Economist Paul Krugman explains Bush's latest con -- Social Security

[OWR51]

The Fake Crisis

Economist Paul Krugman explains Bush's latest con -- social security

By ERIC BATES

To hear George Bush tell it, Social Security is about to go broke. Since his re-election, the president has launched a full-scale campaign to convince the public that the retirement system will run out of money starting in 2018. "The system goes into the red," Bush told reporters on December 20th at a rare press conference. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is." Social Security, he concluded, "can't sustain that which has been promised to the workers."
To save Social Security, Bush wants to destroy it -- replacing government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that will be subject to the whims of the stock market. It's an expensive plan. Allowing workers to divert even a small portion of their payroll taxes into private investments, as Bush is proposing, would require the government to borrow at least $2 trillion to make up the immediate shortfall. It's also completely unnecessary, according to Paul Krugman, a prize-winning professor of economics at Princeton University. In a blistering series of columns in the New York Times, Krugman has marshaled the economic data to show that Social Security is not only solvent, it's in much better financial shape than the rest of the federal government. "The people who hustled America into a tax cut to eliminate an imaginary budget surplus and a war to eliminate imaginary weapons," Krugman wrote recently, "are now trying another bum's rush."

At his tree-shaded home in Princeton, New Jersey, Krugman took a break from working on a new economics textbook to explain why the crisis is phony -- and what's wrong with Bush's plan "to convert Social Security into a giant 401(k)."

What would you say to college students and young workers who are convinced they'll never see a dime of the money they put into Social Security?

Here is the link for the entire article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6822964?rnd=1106888734980&has-player=false

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Remember all those years that Democrats were accused of

using Social Security as a scare tactic? You know, "the Republicans are going to destroy Social Security so vote for the Democrats?" Well, not only were they right, but it seems that right-wingers have elevated the tactic to a new high. They are also using a fear tactic, but for the life of me, I really can't understand their logic. It seems to go like this: Social Security will go bankrupt, so here's how to make it happen faster...?

[blindpig]

2. two things stood out

the flying pigs argument needs to become rote.

"treat privatizing Social Security the way the Republicans treated Clintons heathcare plan." Perfect. The Democrats don't even have to think about it, just act.