Social security, revisited

A thorough dissection of the Social Security myths employed by right wing hacks in our government and in various think tanks, courtesy of the Left Business Observer:

The ludicrously dire projections for Social Security’s future only make sense when they’re considered as part of a massive propaganda campaign to promote the privatization of Social Security, a long-standing obsession of the U.S. right largely unshared by the broader population. Polls show large majorities in favor of leaving the system largely as it is—even among the young, who are more friendly to the idea of private accounts than the middle-aged and elderly. Polls also show the public with far more pressing economic concerns, like low wages, scarce jobs, and rising health insurance costs. So people must be scared into giving up Social Security.

Rarely is the political thinking behind Social Security privatization expressed bluntly; it’s usually wrapped in a lot of blather about “choice” and “ownership.” An exception to the rule of euphemism was former Bush economic advisor Glenn Hubbard’s appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations. Hubbard, now a dean at Columbia, said: “If we were to start afresh thinking of Social Security today, I strongly suspect what we would have is a program that had a very substantial guaranteed benefit for low-income people, and a variety of things that narrowed that down for middle- and upper-income people, replacing those with a combination of personal accounts and savings incentives.” It’s hard to take the “very substantial” bit very seriously, but the major point is that the right is dying to transform the system from a universal one into one targeted at the poor, with the rest of us expected to fend for ourselves. Cutting benefits by switching to a price index would promote this goal, without having to come out and say it directly.

This is the most thorough, authoritative discussion of the myth of the Social Security “crisis” I’ve read. Read the whole article here.