Whatâs
Wrong Today:
Yesterday, the Wrongologist tackled
Social Security and the myth that it is causing our deficit. He called out Pete
Peterson, the âFix The Debtâ coalition, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson as among
the principals gearing up their fog machines.
We know that part of the effort to
weaken Social Security is to scare millennials into thinking that Social
Security will not be there when they retire. Usually, the right says we need to
âstrengthenâ Social Security, but the details are always vague.
So along comes The Can Kicks Back, an
effort backed by Messrs. Peterson, Simpson and Bowles (Bowles and Simpson are
on the Advisory Board) to gin up a
generational war in the cause of deficit reduction. Their website says:
campaign to fix the national debt and reclaim our American Dream.
Wait, there is more:
kicking the can down the road…TCKB willâŚorganize and mobilize over 100,000
young people to pressure elected officials [to] achieve a bold, balanced and
bipartisan deficit reduction agreementâŚ
Here is what Dean
Baker said in 2009 about Pete
Peterson: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
one of the largest and most determined lobbies in Washington. The top priority for this lobby is to cut
Social Security and MedicareâŚThe lobby includes the Peter G. Peterson
Foundation, with an endowment of more than $1 billion from the private equity
tycoon himselfâŚ
The granny bashersâ theme is that Social Security and Medicare constitute an
enormous generational injustice because the young, and those yet to be
born, will be forced to pay for the cost
of these programs for retirees and current workers.
Of course the reality is that the
vast majority of the granny bashersâ horror stories about generational inequity
stems from the cost of sustaining a broken health care system, not from programs for retirees.
The Wrongologist prefers calling them âDeficit
Scoldsâ. By any name, they are not interested in fixing the health care system.
That would involve confronting powerful interest groups like the insurance and
pharmaceutical industries and the doctorsâ lobby. They are not particularly
interested in generational equity either.
This is just an excuse for their real
agenda: Mobilizing support for cutting Social Security and Medicare.
No doubt younger
Americans are nervous. They
are in debt; many are out of work and on their parentsâ couches. People in
their 30s and 40s canât afford to buy homes nor have children. So, it should be
easy to set 100,000 members of one generation off against another.
The real downside for the younger
generations could be competing with older Americans who are forced to work longer
than they originally planned because their retirement income from pensions,
401Ks and real estate holdings were depleted during the Great Recession. There
could be fewer jobs available since normal age attrition will be less than in
previous decades.
Some
studies show that the collapse of the housing market and the resulting stock
market plunge reduced the wealth of older workers and retirees by close to $15
trillion. Most of those who will wind up depending
on Social Security are hard-working people who tried to do everything right.
While
there has been a stock market recovery, there
could be a wealth transfer to the young through lower cost housing, since
they will be able to buy housing stock for a far lower price than they would
have expected to pay 5 years ago.
But let’s not let that get in the way
of the narrative which holds that the baby boomers are the richest generation
in history. That they are working as hard as they can to screw over the young for
their own benefit.
These
âFix The Debtâ millionaires are con artists. They are trying to preserve
America for the young. However, that would be for their heirs.
That’s
how the moneyed elites turn their families into Plutocrats.
Excellent post. Even if you don’t think big picture, the crocodile tears about harming our grandkids is complete bullshit. For the grandkids and kids, if you don’t help grannie with benefits, then grannie will sell her house and move in with the kids. So you gotta pay for grannie one way or the other.
in my own middle class family, federal benefits allowed my mother to stay in her home – we kids paid for major expenses, but her day to day was covered by social security. and when she died, her modest house, unencumbered by debt, became a small inheritance. so wake up america, the tears of the rich that they cannot pass even more wealth to their spoiled kids are false tears.