The hidden agenda behind Bush's assault on social security.

[KlatooBNikto]

For quite sometime, I have wondered about why Bush-Cheney and their gang are going after Social Security, the one government program that has done the most good for our people and is being run even more efficiently than any private retirement fund.Th answer to this can be found in an excellent article in the April Harper Magazine by Michael Hudson, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The article is titled THE $4.7 TRILLION PYRAMID-- why social security won't be enough to save Wall Street.Hudson makes the case that Social Security is not the one that is in danger of failing but many corporate pension plans are seriously underfunded and are likely to go broke.He cites the examples of GM,IBM and others.Bush is trying to save those corporations by laying his greedy arms on Social Security.His thinking is that if Social Security money becomes available to Wall Street, it will produce a temporary boom in the market ( a bubble so to speak) and these corporate pension plans will be saved. Systems like Social Security that take a long term view would be holding the bag when the bubble bursts. Bush can then say " I told you so".

Hudson in his typically undestated way calls it a classic Ponzi scheme.I call it a con, a scam and a ruthless defrauding of elderly Americans on a par with Enron, Worldcom and others.

[FormerDittoHead]

1. An added dimension to the other Stock Pyramid Scheme

...the well known 'baby bust' which will happen when baby boomers start to sell off their 401k/IRA stocks for their retirement.

It's a much talked about issue, esp when addressing with the currently OVERVALUED market (so, *fundamentally*, people shouldn't be buying into the market now, but *technically*, people are playing a game of "chicken" and hoping they can guess the top) due to those same boomers saving money at an increased rate.

I thought that the SS plan was to provide a 'soft(er) landing' for the market, but I think this pension angle gives a greater dimension on this SCHEME.

My father in law worked for only 15 years as a machinist for Boeing and is now living HANDSOMELY off his union pension. He just doesn't get how lucky he's been.

[KlatooBNikto]

2. I think Hudson's analysis takes on a grim note when we realize that

many corporate pension plans purchase the stock of the same companies.This boosts the stock of the corporation temporararily.When the stock market declines,the corporate pension plan takes a hit.Bush is trying to use Social Security to save his cronies in the corporate pension funds.

[ret5hd]

3. i am going to be very frank (offensive language warning)...

Nothing, NOTHING, the Bush-Cheney crowd does will make sense to you UNTIL:

WE, the population, the working people of this country realize that, in the eyes of the Bush-Cheney crowd, WE are nothing more than (and i use this word carefully and with forethought) niggers. Thats right. And all that the word implies. In their eyes WE, every one of us, are lazy, shiftless, stupid, cowardly, immoral, gullible, gold-bricking, feather-bedding slaves that need to be force-marched to do what needs to be done. WE have no compass except THEM. If WE are allowed to have health-care, pensions, social security, and housing, WE will regress to our lazy shiftless norm and will drain society of everything that is good to THEM. There is only one course of action open to THEM: the whip. The whip of economic force. The whip of starvation, illness, homelessness and death is the only thing WE listen to. OUR only purpose is to serve THEM, and although WE only do it unwillingly, it must be done.

Think I am overstating the issue? Look at pictures of the rich lifestyle in Haiti, the most impoverished country in the hemisphere. That is what THEY feel THEY are entitled. WE are in THEIR way...OUR laziness and OUR stupidity are holding THEM back...and goddamn it, they aren't going to stand for it any more!

Class warfare. It's here...but WE didn't start it.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Maybe, but some of these corporations have surpluses in their

pension funds..like IBM. What IBM did was to 'end' defined benefit pesion plans in 1999 and only those employees who were withing a certain window were allowed to keep the 'old' plan. This was challenged by employees and they expanded the window. They also were sued by the older employees and retirees in Cooper vs. IBM and lost! They have settled with one of the classes of the suit, but will appeal on the other 2 classes. If they lose that appeal, IBM may end up owing several billion dollars to the retirees.

I'm a proud member of classes 2 and 3!

[The White Tree]

5. That sounds sinister and may be true but the bottom line

regardless is that they want that Social Security money invested in the market for very real reasons. They call it the "ownership" society and say what that means is that everyone will "own" something.

Unfortunately, to me the reality is that the government and it's controllers (who will be the heads of big buisness as we have seen all to often in this administration) will "own" this money in the sense that they will make the decisions on how it's invested, where it's invested and what it's invested on. This has tremendous consequences for all Americans. With privitization, not just our tax dollars will be working for corporate America, but our retirement money will be to.

I beleive the hope is that by providing Wall Street with guarenteed investment income from social security as well as by tying the success of that investment to how well the markets perform, that this will give them the leverage to make any pro-buisness law that is asked for. So everything else, environment, workers rights, consumers rights will be secondary to the profits that wall street is required to gain in order to provide the growth needed for the social security plan to work.

Buisnesses do this all the time now and only the government and unions exists to leverage that power. This will remove both the government and the unions by making it illegal to oppose buisness in any way. That's what GATT was about, that is what NAFTA was about, that is what ANWR is about. It is not about raising standards, it's about lowering them.

sorry for the rant.

[oneold1-4u]

6. Communism-what it is

I wasn't very old in "45" when I first heard the word "communist". Asking my father what that was, he explained it very simple. "If you have two, or more pictures, the government can take them both and give them to others and the same with everything you might have."
By now, I understand capitalism to be, "if you have a dollar in your pocket, the guy with a million can get it one way or another!"
The crook that robs the neighborhood bank is really small potatoes compared to corporations and their accomplices, "politicians"! Joined together, those two are more ruthless and fearful than any hijacked planes over NY or Wash.DC. To always watch where the dollar goes is overdue by about 45 years!

[oneold1-4u]

7. Just one more here today

I didn't know what a "depression" was because everyone was so poor in my early years of late 30s. I have had a few lessons since that time and watched the common man be rousted out of the stock market several times because the rich could afford a drop and could create it! They would do it again in a heartbeat if necessary to "control" the slave class!