"Tumbling Dice" - Rolling Stones
(Alright it's a dice song, not a card song, but you get the idea. And a chance to play something I love.)
Because of the overwhelming electoral support that the Ryan bill to abolish Medicare has generated, some Republicans are looking to privatize Social Security, no doubt a likely crowd-pleaser as well. Congressman Pete Sessions is proposing that Americans be allowed to opt out of Social Security and put their FICA payroll deductions instead into a "S.A.F.E Account" -- that's "Savings Account For Every American." Sessions has stated that
"Our nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve," Sessions said of the plan, according to The Hill. "To simply maintain the status quo would weaken American competitiveness by adding more unsustainable debt and insolvent entitlements to our economy when we can least afford it."
There seems to be an unlimited amount of bullshit being shoveled out these days by Republicans and their tools in the media. Social Security is not insolvent, it is not adding to the country's debt, it will be decades before the trust fund is depleted, and with minor tweaks, it never will be. Even if nothing were done to change any aspect of Social Security and the pessimistic projections of its critics came to pass, it would still be able to pay 75 to 80% of promised, wage-adjusted benefits -- benefits that would be far better than those that will be realized through some sort of half-assed individual account model. More importantly, if people begin diverting contributions from Social Security it will actually create the crisis that Sessions claims to be trying to avoid, since Social Security is essentially an income transfer program. The dollars I put in today are paying the benefits that my parents are receiving. If working people start putting their money into individual accounts, what is going to be the income source for paying current amounts due.
This is a way to create a problem where none exists.
But I say go for it Congressman Sessions -- by all means, get this bill put to a vote in the House as quickly as possible. Given the meager 70 to 75% approval rating that Social Security enjoys, a move to abolish it will really appeal to that well-honed, hard core 25% for which the Republican Party is aiming. And your fellow Republican congressmen who have recorded votes to abolish Medicare and Social Security -- well I am sure that they can count on the enthusiastic support of that 25% of the electorate. And really, intensity of support is better than quantity of support any day of the week.
You know at some point, someone should explain to these nasty fools that grandstanding has real limitations. Diminishing returns and all that. Good heavens. How thoroughly depressing that there seem to be no signs of maturity germinating in the GOP.
Posted by: nancy | June 07, 2011 at 08:38 PM
Let's throw Tim Pawlenty's most recent proposal in the mix. Lower the top marginal rate to 25% while eliminating all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and investment (i.e. money people make off their money instead of from working). Because that worked so well the first two times we tried it.
Posted by: Toast | June 07, 2011 at 08:51 PM
As we live, watching the daily news as it unfolds, we are being reminded why President Eisenhower dismissed the forebears of these dingbats as fringe, extreme, and stupid.
Posted by: oddjob | June 07, 2011 at 09:20 PM
Damn shame Ike couldn't have nipped them in the bud somehow.
Posted by: Toast | June 07, 2011 at 09:26 PM
ike did a pretty damn good job of it. weeds are hardy.
Posted by: big bad wolf | June 07, 2011 at 09:47 PM
The really depressing part is that these clowns may succeed in trashing the economy by forcing a debt default, and then win in 2012 despite the extreme unpopularity of most of their proposals.
Posted by: beckya57 | June 07, 2011 at 09:57 PM
i read michael lewis's "the big short" last week. great, and depressing, book previously recommended by SC. even i, was surprised at how utterly stupid and evil the wall street folks were, and i was lamenting irrational exuburence in 87 (not that i am so smart, just, as the wife says, curmudgeonly).
i often mock twitter and other tech stuff, as i am a curmudgeon and inept, but credit where credit is due---unlike my itunes shuffle, i would never have followed bing's galway bay with mike jones's still tippin. randomness can be genius
Posted by: big bad wolf | June 07, 2011 at 10:04 PM
You have to understand these people are insane.
All that money. Just sitting there. Collected from nearly all of us, by compulsory process. Hundreds of billions of dollars. Sitting.
Not earning sales commissions. Not earning management fees. Unable to be steered to your brother-in-law's start-up, or the guy you played rugby with at Dartmouth's hedge fund, or the private equity shop run by the owner of the boat in the next slip.
Just sitting there. The modern El Dorado. And it can't be touched.
It's enough to drive a person insane.
Posted by: Davis X. Machina | June 08, 2011 at 12:50 AM
I believe one doubles down in backgammon, a game played with dice. So the musical reference is saved.
Posted by: joel hanes | June 08, 2011 at 01:03 AM
joel,
Like Sarah Palin, I meant that all the time. Thanks.
DXM,
I definitely had the sense that at least when Bush started pushing privatization back in 2005 that a big part of the impulse was to generate investment management fees for Wall Street.
bbw,
Glad you liked The Big Short -- Lewis is a really captivating writer and very good at explaining fairly complex financial matters in understandable terms.
becky,
Yeah, the Republicans are certainly not beyond doing exactly as you suggest. They are completely without shame at this point.
oddjob,
Remember, Eisenhower was an agent of the international communist conspiracy.
toast,
The Pawlenty proposal is just amazing. Talk abut doubling down.
nancy,
I think it is going to take a couple of electoral drubbings to get the GOP to change. Let's hope we can administer one in 2012.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 08, 2011 at 11:55 AM
re:"The Good Mitt could be the next president of the United States. The Bad Mitt won’t make it past Super Tuesday. The problem for Romney is that he just can’t decide which Mitt he wants to be." Steven Pearlstein's column in today's WashPost
I hate it when people even breathe those 12 words, even if they spend the next 500 refuting them. From what I read, Romney and Pawlenty are cut from the same cloth--Kevlar, I believe. Imagine a Romney/Pawlenty ticket. Talk about doubling down!
Posted by: Paula B | June 08, 2011 at 12:17 PM
should have been "even breathe those first 12 words"
Posted by: Paula B | June 08, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has something interesting numbers related to the Ryan Medislash plan: http://bit.ly/kBnGSb
Posted by: Paula B | June 08, 2011 at 12:42 PM
GOP economists and former CBO's dismiss Pawlenty's assumptions about the growth his plan would produce as "impossible".
Posted by: oddjob | June 08, 2011 at 01:12 PM
...Is it still GOP orthodoxy that the answer to any economic problem - even a collapse in federal revenue - is cutting taxes? The mind reels. Look: you simply cannot be in favor of debt reduction and massive tax cuts - on top of Bush's bankrupting decade - at the same time. And if you think simply cutting taxes works miracles, what happened in the last decade? Even before the implosion, growth rates were mediocre....
I think it's pretty obvious the answer to Sully's question is yes.
Posted by: oddjob | June 08, 2011 at 01:34 PM
Hat tip, The Plum Line.
Posted by: oddjob | June 08, 2011 at 01:51 PM
And in Wisconsin doubling down proceeds apace, too.
Posted by: oddjob | June 08, 2011 at 01:56 PM
The Wisconsin thing is fascinating -- they are really going all in.
God, we've got to win these recall elections.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 08, 2011 at 02:09 PM
oddjob--Thanks for these links, I guess. If i wasn't depressed and angry before I read them, I am now.
Posted by: Paula B | June 08, 2011 at 02:15 PM
oddjob, those are fabulous links about pawlenty, tax cutting as the magic wand, and bernanke on how anti-stimulus is really really really not the answer.
guess i'll find a few bucks to send toward wisconsin, too. geesh.
Posted by: kathy a. | June 08, 2011 at 02:17 PM
I think what we are seeing happening at the state level is a roll-out of a new/parallel strategy to take the war on everybody but the top 1% of obscenely rich people to another level where the checks and balances are less well organized and where, in fact it is easy to pull all kinds of unconstitutional tricks and jigger elections with relative impunity.
Unfortunately I do not subscribe to any MSM media such that I could read them online. So I don't know what is being reported there, and of course, it is not necessarily the same thing that is being reported in print or in the broadcast/cable realms. IOW I have a highly biased sampling of the news, biased in favor of seeing a lot of stuff that I would never see any of if I only read a local newspaper or watched the 5 o'clock news.
I suspect if you polled 20 people at random (wherever you are) none of them would be aware of what is and has gone on in WI. Let alone how despicable it is. Inside WI that might be different.
Why anyone considers the republicans to be even slightly legitimate as politicians is beyond my comprehension.
Posted by: Krubozumo Nyankoye | June 08, 2011 at 10:31 PM
George Will makes me want to puke.
Don't miss Google's salute to Les Paul today. Strings work. If you click on the little box that forms the bottom of the second G, you can record!
Posted by: Paula B | June 09, 2011 at 09:30 AM
nice tip, paula. that's one of google's best ones yet.
Posted by: big bad wolf | June 09, 2011 at 09:50 AM
thanks, i agree. i also really like earth day and the salute to jules verne.
Posted by: Paula B | June 09, 2011 at 10:10 AM
This morning, Matt Y. linked to the conservative Smart Girl Summit, which set a very low bar on what it takes to be regarded as 'smart' if you're a conservative woman:
This year's list of speakers includes only one woman whose name is at all familiar: Phyllis Schlafly, who'd already been in politics for two decades when she campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, and who's probably most famous for campaigning against the ERA on the grounds (among others) that it would require unisex toilets.
Yep, that's the face you want to put on your "smart girl summit."
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 10, 2011 at 10:39 AM
call me a rebel, but i've always had unisex bathrooms in my own home.
Posted by: kathy a. | June 10, 2011 at 01:01 PM
kathy,
Given the state in which my wife leaves the bathroom, I am reevaluating my policy on this.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 10, 2011 at 02:47 PM
Actually, she leaves it much like the two guys with whom I shared an apartment my senior year, albeit with less beard hair in the sink.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 10, 2011 at 02:48 PM
Yep, that's the face you want to put on your "smart girl summit."
O
M
G.........................
Posted by: oddjob | June 10, 2011 at 03:20 PM
SC, i'm pretty sure your lovely wife cannot come close to the hilarity and utter destruction of a home bathroom occupied by young male rockstars collaborating on important hairstyle issues involving clippers, elmer's glue, and hair dye of colors not found in nature.
Posted by: kathy a. | June 10, 2011 at 03:48 PM