Look folks, politics aside, we might have to cut SS benefits 30 years from now...

[kenny blankenship]

22. That's next. But first-

Last edited Sun Dec 30, 2012, 05:53 PM - Edit history (1)

But FIRST they have to weaken it with a thousand cuts, so people despair of its future, so the people will drop their psychological attachment and investment in it, and so people are no longer sure what it is, or how important it is to them, since the constant chipping away and constant fear mongering against SS means they can't say with any confidence what it will be in the future. A guarantee that is constantly under revision, always being renegotiated and subject to changes ISN'T A GUARANTEE AT ALL. They have to turn it into another "one of those things the government fucked up". THEN they can cut it up and throw it to their friendly Wall St. patrons at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, et al.

Reagan didn't directly attack the existence of federal regulatory agencies his patrons hated when he could expect partisan and popular resistance. He went after them indirectly. He DEFUNDED them so they couldn't do their job anymore, or couldn't do it well without botch-ups and episodes of what would look to the public like a uniform and routine incompetence. Making regulatory agencies useless, even in the eyes of their beneficiaries and backers, would be Step One to getting rid of them altogether, and accomplish in the meantime much of the Free Market-ey "good" of abolishing them, without the up-front political warfare that would require. If Reagan had wanted to go after Social Security, he would have pushed a payroll tax moratorium, so that SS would go into deficit and become part of the furor over the national debt. Then he would degrade the benefits it paid. He would make sure that SS which previously was untouchable and a fixed certainty of American life, was always on the table in any future negotiations. It would be appear constantly diminishing, always subject to revision and more cutting. Eventually people who previously defended Social Security as though with their lives would be convinced it was hopeless and just give up on it. It will have become, in the popular mind, another one of those things "Government just can't do."