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Thread: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

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    Default FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    (boldface by me)
    President Bush’s overhaul of Social Security isn’t going well right now, but it’s important to remember that he is playing a long game that is less attuned to daily or weekly news cycles than to what he hopes are the cycles of history. At issue is nothing less than the repeal of the whole idea behind the New Deal.
    Peter Wehner, a key White House strategist, put it this way in a recent memo: "For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win—and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country." The White House wasn’t happy this leaked; it is claiming publicly with Orwellian logic that Bush wants simply to update the New Deal. But the history of this debate says otherwise.

    The New Deal entered the language during Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1932. It was originally just a catch-all phrase for his vaguely liberal platform, but soon took on a distinct ideological meaning.

    That year, even many Democrats were appalled at the idea of FDR embracing what he called "the forgotten man." The progressive Al Smith, for instance, anticipated GOP arguments of later years by accusing FDR of fostering class warfare. Republican President Herbert Hoover was in many ways a progressive by today’s standards—he had grown famous organizing relief efforts during World War I and favored raising taxes to balance the budget. But he was appalled at the idea of the federal government guaranteeing anyone, even old people, a decent standard of living. That was the job of business and voluntary associations. Americans, he felt, should be captains of their own fate.

    The animating idea of the New Deal was something quite different—a new social contract under which we all owed each other something. Much of the New Deal was dedicated to increasing taxes, then using the money to prevent farm and home foreclosures and to help people back into the middle class with low-interest loans. Its centerpiece, Social Security, was about making sure the elderly felt in the autumn of their lives that they owned a bit of the American Dream, too. In a way, it was Roosevelt who invented the "ownership society." Tax revenues weren’t "your money" but "our money"—an instrument for righting some moral wrongs, like octogenarians having to dig ditches to eat.

    Nowadays this sounds like a hopelessly old-fashioned Clifford Odets play. But Social Security was so popular from the moment it was enacted in 1935 that it cowed Republicans into me-tooism. The next five Republican nominees for president—Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon—were all moderates who accepted the premise of the New Deal, though they pushed for a more business-friendly government.

    But even as GOP platforms endorsed Social Security, the ascendant conservative wing of the party—from Robert Taft to Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan—considered it a threat to the free enterprise system. The attacks on what William Randolph Hearst called the "Raw Deal" became all the more venomous as Republicans grew frustrated by the staying power of FDR’s legacy. This curdled into the bitterness of the McCarthy era. Anti-communism worked for the GOP in part because it dovetailed with their critique of the New Deal as being socialist or even communist at its core.

    After his death, FDR was too popular to attack frontally. A conservative urban legend was born that lives even now—most recently peddled by Fox News’ Brit Hume—that Roosevelt actually wanted to convert Social Security to private accounts after 30 years. (It’s completely untrue, though he did favor supplemental voluntary retirement insurance above and beyond standard Social Security). While constituents loved Social Security, conservative politicians did not. Within their own ranks, they seethed. Lou Cannon, Reagan’s biographer, wrote that Reagan "shared the view that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme."

    After Goldwater was crushed in 1964 and Reagan lost the 1976 primaries to Gerald Ford in part because both wanted to make Social Security voluntary, the issue became the "third rail of American politics." Touch it and you die. As president, Reagan was slam-dunked when he tried to cut benefits and he later gave in and strengthened the program. Only now do we have a president who is willing to go at the underpinnings of the New Deal consensus.

    Bush cannot do so directly. FDR’s handiwork is still so revered that the president must cast his proposal in the guise of saving Social Security. But Bush’s idea is almost 180 degrees from Roosevelt’s. The New Deal was about insuring against risk, so that disadvantaged people felt more secure in the knowledge that the government would help them stand against the vicissitudes of fate. The Bush Deal is about expanding risk, so that disadvantaged people feel more acutely than at any time since the 1920s that they are at sea amid unpredictable market forces, fending for themselves.

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Social Security is nothing more than a tax on young working people to support older non-working people. The first recepient of social security payments started receiving payments less than a year after the program began. The idea that social security is some kind of retirement plan is the biggest fraud ever enacted. But for the sake of argument, lets look at it as if it really was a retirement plan. In a traditional IRA or 401k retirement plan, you put your money in and it is invested. The only "investments" the social security administration owns are government IOU's. The system is totally dependent on young workers continuing to be taxed so that money keeps coming into the system to pay current liabilities. That's the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme. Like all Ponzi Schemes, things worked great in the beginning as money poured in, helped by the booming population after WWII. Now, things are different, birth rates are lower, people are living much longer meaning the burden of supporting the retirees falls on fewer and fewer workers.

    Since you obvisiously don't like the President's plan, perhaps you would like to post the democrats plan. Oh, wait, their plan is to do nothing but obstruct.
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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    The only "investments" the social security administration owns are government IOU's. The system is totally dependent on young workers continuing to be taxed so that money keeps coming into the system to pay current liabilities. That's the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme.
    Exactly.

    The only people that revere the SS system are those currently receiving benefits; those of us under 40 only see a pathetic 2% return on our money. 2%.
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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Reagan raised social security taxes three times.

    FDR is tied for second place on my list for worst presidents.

    Bush is a minor thug compared to FDR.

    As for social security, Bush's plan is a non-solution that may end up worse. At the core, the money that is put into "private" "accounts" means that money cannot be used for anything else, meaning taxes will have to go up(or inflation) to meet the levels of spending going on presently.
    One of the more serious spinoffs of Bush's proposal is to give people government bonds as their personal account which is effectively only a cosmetic change from the current situation.

    The only real solution is abolishment. Anything else is just pointless in my view.

    One consequence of the situation Ms. Destiny illustrates above is that the government itself owns 40% of the national debt we hear so much about. That is a total accounting fiction and a tremendous fraud that has the result of causing social security to tax americans twice: Once from the fica tax itself and a second time when the ssa bonds come due.


    Social security is working perfectly for what it was conceived to do however. It was primarily conceived of being a way to tax lower income people more than the political climate would allow if they called it outright taxation. For most people there is NO return as it acts as a tax plain and simple with people ending up in the hole rather than gaining(as has been the situation since the 70s at least).

    A secondary function of social security is to be a social engineering project, along the lines of Bismarck. In fact, the Social Security Administration even salutes bismarck and honors him with a webpage:



    In case some haven't heard of him:
    "Of course, Bismarck did not promote social reform out of love for the German workers....His object was to make the workers less discontented or, to use a harsher phrase, more subservient. He said in 1881: "Whosoever has a pension for his old age is far more content and far easier to handle than one who has no such prospect...." Social security has certainly made the masses less independent everywhere..."

    (A.J.P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman)
    Social security is a big reason why family bonds are weakening and why savings rates are so dismal in America(meaning lower future standard of living).

    Another great page at the SSA's website:


    Not even your kids are save from the brainwashing over Social security.

    Bush's plan is a non-solution at best and an avenue for bigger problems in a far more realistic evaluation, in my view. Without the income stream from the "surplus" collected from SSA, congress will have to raise taxes to retain current spending levels or inflate which is many times worse. Now, I'll all in favor of denying the government as much money as possible but I think it is naive to think they will do anything that means spending will decrease. Bush himself has contributed to a 30% increase in government spending; there is simply no way he can dream of doing anything to dry up revenue. His proposal is mostly a cosmetic change to give the appearance of doing something while doing basically nothing. This is especially true if they do the private-accounts-with-government-bonds thing. It would be no change in the net but it would give the appearance of making a grand change. In addition, his scheme also reinforces the insidious idea the government should tell you how to spend your own money. There is no plan promotod by Bush or anybody in congress outside of Ron paul to let people retain and spend their own money as the owner sees fit. If they force peopel to buy private sector annuities, you can bet you will be forced to use certain "approved" firms which could mean a gargantuan boondoggle for the politically powerful in Wall Street, which is one of my great suspicions.

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    I agree, the best solution to "fix" social security would be to abolish it. But there are three reasons that will never happen. First, it's politically impossible to do. Second, since the system basically is a Ponzi Scheme, the system needs those younger workers to continue to support it. Lastly, the democrats would never allow it as it makes for a great way to try to scare senior citizen's into voting democrat.

    I support privatizing social security, not so much as a great investment, but as a way to start to wean people off government support. One way to reign in spending would be to put off the retirement age. When the system was begun, only a small percentage of americans even lived to be 65, and those that did didn't live much past that. Now, people in their 80's and 90's are common. The case could be made for rolling back the retirement age significantly, and could probably be won.
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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    It's politically possible to do, the establishment just has no reason to do so.

    The Ponzi scheme nature of soc sec is exactly why it will eventually be abolished.

    The third point of yours is a non-issue to me as Democrats and Republicans are ideological twins for the most part.

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Quote Originally Posted by Sh0t
    It's politically possible to do, the establishment just has no reason to do so.
    and they have every reason to keep the status quo. Remember, it takes a lot of buearacrats to shuffle all that paper at the social security administration. If you privatize social security, some of the paper shufflers might have to shuffle paper for the private sector, something most government paper shufflers fear.
    The Ponzi scheme nature of soc sec is exactly why it will eventually be abolished.
    If the system isn't reformed, I predict the day will come when young people will just flat out refuse to pay it. What I find ironic is that many of the people against any type of reform of social security are the same ones complaing about the low minimum wage. Yet for many hourly workers, the social security tax is the biggest deduction from their paycheck.

    The third point of yours is a non-issue to me as Democrats and Republicans are ideological twins for the most part.
    Not twins, but close cousins. However, with the AARP acting as the senior citizen's auxilliary of the democratic party, I'd say the democrats have more to gain by keeping the hysteria level at its peak. See, one thing I learned is that politicians don't really want to solve problems. Fear is a wonderful thing for getting people to the polls. As long as the democrats can keep granny convinced that the evil republicans are trying take away her check, they can count on granny voting democratic.
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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    If the system isn't reformed, I predict the day will come when young people will just flat out refuse to pay it.
    There is already buzz in academic circles about an upcoming "Age War" along the lines of what you are saying. I can't wait personally.

    Yet for many hourly workers, the social security tax is the biggest deduction from their paycheck.
    That's Social Security's primary purpose: to be a tax on lower income people more than would be politically viable if they called it an outright tax.

    I stand by the twins comment, if they are not the same monster altogether, similar to that monster of Greek mythology.

    The government at large benefits from the fear of the public, both parties love it for various reasons. Neither party has any real ideology, we have rule by "public policy." Whatever is politically viable and state-enlarging will go. Both Democrats and Republicans love large government. The Federal government actually grows FASTER under Republicans, which is contrary to the rhetoric. The smallest government guy in recent memory was Jimmy Carter. And just like Bush and Bush, Gore and Clinton were in bed with "Big Oil." See the Elk Hills oilfield sale for a great example of that.

    Granny will be equally in trouble if she votes Republican. Speaking of AARP, surely you didn't miss the greatest expansion of Medicare in recent memmory under Bush and a Republican Congress?

    In terms of trend the differences between the parties are superficially and only relate to the battles each politician fights to make his district or state a net tax-consumer rather than net tax-payer.

    Some historical context:

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Both parties prey on people's fears, but they prey on different fears. Democrats prey on peoples fears about social programs, racism, abortion rights, the environment. Republicans prey on peoples fears about national security, overly oppressive government, gay marriage, stuff like that. That's why I call them cousins, not twins. They're both from the same family, but they don't look like each other.

    I have to say, one of my biggest disappointments has been the republicans in congress. I actually thought they might do something to control our runaway spending. Instead, they just award more pork barrel money, but to different people.

    I once had a professor who stated that politicians will only make deals from positions of strength. What he meant by that was something like this:

    Democrats, have a reputation of being strong believers in social welfare spending and stuff like that. The also have a reputation of being soft on national security/defense. So Jimmy Carter signed a nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.S.R., had the hostages in Iran, and was defeated for re-election, because he appeared "soft" on national security, something no democrat can afford. Bill Clinton on the other hand signed into law welfare reform, something almost all democrats hate, and was re-elected. Since democrats are thought to be "strong" on social issues, Clinton could afford to sign welfare reform.

    Republicans have a reputation for being strong on national defense and soft on social spending. So Reagan proposed reforming social security and the public outcry was so great that he had to abandon the idea forever. As a republican, that was a weak spot for him. On the other hand, he could meet with Gorbachev and sign any treaty he wanted and suffer no political repercussions. As a republican, national security was a "stong" point for him. Obviously, this oversimplifies things, but I think you get the idea.

    If you believe this theory, and I do, then you have to really admire GWB for even attempting to reform social security whether you agree with his plan or not.
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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Nah, I don't admire him for any reason and i think his "reform" for Social Security is just more theatrics along the lines of 'let's look like we are doing something but let's keep the status quo going."

    Most of your post is very acute and you do notice a very obvious trend. For instance, "conservative" Republicans are supposed to be tough on cutting government, yet the government expands faster under them. Meaning, people get lulled to sleep thinking things will be changed, but they only change for the worse. I believe that is intentionally. I believe the reason Bush won a second term is because he was able to get so much done in terms of expanding government and he gets away with things Democrats could not get away with, so they kept Bush in to keep things rolling.

    To be clear, I hold the view that our presidential elections are mostly dog and pony shows and that at the top, most of the politicians are on the side same, and it ain't "We the People's" side. This has pretty much been the case since Morgan owned all sides to get Wilson elected, in my view.

    Since you briefly mentioned Jimmy Carter, Gorby, and the USSR, allow me to offer you something that may pique your interest that relates to the very incident you mention:


    Tidbits on the Iranian Hostage situation:

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    The only "investments" the social security administration owns are government IOU's. The system is totally dependent on young workers continuing to be taxed so that money keeps coming into the system to pay current liabilities. That's the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme. Like all Ponzi Schemes, things worked great in the beginning as money poured in, helped by the booming population after WWII. Now, things are different, birth rates are lower, people are living much longer meaning the burden of supporting the retirees falls on fewer and fewer workers.
    Actually, it's even worse than this. Beyond 2018 those two working younger people will not only have to be taxed to pay out the current benefit to one retiree, but those two working younger people will also have to pay EXTRA taxes to make good on the SSI bonds that Social Security 'bought' from the US general revenue budget with the tax 'surplus' it has been collecting for the last decade. The 'dirty little secret' here is that the extra SSI tax money collected from working people throughout the 90's has already been spent on general revenue items i.e. social programs, and was responsible for much of the '90's economic miracle'.

    Some number crunching has been done on speculation regarding the future tax rates necessary beyond 2018 to pay for benefits to retirees, redeem the SSI bonds with additional tax money, plus pay for other budget items like defense, health care and social programs. Those numbers indicate that in one way or another the gov't will need to collect an additional 34% in taxes, or reduce all benefits and spending by 34%, or some combination of the two. Obviously, with current federal, state, local and 'hidden' taxes claiming almost 50% of every dollar earned as income in some states, a 34% increase over and above existing tax rates would be grounds for another American Revolution !

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    Default Re: FDR "The New Deal" & Bush

    Quote Originally Posted by Sh0t
    ... The only real solution is abolishment. Anything else is just pointless in my view....

    * * *

    A secondary function of social security is to be a social engineering project, along the lines of Bismarck....
    Assuming, arguendo, we were to actually abolish the entire system... what then??? Bismarck was not merely engaging in idle speculation as to the viability and/or desireability of some sort of "social engineering project"; he was effectively (and correctly) making the Machiavellian argument for the system, i.e., "control" - beyond that, leave too many people in the gutter and/or without hope, and what you'll eventually wind up with is a revolution... France, Russia... it's happened over and over throughout history.

    Anyway, my point is this: in a capitilistic society, there will always be a certain percentage that, for whatever reason, just cannot make it... and over the long haul, there will also be a certain percentage that, again, for whatever reason, have never been able to get far enough ahead to put anything away for their survival should they live beyond an age where they'll be able to continue to work. And whether or not you agree with the so-called "liberal" position that it's "the right thing to do, etc.," the Machiavellian basis for "skimming off the top to deal with them" remains. So, assuming we were to actually abolish the system, what do you propose to do with the huge numbers of people that simply cannot make it without it? "Let them eat cake," so to speak???
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