Reply #13: More on how the Heritage Foundation is doing the Privatization thing. [View All]

[madfloridian]

SNIP...."If Social Security as we know it is cast off like a rejected first wife by this Congress, it will be because of the slow but steady deterioration of public support over more than a decade. Dorcas Hardy, Reagan's Social Security commissioner, wanted to privatize Social Security, but the idea seemed so weird that it received little serious attention--especially from the public.

It became obvious that privatization would not receive substantial public support until the public's faith in the Social Security system had dramatically eroded--but to do that the public needed to be convinced that there was a crisis, not in some far future time, but now. And so, the "fact" that Social Security was going broke, or was already bankrupt, became a recurring theme trumpeted by the pro-privatization pundits of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The bankruptcy myth

Over the years, the statement has been made so many times and repeated by so many people that many Americans now believe that Social Security is bankrupt, or will be any day now. My personal experience is that most reporters assume that it is so. And yet nothing is further from the truth.

Last year, Social Security paid out $383 billion in checks, and received $436 billion in taxes and an additional $49 billion in interest. Instead of red ink, Social Security made almost $102 billion in profit, to add to the more than $652 billion it had in profits from previous years.

http://www.fair.org/extra/9905/ss-ttm.html