Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Long Con: Social Security and Medicare in the “Grand Bargain”

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The Long Con: Social Security and Medicare in the “Grand Bargain”

Click here to access article by Jim Kavanagh from his blog The Polemicist.

The author provides a very good explanation as to why Social Security and Medicare, two vital retirement support programs paid into like insurance programs, are not a significant factor in the current government debt problems. The major factors are due to the costly invasions of other countries, maintaining a huge military establishment (nearly as large as all other countries combined), and the ongoing support of the banking industry whose reckless behavior is being paid for by the US government. What we are now seeing in Washington is the latest act in a play called "Budget Crisis" performed by the Democrats and the Republicans. He explains all this.

What many people do not understood, including Reagan in the 1980s (see video in article), is that these funds have not been set up as a conventional trust fund. This is best explained by Allen W. Smith in a June post that I commented on.