Neoconservative Disinformation Creates a Democracy Gap

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_157.shtml

by James Pyland


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The alleged crisis in Social Security is a perfect example of the Heritage Foundation’s ideas, proposals, and scholarship. Heritage has been a major proponent of personal accounts, otherwise known as partial privatization.<8> By constant production of articles about the need for Social Security reform, the neoconservative policy establishment has effectively disseminated its message among major media outlets, and the story has by now become rote. For example, an article which recently appeared in The Economist, called “The Fear Myth,”<9> asserts that the Republican Party has won not through the manipulation of fear, as claimed by some progressives, but because it is addressing issues of concern to Americans. According to “The Fear Myth,” the Republican stand on the Social Security issue is an example of “exuding optimism,” demonstrating how Republicans “address the aspirations of an aspirational people.”

The claim is worth examining, both to determine its validity and to illustrate the effect of concentrated but largely unrevealed message campaigns that come from the neoconservative policy establishment.

According to the Social Security Board of Trustee' 2004 report, Social Security will be able to pay all benefits until 2042.<10> After this point, the program will be able to pay 70 percent of the promised benefits. That is still more, in real terms, than what it pays today. The Congressional Budget Office independently arrived at its estimate that Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until about 2050.<11> Moreover, the trustees' report assumes an unwarranted decline in the growth of worker productivity, predicting that after growing 3.8 percent in 2002, productivity growth will drop to 1.6 percent by 2012. Finally, the trustees assume abnormally low rates of economic growth-contradicting claims of high returns on private accounts invested in the stock market.<12>

Yet large numbers of Americans continue to believe that Social Security is financially threatened. Fifty-five percent of Americans think that Social Security is either “in crisis” or “serious trouble,” and 57 percent think that action to fix the program must be taken immediately.<13>

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