Social Security's Explosive Injustices - MUST-read from economist Richard Wolff

[Triana]

People over 65, a growing share of the US population, are suffering a crisis-ridden capitalist system. High unemployment, reduced private pensions, fewer job benefits, less job security, high personal debt levels, and falling real wages make Social Security payments more important than ever. Yet President Obama and Congress recently agreed to bargain over how much to reduce Social Security payments from current levels. That would not only hurt seniors - but also the children who help them.

Consider these statistics covering 2010 [New York Times, April 20, pp B1 and B4]. Married and single people over 65 earning $32,600 or less per year relied on Social Security for between 66% and 84% of their total annual income. That is the majority - 60% - of all US citizens over 65. Cutting Social Security payments seriously damages their lives. An additional 20% of the over-65 population, earning between $32,600 and $57,960, count on Social Security for 44% of their annual income. Cutting Social Security benefits is a cruel "thank you" for a lifetime's work, a default on the payroll taxes they paid into the Social Security system.

Cutting Social Security is an outrageous injustice that may provoke historic shifts and splits in the political landscape. A new left political movement may emerge driven less by students and the young than by their parents and even grandparents. Planned Social Security payment cuts would force many in the older generation to ask the younger for more help just when crisis capitalism distresses them both. Politically explosive pressures are building.

THE REST:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/16213-social-securitys-explosive-injustices

[socialist_n_TN]

1. Kick.......

I think that this issue is probably where I will be arrested again. This injustice won't stand.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. But it's very serious. And a tough decision. And a difficult choice. And

a common-sense belt-tightening move. And a sacred cow that must be gored. And bipartisan. And did I mention it's a tough choice? Very, very tough.

Because those are things that very, very serious adults who are above partisanship do.

And job creators need the tax breaks.

Hey Jamie! Hey Lloyd! Did I do OK this time? Will you tell Peterson I did a good job?

[stuffmatters]

3. Those who overpaid into Soc Sec (the poor & middle class) for decades

are now to be given less than was promised to them.

Obama is complicit in Peterson et alios' "Baining" our national retirement trust fund.

[hfojvt]

4. I don't understand why this economist

ignores the Bush tax cuts and the Obama permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts.

He writes this

"Yet another outrage emerges when we remember why the federal budget has the bigger deficits now used to justify cutting Social Security payments. Deficits shot up because of the capitalist meltdown beginning in 2007."

The Federal Government has bigger deficits because of the Bush tax cuts and the Bush wars in Iraq, especially. And I would argue that the capitalist meltdown was at least partly caused by the Bush tax cuts.

Yet this guy ignores them?

Why?

Perhaps because Obama extended them? And much of the Democratic Party was also complicit in their permanent extension.

[Triana]

5. I believe I've heard him mentioning the bu$h expenditures in other lectures

...but I could be wrong.

[grahamhgreen]

6. Kick