Tell your representative to leave Social Security alone

SOCIAL SECURITY CANNOT GO INSOLVENT
By L. Randall Wray
Ok, here is the dumbest headline the NYTimes has run in recent days:

Social Security Payouts to Exceed Revenue This Year
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

The system is expected to pay out more in benefits this year than it receives in payroll taxes, a tipping point toward insolvency.

Social Security is a federal government program. Government pays Social Security benefits by crediting bank accounts. It can continue to do this even if payroll taxes fall to zero. The payment is an entry on the balance sheet of the Social Security recipient’s bank. Please write your representative and tell her or him to stop this nonsense right now.

Just as Wall Street went after healthcare, you can be sure that it is now going after Social Security. They hype is just starting. It comes in waves—whenever Wall Street loses a bundle, it looks to government bail-outs. What happened after the dot.com bust? Wall Street got President Bush to talk about an ownership society, proposing to dismantle Social Security to give households “ownership” over their own personal retirement accounts. The nonsense was obvious at the time: Wall Street had a big hole to fill, so it wanted households to “invest” payroll tax receipts in Wall Street managed accounts. That way, the same bozos who had just wiped out private savings by inducing gullible households to invest in pets.com would be able to wipe out retirements investing in other Wall Street schemes. Wall Street lost that round.

But now it is back. Wall Street’s latest excesses managed to destroy the economy. Those who lost their jobs or who had to take paycuts are paying less in FICA taxes. Hence, Social Security’s “revenues” are lower. That is a big boon to Wall Street—which will now whip up hysteria about Social Security’s looming bankruptcy. This is to direct attention away from the true insolvencies—which is all of the major private banks. It is also designed to scare the population about Social Security: will I ever get my Social Security pension?

Make no mistake about this. Unless voters tell their representatives to keep their dirty hands off Social Security, the Democrats and Republicans will work out a “compromise” to turn it over to Wall Street—just as they did with health insurance “reform” in the HIBOB (health insurer’s bail out bill). This is priority number one for Wall Street now, since it has lost trillions of dollars and is massively insolvent. It needs more government bail-out and it wants your Social Security.