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DETROIT — Wall Street financiers are targeting young people with a warning: “The older generation is stealing your future!” They generate continuous “educational campaigns” (such as “The Can Kicks Back”) that claim “the burden of entitlements” is responsible for ruinous cuts in education, research, and job opportunities.
Since the devastating capitalist crisis of 2008, neither young nor old trust the Wall Street “solution” of converting Social Security into a privatized, individualized, “investment-based” pension system. We’ve seen the stock market reduce the employer-based retirement system to shreds. Pensions have been cut or eliminated entirely. Even constitutionally-protected workers pensions are being “legally” gutted.
There’s more to it than capitalists’ lust for privatization! Wall Street is also trying to drive home the message, “The money’s not there.” This is ideological preparation for a crisis ahead. They want youth to believe “there is no other choice” but to cut essential benefits. Young people have no way of knowing their parents’ and grandparents’ generations were fed nearly the same line thirty years ago. We were told that the World War II generation was set to go on the generous gravy train of Social Security, but the Baby Boom generation would “break the system” and maybe wreck the country.
Congress devised the fix of nearly doubling the FICA taxes! The Baby Boom generation has paid a whopping 12.4% of payrolls over decades. We expected this would make Social Security totally solvent. It did! Unfortunately, over decades Congress transferred massive FICA revenue surpluses toward funding of year-to-year general expenditures (including wars and corporate welfare.) By means of “inter-governmental borrowing,” they’ve taken trillions of real dollars out of Social Security and other federal trust funds. They’ve left only IOUs from one part of the government to another. There is no remaining pool of dedicated Social Security funds in reserve to draw on, only the taxes that come in each year.
Politicians of both parties still hide the crisis they’ve created in Social Security. They generate ongoing confusion. Republicans call Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Democrats insist there’s nothing wrong that minor tweaking won’t fix.
Here lies the threat: Any re-payment to the Social Security Trust Funds rests on the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. Treasury to re-pay itself. Do we really think they will be able to pay back trillions of dollars to Social Security, given that 40% of federal funds spent every year is borrowed? The promise of Social Security is only as good as the economy. The capitalist system will need to diminish all social programs–even Social Security.
Young workers are vulnerable because their incomes, savings, and retirements will be much lower than past generations. Many are already burdened with debt. Still, polls show that even young people who don’t think Social Security benefits “will be there for them” support Social Security and oppose cutting it! Our young people have a different sense of morality than cynical billionaires. They believe in caring for seniors, the disabled, and the orphaned.
