Progressives question Obama's bona fides

OK, just as when, repeatedly, you got your ass handed to you about the Canadian health-care system by real Canadians who knew what they were talking about, and did nothing but throw out unsupported asertions that they knew from experience were wrong, you're doing it again.
The first mistake you make is to conflate an social insurance program with the way insurance companies work. But let us leave that aside for the moment. The second mistake you make is to fail to disentangle your argument about SS from the things that actually DO damage the US economy -- namely ruinous tax cuts for the wealthy. 20 years ago, that noted Ponzi liberal, Alan Greenspan, devised a plan to raise the payroll tax in order to create a trust-fund to pay SS benefits once the boomer generation began to retire. (This was in reaction to ruinous tax cuts for the well-off enacted by Ronald Reagan.) That tax increase was (perhaps) not quite large enough. In any event, the CBO estimated that the trust fund will not run out until 2052 and even then, 81 percent of the benefits will still be paid out. That same report said that the system can extend into the 22nd century with additional revenues equal to .54 percent of the GDP.
The third mistake you make is believing that repeating something makes it a fact. We once had a system of retirement savings that was totally market-based. Old people died like cordwood. And even you should know that private accounts mean privatization. I covered the 1983 debate and that's the word people used. The Frank Luntz focus-grouped it and found it was aloser so they stopped using it. But private accounts gut SS from the inside. That's why people who want to do away with the program for ideological reasons -- which is most of them-- since the numbers do not support their case, approve of them.

 

By the way, you might want to fact check this conservative myth. It has be debunked over and over again. The truth is, when you take out infant/child deaths, black life spans are roughly equal to white ones. Why take out infant/child deaths? Because children do not pay into social security.

DOJ voting rights chief John Tanner tried to use the same exaggeration recently and got smacked down hard.

 

Zeke, I don't agree with most of your politics, and no way am I going to vote for Obama, but you make a lot of good points here. Righteous post.

 

Anybody who finds "substance" within yet again another endless parade of mindless political tropes -- "Nanny society"? Wow. Make that up yourself, did you? -- gets a cookie. You don't present "irrefutable fact," you present assertions, and mostly hysterical (Ponzi schemes!) ones. And, if you seriously believe that massive tax cuts don't have a serious effect on the entire federal budget structure, you proibably should go away for a while. And read some more.

 

But Fen, I just heard our president say that tax cuts equal more tax revenue??? Hell, that con job ought to be on Snopes by now. Even Alan Greenspan says its totally bogus.

 

While Alan Greenspan knows more about economics that I could ever dream to understand, he isn't perfect and he shouldn't be the person that decisions be based around. It isn't like he wasn't aware of the oncoming subprime problem. The man chose to ignore it.

Throw in the volatility of the dollar and how the politics played with it, by this president and most likely future presidents, and why should we trust that creating a fund would automatically grow? Historically it has. However, there is no given that it will continue. As we watch the rise in China, the fall in Russia and the craziness in Pakistan, who is to say that Wall Street can sustain?

 

Big business breeds lobbyists and indeed, they will control everything, including SS decisions, until someone with a people's viewpoint counters it. Corporate power bases spin everything, including to a large extent how news is delivered in tone and context.
If there would be anything that would "make" me vote Democrat, a person with an absolute commitment to this which would certainly bring about bitter confrontation (and that president would have to have the inner circle support and personal strength to combat him) could get my vote. But my long-held belief, with plenty of evidence, says 99 percent of Democrats give lip-service to this only. I'm allowing 1 percent for the purpose of hope.

 

The mortality rate to look at is of those who reach retirement age, is there a disparity is longevity.

And are we only talking about regular Social Security payments or SSI which is awarded regardless of age based on a disability? I think minorities receive SSI payments disproportionate to their population representation.