by DemFromCT
So when you're failing at selling your political cereal and soap, what do you do? This from the op-ed page of WSJ.com by Ed Crane (president of the Cato Institute):
You want to get people excited about personal accounts? Tell them about the 1960 Supreme Court case, Flemming v. Nestor, which explicitly says Americans have no ownership rights to the money they pay into Social Security. It is, the Court ruled, a social program of Congress with absolutely no contractual obligations. What you get back at retirement is entirely up to the 535 members of Congress. Where's the dignity in that?
In addition to more control over your life through personal accounts, all the ancillary benefits of ownership should be enthusiastically played up: the pride one has in having provided for his or her own retirement, as opposed to being a supplicant of the state; the security of knowing the government can't take the money away (which they do whenever they raise the payroll tax or push back the retirement age); and most of all, knowledge that your loved ones may benefit from your labor. Inheritability is a hugely underexploited benefit of personal accounts. When you die, the money simply disappears. What's up with that? Which opponents of personal accounts want to debate that issue? If you want to energize the grass roots, challenge opponents of personal accounts on inheritability. Why should the money go to the government and not your loved ones?
I recently undertook the masochistic task of reading the last 10 apoplectic op-eds Paul Krugman has written on Social Security for the New York Times. Not once in his rants does he address the issues of ownership and inheritability. Indeed, opponents of personal accounts shy away from those issues like a vampire from the cross. I know you might counter by saying the president does mention ownership in virtually every speech. True, but mostly in passing. It's not the centerpiece of his sales pitch. In Orlando recently, he used the word "ownership" once, on page 18 of a 25-page speech. He never once mentioned inheritance, choice or personal control.
Sticking to the facts and letting the President sink himself (despite the invitation-only pre-screened friendly audience that has become a way of life for Junior)? Why, the noive of that Krugman. "Ownership" – the Holy Grail of the WSJ – means different things to different people. From the WaPo:
"I'm 1,000-percent convinced of this: The president cares the most about this $10-an-hour person," said Allan B. Hubbard, director of the White House National Economic Council. "And what he gets most irritated by is when it is suggested, 'Oh the $10-an-hour person isn't sophisticated enough to deal with a personal retirement account.' "
But between work, day care and the endless battle to lift themselves up, some members of the president's would-be ownership society say they would just as soon not have another thing to worry about. At least that was the case for several who in recent weeks visited a Southeast D.C. tax clinic run by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now."When you know you're entitled to Social Security, you know it's going to continue to come until you breathe your last breath," said Sondra Gilbert, a former D.C. government worker who had been jobless since 1999. "But if I start putting the few dollars he's going to let me put into an account, I could run out of that in a year or two, or whatever. Then I'm back on what? A homeless shelter?"
Do I need to add that most members of the working poor have not likely read WSJ.com nor do they likely share Mr.Crane's orgasmic vision of the ownership society, which really means the end of the New Deal social compact?
In many ways, the 2004 election seems to have left the Bush Administration's radicals shedding their cloak of moderation now that they're in a position to effect change. The interesting thing is whether they can get the public to buy the cereal and soap. So far, they're not doing especially well. But that just means firing the ad agency and slipping the 'moderate' 'compassionate' cloak back on the closer we get to 2006, hoping for short memories and fat ad buys. Hopefully, we'll all be around to remind them of what they've said, and what they really mean.
You want to get people excited about personal accounts? Tell them about the 1960 Supreme Court case, Flemming v. Nestor....
Good thinking, Ed--'cause nothing excites the American people like obscure 45-year-old court cases.
Thanks, DemFromCT--the stink of desperation is all over these guys.
Posted by: Hprof | April 18, 2005 at 10:15
Um, Mr. Cato Institute? How does it help to tell people about a 45 year old court decision at the same time you're villifying the federal judiciary?
I'm not even sure if that contradicts or supports the Bush/DeLay/Frist attack on the judiciary.
Posted by: DHinMI | April 18, 2005 at 12:40
Doesn't that court case also essentially say that there is no guarantee that congress has to let you have the money in your personal/private account??
Zach
Posted by: Zach | April 18, 2005 at 13:50
what i don't get: why people don't like the idea to pay for one another, as if they were member of a bigger community. In the end, it is the concept of nation that is at stake, isn't it?
Posted by: braq | April 18, 2005 at 13:53
braq--that's the OLD ownership society...you know, the one Strom Thurmond liked and Trent Lott wishes we could get back.
Posted by: DHinMI | April 18, 2005 at 13:58
OK. Let's take that "hugely underexploited benefit of personal accounts" and make it this year's ONLY reform of Social Security. Add a cash-equivalent option to Social Security. That would tally up to the amount a contributor paid into the system (plus some amount of interest). The heirs of anyone who died before consuming the cash-equivalent amount of her or his Social Security contributions would be able to collect this amount over a period of, say, ten years.
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