I've always loved former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, and for much more than the truly awesome jugs on his great, great, great grand-daughter, Jessica. I love him because he was the funniest senator in recent American history that wasn't Bob Dole.My main reason for respecting and adoring the man as I do, however, is that he never gave much of a shit what you peons thought about much of anything. There are few higher qualities in a republic than that.
Most people -and Republicans in particular, when Republicans aren't, y'know, in power - forget that the United States is not a democracy, it's a republic. In a republic, you elect representatives to make decisions for you, because you're either too busy or too stupid to make them for yourselves.
Edmund Burke made the point best at his Speech To The Electors Of Bristol At The Conclusion Of The Poll on November 3, 1774 when he said;
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs—and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.Goddamned right! No functional adult can represent the democratic wishes of a people that are incapable of holding a consistent position on Britney Spears from one week to the next, and when devious scumbags like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner suggest that they can, you should know that they're fucking lying.
But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure—no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
The American people are, by and large, powerfully ignorant and want mutually exclusive things; like a robust, free-market economy, with a high-tech military and the end of the welfare state, so long as it isn't their welfare that's being ended. A people that want the capability to end life on earth, but don't trust the government to deliver your mail shouldn't be trusted to decide anything at all because they might be dangerously dumb. Or they might think that there are two different governments: one that targets missiles, and one that spends billions of dollars on bridges that service 50 people.
Senator Simpson seemed to always understand that. He appeared to know that if the people thought he went too far astray of his wishes, they'd shitcan him. And they never did. Mostly because he was almost always right about the issues. So he didn't really have care about what his constituents thought about "the issues" on a day-to-day basis.
Now that he's out of office, he cares even less, which makes him immeasurably more fun.
Take his position as co-chairman on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Friggin' cowardly Republicans like John McCain demanded that Obama appoint one to deal with the debt, but voted it down in the Senate when it looked like its recommendation would have to face an up-or-down vote in Congress without amendments.
Social Security, alongside Medicare and national defense, is one of the three ticking time bombs that is going to fiscally blow the United States up in the very near future. The country can't can't afford any of them at their current rate of growth.
The Pentagon budget is the easiest to downsize. If you reform American foreign policy so that it the United States isn't the final arbiter of every dispute in the world, you don't need a very large army at all. That's what Washington, who knew something about fighting wars, called for in his Farewell Address and the founders were nearly unanimous about. However, if Americans want to police all the world's regions and, say, disarm giant countries like Iran; the military is far, far too small. You need a much bigger budget and a draft for that.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are far more devious, in that they are legislative entitlements. The problem with entitlement programs is that, well, folks think that they're entitled to them, whether the country can afford it or not.
The problem is, as it is with most issues, is demographics. Look at the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It doesn't matter what Jerusalem is willing to concede, the Arab birth rate eventually solves the problem itself. Sooner or later, the Arabs are so going to demographically overwhelm the Israelis that they'll just have to say "let's vote". and Israel will either have to cede to their demands or cease to be a democracy.
The same is true of American - and most Western - social programs. There are a lot more old people than there used to be, and they have nothing else to do but vote.
When Social Security was created, it was the perfect Ponzi scheme. In 1936, the retirement age was set at 64, but life expectancy was only 62. If you lived to collect benefits, you didn't for very long. Also, there were about a dozen people in the work force for every one collecting benefits. In the very near future there will be fewer than two people in the workforce for every recipient that will be expected to support the largest generation of retirees in human history, mostly because Medicare and Medicaid allows them to live so long.
While we're here, let's discuss the canard that people have actually paid for their Social Security benefits, okay? Even after President Reagan actually doubled the payroll tax to "save" Social Security in 1983, most retirees still receive everything they paid into the system within two years, but live for almost ten beyond retirement. And that was before the Boomers were entitled to their lucre.
As you might have guessed, that's deficit spending, and Social Security is expected to pay out more in benefits than it receives in taxes as soon as 2016. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined have $57 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, based on current tax revenue and projected expenditures.
Which is where Al Simpson comes in. As co-chair of the Obama Commission, he's getting oldseters pissing in his cornflakes on a fairly regular basis, mostly by e-mail.
Some crazy bitch from the Older Women's League, which no one has ever heard of, sent Senator Simpson a nasty gram this week that, so far as I know, no one has actually seen. But Simpson's sure was. It reads as follows;
Dear Ms. Carson,
Someone was good enough to forward me your column of “Enough with the Pink Panthers Bit” of April 27,2010.
Some of what you say is true. Much is not – but that’s nothing new about public life for me! I have news for you too, my friend. There may be no group called the Pink Panthers working to protect Social Security but I sure as hell am! I’ve spent many years in public life trying to stabilize that system while people like you babble
into the vapors about “disgusting attempts at ageism and sexism” and all the rest of that crap.
Now hold on tight, because you won’t like what I’m sending you. You may obviously be aware that the Social Security system is “in trouble.” If you don’t agree with that, then there is no need to read any further. But I wish to share with you the presentation by Stephen C. Goss, Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration on May 12, 2010 to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. If you think the statistics on poverty for seniors are alarming – then you need to read this little pamphlet to know what is really alarming.
If we can’t get a handle on this system and make it sustainable and assure long term solvency, and make some changes that are “minor” at the present time and will become “major” as each year passes, then take a look at the chart on Page 6 which I hope you are able to discern if you are any good at reading graphs – or anything that
might challenge your biases and prejudices.
Anyway, have a look at it and if you should choose, you might communicate with me. If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know. And yes, I’ve made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know ‘em too. It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!
Al,
And you know what? Al is absolutely fucking right!
Don't get me wrong, it started out as a hell of a scam. In 1935, FDR instituted a new payroll tax that would pay a minimum income to citizens over 65. It was a great idea that was made even greater by the fact that American life expectancy at the time was 62. The program was even more popular by the time the baby boomers had fully entered the work force and there were fourteen or so people paying into the system for every person collecting benefits. Soon, there will be fewer than two.
The chief suckler happened to be the federal government itself. Had Social Security been managed properly, the surpluses from the program's first five decades could have been used to pay benefits for at least another generation. But the payroll taxes that were supposed to be funding Social Security instead went into general revenue, where they were spent on the things like wars, tax cuts and all of the other dopey shit that successive American governments have done to stay popular.
But don't worry. Every time Congress raided Social Security, they left a nifty I.O.U, which is practically worthless in the face of a $13 trillion dollar national debt. The sheer size of the United States' debt is going to make Treasury bills almost worthless in the very near future.
Of course, one should never forget that Social Security is the single biggest welfare program in human history. The idea that you "invest" into is a farce when you consider that you collect everything you paid into the system within the first two years of collecting benefits, once you adjust for inflation. That being the case, current seniors are getting about $15, 000 in free government money a year for upwards of twenty years.
Most Republicans, being Republicans, want to give some or all of your Social Security money to Wall Street, which is so mind-alteringly stupid that the idea should be scheduled as a narcotic and outlawed. Wall Street's shenanigans in the fall of 2008 decimated the average 401 (k) plan, in some cases wiping out two-thirds of their value.
The most recent plan, under the second President Bush, said that it would only allow Social Security investment into "preferred" stocks, chosen by Washington. This would even further pervert the stock market, in that it would identify companies that were not only too big to fail, but companies that could not be allowed to fail under any circumstances. Privatizing Social Security is only a good idea if you thought that the Troubled Assest Relief Program and Ben Bernanke's other hi jinks weren't quite extensive enough, because it would someday necessitate bailouts that would dwarf even those.
Given my druthers, I'd abolish Social Security outright. Firstly, because I don't think that government is equipped to be involved in the retirement planning business. Secondly, because the whole program is now such an ungodly fucking fucking mess because democracy was allowed to get involved in it, leaving it broke. However, I understand that that's politically impossible. Anyone who seriously proposed that would immediately become Rodney King, faced with 310 million angry members of the LAPD.
That being the case, there has to be fundamental reform of Social Security, and I think Senator Simpson knows this. That's why his not seeking office is instrumental in actually being serious about it, because no realistic proposal is going to be popular with anybody.
Here are mine;
First, the retirement age is going to have to go up. When FDR passed Social Security, the retirement age was set where your average worker had a pretty good chance of being dead. That's no longer true, and hasn't been for some time. Just raising the retirement age to seventy will probably save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next generation or so.
Second, increase the payroll tax. The current regime was designed for a given number of workers contributing for every recipient, and that's been out of whack for at least twenty years. The Boomers are going to throw it further out of balance, particularly given the outsourcing of middle-class manufacturing jobs over the last thirty years. An increasingly service-oriented economy cannot long sustain a program like Social Security at current contribution levels.
Third, means-test benefits. If you live in, say, Idaho and make a hundred thousand a year, it can be reasonably be expected that you can finance your own retirement. Social Security was initially universal because of the real possibility of class warfare during the Great Depression that no longer exists.
Fourth, lift the cap on taxable income. Social Security's single biggest challenge is revenue, and there's no bigger source of it than incomes over $100,000 a year. Once you get away from the idea that Social Security is an investment, and recognize it for the wealth-redistribution program that it really is, that becomes more politically realistic to do.
Fifth - and probably most important - take the money way from the president and Congress! The "democratic process" that allowed successive administrations and Congresses to piss away the money as it came in is exactly why the system is where it is now. Budget surpluses are politically impossible to maintain in a democracy, especially in the American variety thereof, where the constant and insane demand for tax cuts, social programs, and new and exciting wars eats away money faster than it can be generated.
That will require giving the Social Security Administration complete independence from the political process, much like the Federal Reserve enjoys. It might even be possible to merge Social Security into the Fed, although I'll admit that I haven't really thought out the wisdom of doing that. But I do know that infusing democracy into Social Security money has bankrupted the system, and the illusion of solvency has only been maintained by Treasury bills and the mounting national debt.
I'll be the first one to admit that some of my ideas are ultra-conservative, far to the right of what even Paul Ryan is proposing; and some are uber-liberal. But they all recognize the very demanding laws of mathematics, which is what is demanded in a time of crisis.
I don't know that Senator Simpson would agree with anything that I'm suggesting, and I know that a lobbyist scumbag like Ms. Carson won't agree with any of them. But I do know that only someone as independently-minded and free of retarded dogma as Alan Simpson can do anything like what I'm suggesting.
I hope that he tells more folks to go fuck themselves in the very near future,
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