I agree with Carl that you are granting the capitalists too much credit for conspiratorial creativity here. This is really just end-stage bubble kinds of stuff. Lots of GEN-Xers have known nothing but soaring stock markets and high social security taxes. So, they figure they would be better off with Soc. Sec. privatized and are supporting it. A good bear market ought to take the steam out of this half-baked privatization push more rapidly than any amount of data mongering by LBO or EPI. Barkley Rosser On Wed, 12 Aug 1998 09:34:06 -0400 Carl Remick <cremick at rlmnet.com> wrote:
> Re: "Well, Carl, you're the PR professional. Don't you think they could
> pull it off?"
>
> Absolutely not. I think I was misleading in talking about the
> establishment's "wiles" -- a word that suggests the aforesaid is
> cleverer in its obfuscations than is the case. I consider Ronald Reagan
> & Associates "Exhibit A" in making that argument: There was never
> anything particularly creative or subtle about their chronic
> misrepresentations; people at large believed them because they WANTED to
> believe them. CEOs likewise get a free ride these days; they have to
> satisfy astonishingly low standards of logic and evidence to get people
> to buy the free-market line.
>
> BUT, history shows there is nothing like the bursting of a speculative
> bubble to clear the air of credulousness at large. Greenspan et al. can
> waffle on all they like, but if we really are staring something like
> 1929 in the face, the age of uninhibited marketplace "solutions" to
> everything is well and truly over.
>
> Or I could be wrong. In that case, I propose a new national motto:
> "Mundus vult decipi -- ergo decipiatur." (The world wants to be deceived
> -- therefore let it be deceived.)
>
> Carl Remick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Henwood [mailto:dhenwood at panix.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 1998 12:41 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: stox -- and the probability of resistance
>
>
> Carl Remick wrote:
>
> >Re "one thing about the stock market crashing -- it would spell a death
> >knell to
> >privatization of social security."
> >
> >That's what I surmised the other day, but Doug said the always wily
> >establishment would force privatization on through to pump the market
> up
> >again. I have no doubt about the wiles of the powers that be, but I
> >think this would an impossibly tricky maneuver to pull off in the face
> >of a great panic -- which indeed just might be on the horizon.
>
> Well, Carl, you're the PR professional. Don't you think they could pull
> it off?
>
> Doug
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu