Social Security

By Dec, 2000 ZetaTalk stated that a Social Security Scam was being proposed by the new Bush Administration, sacrificing these funds to support a tettering Wall Street. By Feb, 2002 details explaining on what this change would mean appeared in print.

Four Lies About Social Security
Impact Press, Feb, 2002

A CBS News poll taken in August 2001 found that a majority of Americans do not believe that Social Security will be able to pay their retirement benefits. A similar majority believe that investing part of our Social Security funds in the stock market is a good idea. That speaks to the success of a brilliant, multi-year public relations campaign engineered by rich Wall Street firms, in conjunction with their friends in conservative Washington think tanks. Their goal: to convince the public to consider dumping Social Security in favor of private accounts. It's a campaign built on misinformation, distortion, and outright lies. What's Wall Street's stake in all this? They want to get their hands on the one trillion dollars currently sitting in the Social Security trust fund - probably the largest single stash of dough ever amassed in human history. If Social Security were privatized, that giant trust fund would be sliced up into individual retirement accounts, managed by the banks, one account for every man, woman and child in America. Each one of those accounts would generate management fees for the banks, a never-ending Niagara Falls of fees, cascading forever into the coffers of Wall Street. ...

Lie #3: The stock market is definitely a better deal. The pro-privatization President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security has claimed that stocks will have an annual "return" of 7 percent, while the current Social Security system only returns about 3 percent. But the Commission does not provide any hard numbers to back up their 7 percent estimate. That's a stunning omission, given the fact that the whole argument for privatization rests on projected stock market returns. The truth is that the stock market is a much shakier investment than most people realize. Even with recent drops, stock prices are still high by historical standards. At this writing, the Dow Jones stands around 10,000. But Alan Greenspan warned that stock prices were too high (by making his "irrational exuberance" comment) back when the Dow was way down below 7,000! Another problem is Social Security's own accountants are projecting that corporate profits will grow much slower over the next 75 years than they have in the past. Since stock prices are tied to corporate profits, this can only dim the prospects for stock market returns. Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research crunched Social Security's own numbers and came up with a future stock market return of 3.6 percent a year. When you subtract the fees that banks will charge to manage the accounts, the stock market drops back into a dead heat with old reliable Social Security. Except that with the private accounts, it would still be possible to lose everything in a stock market crash. So far, the President's Social Security Commission has failed to refute or even respond to Baker's calculations.