgets and deficits, etc. 

So, read the article here, but in summary (the key points!):

Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit...  

... and therefore should not be part of the "deficit reduction" hysteria.

Social Security is not going broke.

The Trust Fund is NOT Social Security. It does not matter at all when it "runs out."   

The "Eight Trillion Dollar Actuarial Deficit" can be paid for by raising the payroll tax eighty cents per week each year.

Social Security was designed...insisted upon by Roosevelt...to be worker paid: "So that no damn politician can take it away from them." 

One has to only follow the money to see where the "Big Liar's" desire to take SS: Remove it from the public's control (via the government) to private control so that a few can extract (extort) money from the flows into the fund.  

No doubt this will be much wider read if taken up by Mr. Krugman (as Angry Bear hopes!), but I am more than willing to spread the word if I can... 

As Mr Coberly closes:
The Big Lie is that "Social Security is going broke, causing huge deficits that will burden our children."
Tell the people.

Read the article, and please, Spread The Word!   

Time to Change Course, Rebuild Finance and Debate 'What is The Good Life'

Jamie Galbraith is one of my favorites: He speaks clearly and holds nothing back. Elsewhere he has called for the destruction of the Financial System and a clean rebuilding of it. Makes sense, since in its current form it serves us not, and instead extracts the value of our labor and output. Finance should be a utility: Moving money from where it is to where it is needed. However, the reality is that Finance instead preys upon the majority, stripping the value from our assets (via loans and speculation), pocketing money they create akin to Counterfeiting.

As Finance grows and extracts all they can from a particular market, it continually moves on. Currently its intended prey is our public institutions: Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and even perhaps our public lands. Through its tools in the House and Senate, they pretend that it is the only way.

But there is a another reasonable way of viewing the current situation. Finance promised us jobs and prosperity if we cut taxes on Capital and High Incomes. We did so in 2003, with dismal job growth and stagnate gains since. It was a loan that didn't pay off. It is time to call it in: If we have learned anything over the past 20 years is that leaving money in the hands of the Finance industry and the excessively wealthy does society no good - and there is no credible argument that the majority of society need to give anything up to pay for the misdeeds of the members of the Finance Industry.

Galbraith here explains the global state of affairs very nicely, and reveals in commonsense terms how what is happening in America is not distinct or separable from what is happening in Europe - that Finance is currently in the advanced stages of destruction of the World Economy. Although speaking to a European Audience, he reveals many things about the global economy, the US Economy, and exactly how and why there are different current outcomes, but that all is not stable...

Galbraith: Change of Direction

Social Security Notes

With the release of tomorrow's report, Social Security will once again be on everybody's mind, especially those that would like to trim, if not gut, the current program under the rubric that we can't afford it.

As one who knows many individuals who, despite efforts to save and prepare, found themselves on the short end and use (not abuse!) SS for their retirement (and even some cases that used it many years before retirement when a spouse died young) - I find myself a fan. Sure it takes a little of my income, but it takes the same little of everyone's income, and in return we have a floor through which we cannot fall regardless of life's vagaries.

But the rich don't see it that way: It's just an entitlement of the poor, and they hate paying money to the poor. Never mind the social good it does, never mind the relative pittance it is to their incomes....

So, some numbers, and a very good plan for maintaining Social Security for the next 75 years.

And access to your Senator when the hatchet jobs start coming in! Let 'em know you care! Keep Social Security alive.