After years of laying the groundwork, Bush is sharpening his ax and preparing to mount a campaign for the final blow – the destruction of Social Security! His call to privatize Social Security, in order to 'save' it is akin to that administration’s 'Clean Airs' act, which actually allowed corporate polluters to further pollute with impunity! These corporate liars support Social Security the way a rope supports a hanging man! We must all view Bush’s call for privatization of Social Security as a bugle blowing the call to arms, all out to defend our retirement security from corporate wolves! Bush’s attempt to destroy Social Security can be either the first blow in a four-year pummeling of working peoples’ rights and economic standards, or the huge people’s movement that came together during the election can fight, and make this Bush’s Waterloo!

In the first place, we must arm ourselves with the truth, something that is in short supply in corporate media circles. The only way that that Bush’s privatization scheme can be sold to the American people is that they must first be sold the big lie, that Social Security is actually in crisis and must be 'saved!' While this big lie has been trumpeted as an unchallenged fact by the big business media, nothing could be further from the truth!

What are facts?

Social Security is running with a huge surplus at this time. The Social Security Trust Fund is over $2 trillion strong, and growing by $150 Billion a year. Most conservative estimates suggest that this fund will solvent until at least 2041, with more realistic estimates, in my opinion, citing 2052. At that time, as baby boomers retire, the surplus will be played out and some small amount of extra financing will be necessary. Any problem with financing for Social Security, in 36, or 47 years, could easily be taken care of by taking back just a quarter of Bush’s tax cut to the rich, for only one year. Further, nobody is talking about the ridiculously low cap on paying Social Security taxes – $87,900. By scraping this cap and having the rich pay their share Social Security would be good until after 9999! Far from 'saving' Social Security, the setting up of Bush’s private accounts would be astronomically expensive and a huge drag on the Trust Fund. It’s estimated that setting up of those accounts would cost more than $2 Trillion over the first decade. To pay for this massive expense, monies would have to be taken either from the Trust Fund, greatly weakening it, or it would require further government borrowing, raising an already gargantuan federal deficit created by this administration. Turning people’s retirement security over to Wall Street would be a horrible gamble. Millions could lose everything with just a small blip in the stock market. The idea that private financiers would handle our retirement money more efficiently than the federal government is part of the anti-public big lie being spread as an unchallenged 'fact' by the corporate media. The truth is that while Social Security has never missed a payment in the nearly 70 years of its existence and administrative costs at that agency are under 1percent! Most conservative estimates state that financiers running private accounts would use at least 15 percent of revenues up in administration costs, not even considering the profits they’d take. Bush and proponents of private accounts play up the possibility of some folks getting rich off private accounts. They’re trying to make it a wedge issue Republicans have become so good at, playing young against old workers. In reality, nobody would ever get rich from that type of account, since high-risk investments would be extremely expensive to manage. Private accounts would have to be set up with few options, and very little possibility of high returns. The privatization of Social Security is actually an extremely important issue for young workers, since it would actually bankrupt that plan and destroy any possibility of economic security for those workers and their families later in life. Women and minorities would be much harder hit by any plan to privatize Social Security. Minorities have shorter life spans and both women and minorities are less likely to be covered by real pensions, have more career interruptions and are much more likely to depend on Social Security for their main income in old age. Private accounts would not have disability coverage. Workers who got disabled with those accounts could potentially be thrown to the wolves. Furthermore, approximately one-third of Social Security benefits are paid out to disabled workers, widowed spouses and dependent children. These benefits would be endangered by the undermining of the Social Security Trust Fund due to privatization.

For these and many other reasons, privatizing Social Security is a horrible idea. It would undermine the last line of defense for a great many working folks against the ravages of brutal, raw capitalism! Bush and his corporate ultra-right buddies, who never supported Social Security in the first place, now tell us to trust them to 'save' it. As we examine the facts it becomes clear that they plan to 'save' Social Security like the General in Vietnam who spoke of having to 'destroy the village to save it!'



--Bruce Bostick is a trade union activist in Ohio. This article is excerpted from 'How secure is your retirement? Social Security privatization scams young and old,' which originally appeared in the People's Weekly World (www.pww.org).