Deficit debate driven by the wealthy: "It's Their Future"

[kpete]

Deficit debate driven by the wealthy

The Simpson/Bowles plan bills itself as a road map to deficit reduction, but it's really a guide to cutting services and benefits for the working and middle class while protecting the interests of the wealthy.



......................we are now being treated to finger-wagging about the need to get our fiscal house in order by corporate CEOs like JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon (trading loss $5.8 billion and counting, potential cost to ratepayers from alleged manipulation of the California electricity market $200 million and counting).


...the debate seems increasingly to be driven by the wealthy, who can be trusted to protect their own prerogatives while declaring everyone else's to be wasteful. Just two weeks ago, a squadron of CEOs and bankers, including Dimon and hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson, lined up behind a campaign to impose adult supervision on our squabbling Congress.





The single program getting the bulk of the Simpson-Bowles plan's attention is Social Security, which in fact contributes not a dime to the federal deficit, and can't by law. Something else is at work here other than deficit reduction: It's a plan to cut benefits to seniors by ratcheting back on inflation protection and sharply cutting the benefit formula for everyone, starting with those whose average lifetime earnings are $9,000 a year.



There's a lot not to like about fiscal-cliff panic. Allowing deficit-cutting concerns to influence how we address today's meager economic growth rate of 1.5% is hopelessly backward. So is talking about cutting government programs when they're needed to maintain employment and assist the poor and unemployed. So as much as corporate CEOs and other privileged incumbents claim they're concerned about the future, it's their future they mean.



MORE:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120729,0,2146392.column
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/29/1114838/-L-A-Times-columnist-calls-BS-on-inside-the-beltway-deficit-reduction-common-wisdom

[indepat]

1. But, but, but were not Simpson and Bowles, a right-wing wet-dream duo, handpicked by

BHO to get the job rolling, if not done?

[Teamster Jeff]

2. Yep...If I could pick the first question in the Presidential Debates

I would ask both candidates if they plan to cut social security and medicare. Romney would probably say yes and Obama would probably lie.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. K&R. Decoupling SS benefits from inflation is vital to their scheme.

They taken devaluation almost as far as they can, so the way to inflationary profit must be cleared.