The obsession to eviscerate social security is one that I think the whole Village shares. The late Tim Russert always was raising it as a question he put to Democrats on his show ("how will you fix social security and other entitlements") and his successor, David Gregory has the same obsession. Yesterday, Wolf Blitzer asked Nancy Pelosi the same question with unquestioned presumption that Social Security (as opposed to medical costs) were driving the Federal Government to Fiscal oblivion. It is very fact free and analysis free reporting, just groupthink and the citing of "independent experts" who are the agenda driven like the Concord Group and David Walker.

As a side note, I have read a couple of stories about how few real stories (other than PBS's Frontline) are done by the media on health care and what is really driving up the costs of care. I can't help but wonder if the large number of drug company ads that I now see on Cable and broadcast TV is influencing their coverage of this topic. In otherwords, what is good for the drug companies is good for the media comglomerates.

there was a sinister parallel between Bush's effort to privatize SS at the same time the financial parasites of the real estate and housing industry were busy capturing huge slices of the housing bubble they had created, leaving that much less of it to homeowners and final investors

risk-free obscene salaries, fees and commissions generated by onerous terms and conditions, were built into housing loans which shifted risk to everyone but the parasites in the middle of the added value chain

Bush was attempting to do to SS what he did to homeownership - undermine the successful administrative efficiency of a government program that works, and replace it with another privatized feed trough for the financial parasites

It's disgusting to see the media distorting the social security program again. I had hoped we were done with that after Bush was defeated in his push to privatize social security in 2005. It looks like we will have to start "pushing back" again. I guess they will never give up until they have achieved their goal of eviscerating social security. Let's hope that day never comes.

Future value of money.

Look at the contributions to Social Security by the individual as investment in the future.

How can money invested today be worth more in the future?

Improved efficiency, less use of depletable resources, better education, healthier people, improved transportation, improved communications, and a very long list of other things.

Can the private sector do this on its own? No. There has to be a bovernment hand to set corporate powers, monopoly, when needed, exercise police powers, and of course taxing power to collect the money to do corporate powers and policing.

Can govenment in the United States do this on its own? Probably not.

So what's the solution? Get off this kick of MY solution and think of OUR solution. Get off the kick of only one way to skin a cat.

Give us some true alternatives and the facts to chose among the alternatives.

Use Social Security to build and maintain toll roads and the proceeds from the tolls to pay the retirees and health costs?

Use Social Security to build and maintain renewable sources of electricity and the proceeds from the sale of electricity to fund retirees and health?

Dick is on the right track. If in 1996 we had dedicated the Social Security surplus to buying high quality state and municipal bonds we would now have a portfolio insulated from the 'Phony IOU' crowd. Because in my view about 90% of the motivation behind Social Security 'reform' is a reluctance to actually pay back the $2.3 trillion (and counting) owed. State and muni bonds are typically paid by property and sales taxES which can not easily be dodged even by the ultra-wealthy. Want to have four houses in Sedona? And side by side condos in Coronado? Great its a free country. But you would know that a portion of your property tax was going to redeem infrastructure bonds held by the Social Security TF.

Properly managed such a portfolio could be politically neutral (say by mandating equal bond purchases in each Congressional district) while targeting infrastructure projects that maximize tax returns to Social Security. I don't know what percentage of every infrastructure dollar ends up being in someone's wage, but with secondary and tertiary transactions (cashiers and waitresses paying FICA, as do the truckers who bring the goods to market {though maybe not the people who produce those goods to start with}) it has to ultimately be quite a bit, and 12.4% of every such dollar comes right back to Social Security.

If nothing else such a policy might have nipped Bush tax cuts in the bud by not allowing FICA surpluses to flow to the General Fund and so mask the real size of the deficit. In fact you could incorporate this as part of the stimulus package and restore some honesty to the accounting (TF interest currently not being financed by actual current borrowing from the public).

This would have resulted in a real lock box in place of the mostly metaphoric one suggested by Gore.

Did you see the 60 Minutes segment on oil speculation that I found on [url="http://consumerist.com/5129731/video-oil-speculators-to-blame-for-record-gas-prices-after-all"]Consumerist[/url] How can there be speculation on futures if none of the speculators can actually take delivery? Wouldn't they have to sell when the contracts came due, so the actual buyers would have to be complicit?

Given what's going on with the 401ks of the soon-to-be-retired, and the housing crash, you'd think that Social Security "reform" would be dead as a dodo. How do the "reformers" expect to sneak this one through, anyway, given that a large number of retirees will have little or nothing but their Social Security?

If anything, we're likely to have to expand Social Security to cover workers in their late 50s/early 60s who may be laid off with little prospect of finding a job before they're old enough to retire.

It is amazing that this bilge is being pushed in the middle of a push for a major fiscal stimulus. We are supposed to be talking about cutting ss benefits or raising fica taxes? Nonsense.

What is more obviously nonsense now is the old alternative most have been pushing, some form of privatization. Those SSA reports have long posed only one projection for returns to privatization, very optimistic, even though they have had three different projections for the revenues and expenditures of the sytems. That optimistic projection looks ridiculous. If we do not get out of the current recession, or get stuck in a Japan style stagnation, and the more pessimistic SSA projections come true, well, we may see the stock market do a Nikkei, which hit 38,000 19 years ago, but has never been near that since and is well below 10,000 right now.

I am pleased to see the front line troops gathering here at Dean's place.

A while back I was thinking that the first wave of the TARP could have been SS, but given how that went I am relieved it was not discussed. It would have been amusing to have SS propping up Goldman et al. I really like the idea of imbedding FICA/SECA in every community in America.

BTW, Dean has a good article in the Guardian.

We are sitting in a deep hole and (some of) our economic geniuses tell us we should really be concerned about a minor bump in the road that is projected to appear 20, 30 or even 40 years from now. That is not grotesque any more, that is insane.

This is a country that is squandering, with virtually no debate, trillions of dollars on pointless military adventures, we are pouring hundreds of billions into subsidizing the failed, inefficient financial industry, and here we are debating for the zillionth time a government program that is efficient, well-run, and well-funded. That is not grotesque any more, that is insane.

The whole business of predicting the state of the SS trust fund decades in advance is ridiculous. Just a few months ago, most "experts" in this country believe the economy to be in a reasonably good state. They can't see a depression-size crisis a few months in advance but they pretend to be able to accurately predict all the demographic and economic variables that will affect SS over the next *75 years*? That is not grotesque any more, that is insane.

One more. So the CBO expects a SS shortfall of $6.8 trillion *over the next 75 years*. That figure, 6.8 trillion, is about what the stock market crash has destroyed *within 3 months* (and that doesn't count the disappeared real estate wealth). Many people hoped to pay for their retirement out of their stock market investments. A large chunk of that retirmenet money disappeared *within 3 months*. But our Voodoo economists relentlessly repeat their right-wing talking point - Social Security is the "real problem". That is not grotesque any more, that is insane.

Even after that date, it would always be able to pay beneficiaries a far higher benefit than what current retirees receive.

Well that's only fitting, seeing as the Social Security tax rate has been increased 520% since 1937. And the Social Security base has been increased 141% over inflation since 1937. However, you forgot to factor in the fact that benefits have been implicitly reduced by pushing back the full retirement age to 67.