Now that President Obama's first 100 days are behind him, the altruism killers have stepped forth from the shadows again to remind us why Social Security must be dismantled.
The Washington Post's Robert J. Samuelson recycles the greatest hits of this argument in his column today. "The recession had made everything worse...trust funds run dry; promised benefits exceed dedicated payroll taxes...retirees would scream. Hospitals might shut," Samuelson hysterically shouts from the page.
As usual, the first hint of a looming financial crisis resurrected the sudden need to get rid of Social Security. Now that the financial crisis has bloomed into a depression, Samuelson and company have returned with spears and fire to kill the last social contract.
The fact that this tribe looks to take one of the only social promises afforded to hardworking Americans (particularly meager considering the social contracts some other countries share) ranks as one of the more totally evil things done by Conservatives. And their arguments for doing so are bullshit. There's a reason this claim reappears every few years or so. Social Security isn't in immediate trouble, but it does reside on Conservatives' wish list of popular programs they'd love to gut in the name of privatization.
The first problem with Samuelson's apocalyptic vision of the future is that his hypothesis occurs many years from now, a problem that Samuelson points out himself in the middle of his rant (emphasis mine).
Unfortunately, the Medicare and Social Security trust funds won't be exhausted until 2017 and 2037, respectively, by the latest projections. Although these bankruptcy dates are moved up from last year's estimates (2019 for Medicare and 2041 for Social Security), they're still fairly distant.
A projection dated 28 years in the future is fairly meaningless. Too many variables exist between today and 2037 to accurately say what Social Security will look like then, especially if the government takes minor actions to replenish Social Security such as raise the cap on the regressive payroll tax.
But the solution isn't to dismantle one of the United States' oldest social spending programs. The solution can be found elsewhere in cutting funding from the bloated military budget, reforming the tax system to be more progressive, and fixing the country's broken healthcare system. Noam Chomsky points out in his essay The Social Security Non-Crisis:
The United States has one of the most inefficient systems in the industrialised world, with per-capita costs far higher than other nations and among the worst health outcomes. The system is privatised, one reason why it's so inefficient.
Privatized healthcare, and not Social Security, will bankrupt the United States. Yet, healthcare is never the central villain in this dialogue. The great leach is always Social Security, and so Social Security must be dismantled despite the fact that poll after poll (PDF) show citizens' support for expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, which would help relieve the biggest burden facing Americans. However, we're told a simple expansion of a program that already exists is tantamount to Socialism. So you see, the real solution is killing Social Security.
Samuelson's argument is an insult to Americans. It basically claims that the government has enough money to bail out banks, pay lavish CEO bonuses with taxpayer money, and wage simultaneous wars overseas, but it doesn't have enough provisions to care for retired workers, who have sacrificed their very lives for a system that has revealed itself to be a form of slavery in the name of Capitalism.
This so-called crisis is phony, phony, phony. Really, it can't be said enough. America must care for its workers, and not for the private industry that wouldn't even exist without the hard work of retired Americans.
Cross-posted from Allison Kilkenny's blog. Also available on Facebook and Twitter.