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The Peter Petersons want SS privatized to the financial sector, where SS's trillions would have $100Bs extracted yearly in fees, much like investors in 401K and hedge funds get hit with fees annually, often hidden and unknowable.
I guess this guy wasn't impressed
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_4133863.html
EDIT> "billionaire" -- 6 matches
"en lements" -- 1 match (but it a quote from another article)
The Peter Petersons want SS privatized to the financial sector, where SS's trillions would have $100Bs extracted yearly in fees, much like investors in 401K and hedge funds get hit with fees annually, often hidden and unknowable.
How Deficit Hawks Are Pitting Millennials Against Seniors to Attack Social Security and Medicare
Generational grievances pitting struggling young millennials against supposedly better-off seniors is creeping back into American politics, fanned by a new wave of deficit hawks who want to undermine public confidence in Social Security and Medicare—as the first step in cutting the social insurance programs.
In a string of recent examples— rants from MSNBC’s wealthy young commentator, a notorious elderly-attacking House candidate, think tanks promoted on NPR—generational warfare cheerleaders are proclaiming that America is heading toward an epic and immoral conflict as better-off seniors are robbing millennials of shrinking federal dollars because retirement programs cost too much. That’s simply false, as Social Security is solvent through 2033, and spending on all mandatory programs as a percentage of GDP is close towhere it’s been since 1975, at 21 percent.
This spat captures the contours of an old and still looming political fight where centrist Democrats and most Republicans refuse to fortify America’s most popular and widely used social insurance programs by a mix of simple tax increases and more realistic cost-of-living increases. More than 80 percent of Social Security benefits go to people with incomes of less than $30,000—and most average less than $12,000 a year. Yet faces are appearing on America’s airwaves posing a false analysis and choice: that federal finances are a mess; and that the only fix is depriving seniors of earned social insurance benefits so those funds could be diverted to struggling youths.
Pew isn’t the disinterested wise observer that’s NPR presents. It and the right-wing Laura and John Arnold Foundation have lead a tag team effort to cut back government employee pensions. They recite austerity frames—talking about slashing spending and avoiding other options where wealthy interests would pay more. Taylor is a bit too black and white when he says “everyone” in Washington knows that a retirement safety net crisis will explode in 15 or 20 years. That’s not how liberal economists see it.
When you peel back the details, what’s going on here is simple and not new. Right-wingers—starting at the libertarian Cato Ins ute which doesn’t want federal social insurance programs to work, going next to Wall Street firms that see a gold mine from privatizing Social Security, and continuing to today’s spokespeople for these interests—want to undermine public confidence in government and push for-profit subs utes. They know that seniors and near-retirees won’t buy into any of this, which is why they have tried for decades—as Republican Congressman Marino’s fundraising letter noted—to create generational grievances pitting America’s young against its elderly.
Their best strategy, as laid out in the fall 1983 Cato Journal, was seen as fomenting a generational divide fighting for a shrinking slice of the federal pie. At the same time, they also began to push businesses to replace employee pensions with individual retirement accounts, which, as AlterNet’s Lynn Stuart Parramore hasdescribed in detail, have produced far less for retirees.
Their best strategy, as laid out in the fall 1983 Cato Journal, was seen as fomenting a generational divide fighting for a shrinking slice of the federal pie. At the same time, they also began to push businesses to replace employee pensions with individual retirement accounts, which, as AlterNet’s Lynn Stuart Parramore hasdescribed in detail, have produced far less for retirees.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-...age=1#bookmark
It's all about shifting SS $Ts to Wall St, where the $Ts will be sucked deeply for $100Bs of fees.
Pretty tired of these old coots ing things up for my generation, tbh.
... because you've been suckered by the 1% propaganda to believe that the deficit/SS hawks give the tiniest about you.
if you think old coots it up, wait till the financial predators/frauds/grifters get their hands on your retirement.
"It's all about shifting SS $Ts to Wall St, where the $Ts will be sucked deeply for $100Bs of fees." per year.
Ronald Reagan and the Great Social Security Heist
Instead of being a proud day for America, April 20, 1983, has become a day of shame. The Social Security Amendments of 1983 laid the foundation for 30-years of federal embezzlement of Social Security money in order to use the money to pay for wars, tax cuts and other government programs. The payroll tax hike of 1983 generated a total of $2.7 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue. This surplus revenue was supposed to be saved and invested in marketable U.S. Treasury bonds that would be held in the trust fund until the baby boomers began to retire in about 2010. But not one dime of that money went to Social Security.
The 1983 legislation was sold to the public, and to the Congress, as a long-term fix for Social Security. The payroll tax hike was designed to generate large Social Security surpluses for 30 years, which would be set aside to cover the increased cost of paying benefits when the boomers retired.
Let’s have a look at the events leading up to this proposal. Reagan and the government had big financial problems. Supply-side economics was not working like Reagan had promised. Instead of the lower tax rates generating more revenue as the supply-siders claimed would happen, there was a dramatic drop in revenue. Something had to be done, so Ronald Reagan set for himself a new mission. He would have to figure out a way to get the additional revenue he needed from another source.
The mechanism, which allowed the government to transfer $2.7 trillion from the Social Security fund to the general fund over a 30-year period, was the brainchild of President Ronald Reagan and his advisers, especially Alan Greenspan. Greenspan played a key role in convincing Congress and the public to support a hike in the payroll tax. A few years later, Reagan appointed Greenspan to become Chairman of the Federal Reserve System. Since Greenspan’s new job was one of the most coveted positions in Washington, many observers have wondered whether or not this appointment represented, at least in part, payback for the role Greenspan had played in making vast sums of new revenue
available to the government.
President Reagan and his advisors knew, from the very beginning, that the government would soon face a severe cash shortage. Budget Director, David Stockman, had deliberately rigged the computer at the Office of Management and Budget to generate bogus revenue forecasts in an effort to convince Congress to enact Reagan’s unaffordable proposed tax cuts. When Stockman first fed the data from Reagan’s economic proposals into the computer, he was shocked. The computer forecast that, if Reagan’s proposals were enacted into law, massive budget deficits would loom ahead for as far as the eye could see.
Reagan needed a new source of revenue to replace the revenue lost as a result of his unaffordable income tax cuts. He wasn’t about to rescind any of his income-tax cuts, but he had another idea. What about raising the payroll tax, and then channeling the new revenue to the general fund, from where it could be spent for other purposes? An increase in Social Security taxes would be easier to enact than a hike in income tax rates, and it would leave his income tax cuts undisturbed. Reagan’s first step in implementing his strategy was to write to Congressional leaders. His first letter, dated May 21, 1981 included the following:
As you know, the Social Security System is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy…in the decades ahead its unfunded obligations could run well into the trillions. Unless we in government are willing to act, a sword of Damocles will soon hang over the welfare of millions of our citizens.
Reagan wrote a follow-up letter to Congressional leaders dated July 18, 1981, which included:
The highest priority of my Administration is restoring the integrity of the Social Security System. Those 35 million Americans who depend on Social Security expect and are en led to prompt bipartisan action to resolve the current financial problem.
Social Security was definitely not “teetering on the edge of bankruptcy” in 1981 as Reagan claimed in his letter to Congressional leaders. The 1983 National Commission on Social Security Reform, headed by Alan Greenspan, issued its “findings and recommendations” in January 1983. The Commission accurately foresaw major problems for Social Security when the baby boomers began to retire in about 2010. But that was nearly two decades down the road. In addition to the long-term problem of the baby boomers, the Commission found a possible short-term problem for the years 1983-89. But the outlook improved and became favorable for the 1900s and early 2000s. The possible minor problem for the years 1983-1989 was based on very pessimistic economic assumptions. So, at the time Reagan informed Congressional leaders that Social Security was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the actual condition of Social Security funding was fairly sound for the next two decades.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/09/ro...ecurity-heist/
REPUGS St Ronnie wasn't, and Greenspan, Stockman, who setup the heist of SS funds into the govt general fund, are not "boomers".
They seriously cut taxes on the 1% (eg, themselves) that caused the big drop in "trickle down" govt revenues which they compensated for by raising regressive (SS) taxes to pay for cutting taxes on the wealthy.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 03-30-2014 at 09:53 AM.
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