Why Republicans Don't Like Social Security

From Light Up the Darkness--see post for links:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=574

Why Republicans Don't Like Social Security, and Why Wall Street Should Leave It Alone
17 March 2005


Tom Meisenhelder, professor emeritus of Sociology at Cal State San Bernardino, has some interesting insights as to why Republicans dislike Social Security:

Republican neo-conservatives are uncomfortable with the "social-ness' of Social Security. Social Security is a program of intergenerational reciprocity and social justice. Social Security was founded on the notion that we are a community living and struggling together. Privatization is based on the dog-eat-dog notion that each of us is driven to defeat our neighbors in a supposed natural order of social competition. The Bush privatization scheme proposes to replace a program of common security against life's difficulties, with a program where isolated individuals struggle against each other to secure personal reward. Social Security promotes values of community trust and solidarity such as our collective responsibility to assist the less fortunate, the disabled and the aged. Social Security announces that the community will not allow any of its members to suffer alone and unsupported the punishments of nature or the marketplace. These social values are what Bush wants to dismantle.

Republican neo-conservatives also are uncomfortable with the "security' aspect of Social Security. The main point of Social Security is to spread the cost of certain inevitable dangers throughout the community, so that we all are offered some level of protection. Privatization is being sold through false claims of economic crisis that cause people to become afraid that they will never receive a check themselves. If enacted, privatization actually will make people's lives riskier and scarier, since our well-being will depend on the unpredictable fluctuations of the stock market and the global economy.

Robert Samuelson writes in the Washington Post why Bush's plan may be bad for Wall Street:

The idea of personal accounts is that Wall Street should triumph over the welfare state. Just the opposite might occur: The welfare state would triumph over Wall Street. The money flowing into personal accounts would not be invested according to the "free market." Individuals wouldn't have the freedom to invest in Microsoft, General Electric or eBay. Instead, it would be invested according to rules made by Congress, influenced by politics. There would be unrelenting pressure from interest groups, "experts" and public opinion.

They invest it FOR you--you get to choose from a few plans--just like Medicare. The idea is just to put their money into the big roulette wheel and spin it. If it's lost, tough on the poor sap "investor". The money managers still make out. Even if it makes money, it still won't make enough to equal what the "investor" would have made just leaving it in bonds.

If investing "the government's money", money in T bills, was such a great idea, why didn't they do it all along? Because it's RISKY and they know it.

The dopes that are "for this" think they are controlling their own money and that it's a good thing that it won't be going to "poor people" or "welfare cases" or "cripples" or "geezers". What a bunch of greedy cretins they are.

and the stock market. Nothing for sure but it has a nice sound to it. The republicans have been trying to destroy SS for years. Ever since FDR created it. Bush has been trying to sell his little plan since 1978 when he first ran for Congress and he STILL can't sell it. Quite pathetic really. I have listened to a few freepers call in radio show's I listen to (mainly Guy James and Bernie Ward) and they talk about being for Bush's plan and they are SOOO greedy! Man a live! One guy who was nineteen called in Guy's show I believe and he was saying how he didn't think there should be any government handouts etc. and Guy was going on about what tax's and all that help pay for. The nineteen year old went to a local community school which was paid for by other people. These people don't care about anybody but themselves and sometimes I'm ashamed to share a country with them.

"Bush has been trying to sell his little plan since 1978 when he first ran for Congress and he STILL can't sell it."

That was also when Bush claimed that Social Security would be broke in ten years. He was wrong about Social Security then, just as he is wrong about it today.

I'm saving this one.

If you want to invest, go for it. Etrade will be glad to help you out. But leave Social Security alone. It is a pay-it-forward system that works.

Social programs are immoral. By giving people things they haven't earned, social programs remove the incentive to be disciplined, which is necessary for both morality and prosperity. Social programs should be eliminated. Anything that could be done by the private sphere should be. Government does have certain proper roles: to protect the lives and the private property of Americans, to making profit seeking as easy as possible for worthy (sic) Americans (the disciplined ones), and to promote conservative morality (strict father morality) and religion.

From "don't think of an elephant," pg. 83

You can't make this stuff up!!
I find it revolting. :puke:

Apparently it is bad for individuals to get things they haven't earned, but ok for corporations. Maybe that's now how they see it. Perhaps corporations which help Republicans get elected deserve to receive their rewards.

it makes sense. I just envision Scrooge (with apologies to Dickens).
Before he went to sleep Christmas Eve, of course.

I just scratch my head and drop my jaw in disbelief. Talk about bad genetics/bad parenting.

By giving people things they haven't earned, inherited wealth removes the incentive to be disciplined, which is necessary for both morality and prosperity.

The true followers of Mammon want no other gods beside him. Money given to The Government means that it will have to behave according to rules other than ego needs and greed, and that offense to Mammon gets them worked up more than a PETA member locked in a running chicken slaughterhouse.

despite of 70 years of GOP efforts to sabotage it and slowly strangle it.

And that makes them look like the ignorant fools they are when they rail against socialism.

I wouldn't feed into their rhetoric by calling it socialist. It's a government program tha works. Nothing really socialist about it. The plan completely works along with privately owned business.

Age-baiting as a new kind of race-baiting?

Privatization is based on the dog-eat-dog notion that each of us is driven to defeat our neighbors in a supposed natural order of social competition.

They might realize that they cannot safely exist in a society where their neighbors most basic needs are not met. Eventually, if their neighbors feel too oppressed, while the rich are getting richer, the people will rise up and take what they need, the laws be damned.

and it needs to be a MAJOR concern.

That's why Republicans shot it down when Clinton was talking about SS and stock market ideas before. That much money going into the markets is government control of the markets and a really bad thing. I don't know why Democrats don't bring that up.