President Declares "Ownership Society"
Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund
by Greg Palast
September 2, 2004 17:06
[New York] Of all the bone-headed, whacky, breathtakingly
threatening schemes George W. Bush is trying to sell us in his
acceptance speech tonight is something he and his handlers call, "the
Ownership Society." Sounds cool, "ownership." Everyone gets a
piece of the action. Everyone's a winner as the economy
zooms. All boats rise.
Sure. Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that
dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for
making Bush's tax cuts for the rich permanent.
Here's what the President has in mind. Social Security is an
insurance plan. You pay in, you get back. But it's hard to
get your money back when there's a war where the Clinton surplus used
to be. It's not the war on terror, or the war in Iraq, though
Lord knows those have cost us a bundle with nothing to show for all the
lost loot. I'm talking about the class war that Dubya and his
Dick Cheney have waged on the average working person.
We're talking an economic Pearl Harbor here. While firemen and
policemen went running into falling buildings, the Bushmen were
preparing to relieve some gazillionaires, such as say, the Bush family,
of the need to pay the taxes that the rest of us pay. Work as a
teacher, you pay Social Security and income taxes on every darn
penny. Sit on your yacht and speculate in the stock market
casino and you are off the hook on taxes on the "capital gains."
Bill Clinton proposed putting his big surpluses into a Social Security
"lock-box" for that predictable rainy day. But tonight, Bush
instead proposes to give the stock-options class a boost by lopping off
a chunk of Social Security insurance revenue for gambling in the stock
market. He had this same idea in 2000. If he'd had his way
on his inauguration day, the average "owner" in America, investing in
the stock market, would be 7% poorer, many flat busted. Some
"security." Happy elderly "owners" would be hunting for lunch in
the garbage cans under Madison Square Garden.
Here's the latest report from the front lines of the class war: The
World Bank reports the USA has more millionaires than ever -- we'll see
them at the Garden tonight. Median household income's down --
most of us are median -- while the bottom has fallen out for those at
the bottom. Our poorest 20% have seen incomes drop by a fifth.
America's upper one percent now own 53% of all the shares in the
market.
And now the uppers want to crack open your retirement piggy bank, cut
some of your retirement benefits, then "allow" you to give them the
remainder of your money to fund their latest stock float schemes.
If betting trillions on stock market ponies doesn't produce a big win,
what does Mr. Bush propose to do with all the hungry old
folk? I think I heard George say, "Let them eat Enron
certificates."
And the future market fall, Mr. President, is a slam-dunk
certainty. Let's do the math. OK, class, we all buy stock
this afternoon to fund our retirement. In fifteen years,
baby-boomers are ready to kick back, take it easy and retire on the
stock they're about to sell. Did I say, "SELL"? And
HOW. Around 2020, tens of millions of "owners" will be selling
their shares
to whom? CRRRRASH!
A deliberate policy of aiming for another 1929 is appropriate for the
top-hat and pinky-ring party of Herbert Hoover.
The big problem is that supposedly non-partisan and even Democratic
poobahs are rushing to "reform" Social Security. We have Alan
Greenspan, who has barely a word to say about the multi-trillion dollar
deficit wrought by Mr. Bush's tax cuts, yet is already warning about
some disaster in Social Security based on "trends." Well, if we
go by his own trend, the Fed chief will soon be marrying a 12-year-old
Girl Scout.
Hey, Alan, back to Economics 101 for you. As the boomers hit
retirement age, we're going to need added borrowing for transfer
payments like Social Security to maintain purchasing power to keep the
economy alive while millions of old folk dump assets.
Listen, Mr. President, we had an "ownership" society once before.
Luckily, it came to an end when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation.
****
- Greg Palast, nominated Britain's Business Writer of the Year by
the UK Press Association for his writings in the Guardian papers, is
the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy." This month, Palast, who has returned to his native USA,
will release, "Bush Family Fortunes," the film based on his
investigative reports for BBC television. Watch a preview of the
film, out on DVD, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm