Social Security

There are few things that Republicans hate more than Social Security. It's the number one or two remaining bulwark of the American middle class against reduction to the kind of penury that conservatives think everybody else deserves. There number one ploy in their war against SS is the claim that the system is broke - when in fact it is actuarially one of the soundest programs that the government has. I was talking to a couple of friends at lunch today and they were oh so concerned that something be done to reduce social security benefits. These guys are not idiots - they have five physical science degrees among them - but they have swallowed the nonsense that the US cannot afford to pay back the money that it has borrowed from the SS trust fund.

The idea of borrowing from the Social Security trust fund was cooked up by Alan Greenspan and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The claim then was that they were putting away money for the funds future. The real purpose was to pay for the tax cuts Reagan gave to the rich and his vast expansion of the military.

Now that payback time approaches, the heirs of these policies are saying "just kidding, you middle and working class suckers, we don't really intend to pay you back." The whole scam was an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle and working class to the rich, and the rich like it that way, and they have the trillions (literally) to buy enough politicians to try to pull it off.

If Americans let them get away with that, we are probably too dumb to be saved.

Too bad we don't have a Democrat in the White House. A real one, I mean.

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