All the arguments about money in this country come down to the struggle between higher taxes and lower entitlements. If we want to solve this argument and come to some kind of agreement on a middle ground, the first thing we have to do is define our terms. The habit of politicians and talking heads of identifying Social Security as an entitlement is dead wrong. An entitlement, by definition, is something we get, simply because we exist, or because we exist in a certain milieu that affords that entitlement.
Social Security is neither of these. Social Security is an investment that certain individual workers, not defined by any milieu, except that they earn ad invest a part of their wages, make, to insure the security of their future.
There is nothing wrong with the Social Security system that couldn’t be fixed by the government replacing all the money that it has, over the years, been taken illegally from the system. It was done to fix other problems, that government workers were too lazy or too stupid to deal with the proper way. This is neither a Democratic nor a Republican problem but one that has been caused by both parties and is currently irritated by all those who tend to ignore the real reason why there is any problem at all with Social Security. The only problem with Social Security is the felonious behavior of those previous government officials who in contravention of the Social Security Act, took money from it to fund other programs. Only those that are lying, ignorant of the law or have an ax to grind, claim that it is an entitlement.
Medicaid, is an entitlement, Medicare, partly one. Food stamps and any number of other government programs that give help to those who legitimately need it but have no investment in it, are entitlements, but Social security is not, to repeat for those who are too deaf or too intellectually challenged to understand, it is an investment by those who put money into it, their whole working lives. It is the investor’s money to retrieve, not the government’s, nor the taxpayer’s to lend, nor congresses to play with to get their way in political battles.
Any other definition of Social Security is false, and is made only to achieve the devious ends of those who put it forth. There is no reason to raise any age limits or look for means testing in the system. The only thing necessary to put it on firm ground through the end of the century is for the government to replace all the funds that have been illegally taken from it and never replaced. Although not incurred by the present government it is the responsibility of this or any other government to make the Social Security fund whole again.
I have never been a friend of lobbying or the groups that indulge in that undemocratic process but in this instance, one group, AARP can, by its size and single minded backing of the Social Security system do serious damage to the career of any congressman who gets in the way of that system doing the job for which it was created, and that is a profoundly good thing.
If congress wants to look into entitlements that can be cut or eliminated, to the benefit of the concept of keeping taxes low, that is their job, but in doing this job they should keep in mind the kind of country that most of its citizens would like to think America is. Taking food stamps from hard working but underpaid families in order to support tax breaks for industries that make trillion dollar profits neither supports our concept of justice and fair play nor does it help the nation enhance its self image of being exemplary. If we are a nation that starves its working poor to make a few billionaires richer, we are failing every test by which exemplary statehood is measured.
We created this country to get away from a European caste system that had separated the rich and the rest of mankind into two vastly unequal humanities. Now we are drifting back into that same system from which we fought so hard to escape. A coterie of billionaires, are seeking to destroy the American system for all but the members of their own elite caste. Men like the Koch brothers are polluting Chicago and Detroit with their refining operations which leave behind piles of poisonous detritus, sickening and killing the children of those two major cities. They don’t have to do this. They make more than enough money without doing this. They do it without regard to those who must live in their wake simply because they can, and it makes them more money, more money than any human being can possibly spend.
They are joined by men like Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs and a criminal by almost any definition of the word, who claims that after all the damage done by the banks and Wall Street in the recent crash that they are ready to make a big splash and have a lot of cash to do it. Where the hell have they been when small businesses were pleading for cash and when the nation desperately needed cash for renewed infrastructure? He doesn’t care that the recovery has been creeping along for five years without his help and that the average guy has been bleeding to death all that time because he and his billionaire buddies have been hoarding cash rather than investing it. He doesn’t seem to realize that the financial industry doesn’t make anything, it doesn’t create a product that enhances peoples lives or helps them do something and it doesn’t employ anywhere near the number of people that its vast financial resources would imply.
One listens to men like Blankfein and James Rogers chairman of Duke Energy another company trying to poison the land for profit, and one realizes that these men are the product of an environment that cares nothing for their fellow men but only for the profit that can be extracted from them. Rogers makes a big push for the expansion of gas exploration and the technique of frackting. He does this with full knowledge of the fact that this technique, already prohibited in many other countries, will poison the land and water of our continent and has already been proven to cause earthquakes in the mid-west. Instead of investing in renewable clean technologies that will ultimately have to be the future of the planet if we are to continue to exist, Rogers pushes for more of what is destroying us, investing in new capacity for the destructive technologies that are making him billions at the cost of the health and lives of the rest of us.
All these robber barons and their businesses currently benefit from a tax code that creates entitlements for them, entitlements that they really don’t need in order to make trillions. Those entitlements are a major part of the reason why Social Security is even mentioned when it comes time to tighten the noose around our financial structure. Why does big oil or factory farming or GE get a tax break? They make so much money they don’t even know how to spend it, certainly not for the benefit of those with whom they share the planet.
But all billionaires are not scum. There are plenty of them out there who are doing amazing things for the benefit of the planet and those who inhabit it. Even while men like the Koch’s, Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and James Rogers try to exploit it for their benefit alone. There are men like Dan Gilbert who is trying, despite the Koch’s attempts to poison Detroit, to rebuild the downtown of that decimated city. Gilbert is almost single handedly renovating downtown Detroit, bringing in and financing small businesses and creating a burgeoning business district that will naturally expand, creating service businesses and housing to meet the needs of those who are currently moving into his new commercial zone. It is this kind of entrepreneurial innovation that has made America great while it is the Koch’s version that will destroy it.
It isn’t difficult to define the differences between men like Dan Gilbert and those like the Koch’s, Jamie Dimon and Blankfein, what’s difficult is to make the latter greedy pigs responsible to the rest of us for the damage they do to our environment, our financial systems, our very lives. Rather than looking to steal more money from Social Security to finance government programs that often exist simply to offset the results of those billionaires plundering the land, we must make them at least financially responsible for the damage they are doing to this country and those who inhabit it.
Social Security isn’t the answer to lower taxes, holding the billionaires whose actions cost the American public trillions each year, accountable for their entrepreneurial felonies is the only solution to making the federal budget balance.
Every Sunday morning BP spends hundreds of thousands, maybe millions on TV advertising, flooding every station with the lie that BP is good for America. This is a foreign company that destroyed our Gulf Coast and is now fighting the government to reduce the fines that have been legally charged to them. Maybe if they spent a little less on lying about how great they are for us and a lot more on the kind of safety measures that would have prevented their catastrophic spill. we’d all be better off.
Making them accountable for at the very least a fair tax on their enormous profits is the path to a balanced budget. Saving a few pennies by cutting off some kids medicine will not solve any problems. Making GE, BP and the rest of the plunderers pay their fair share of taxes will.
Finally…something I can agree upon with you 100%. Well said.