Whatever happened to zero budgeting? Shouldn’t there be $2.7 trillion in revenue to match the budget? Of course in the past there was the massive surplus of social security to bail out the shortfall; now there are Saudi Arabia, China and Japan are more recent Santa and elves. Had social security not been the bank for extended expenditures, the fear would be that the account would sit in a bank account gathering meager interest, whereas treasury bonds would yield twofold. In the early days had anyone suggested that the surplus be sent to Wall Street for diverse investment, there would have been panic owing to competition with private investors. If one recalls in the late 90s Greenspan’s overblown fear that a surplus, then designed to pay down the debt, meant ultimately the government would owe nothing and with continuing surplus having nowhere to go but in the free market, and striking fear into the heart of Wall Street. The current persuasion that private investment yields a greater return than social security prohibited from doing so is laughable.
Yet this is no longer thought of as a threat to free investors even though privatization of social security would mean just that. However, Bush knows that if privatization is kept optional rather than mandatory, all but the affluent would participate, venting a sigh of relief throughout the brokerage houses at the expense of the unwashed who will still see cuts in their social security anyway, resulting in the millennia’s supreme flim-flam. This is no different from the ploy of IRA deductions in the 80s when it was clear that most of those who really should have taken advantage of the retirement scheme couldn’t afford it.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 8, 2005.
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