I think you could safely say that social security already is an indirect investment in the private sector. The money you pay in as an individual or that your employer matches are based on gross income up to $68,400 dollars. If the economy is healthy, and you are working and earning,then the more money that is going into the trust fund. The trust fund invests it surplus funds in special treasury bonds. This allows the federal government to spend money and buy or build things. Who do they buy from? The private sector of course. Thus pumping up the private sector. This is pretty sketchy, and, doesn't even address the demand created by social security recipints or government employees. as they spend their wages.
Your email pal,
Tom L.
Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
> John K. Taber wrote:
>
> > Paul Henry Rosenberg said:
> >
> > [re Social Security]
> > But there's more: it was the conservatives who originally insisted that
> > SS *NOT* be an investment vehicle. It's very important to make the
> > point that it wasn't a liberal plan to set things up this way -- it was
> > the result of negotiations in which liberals got the plan through, but
> > not in the form they originally envisioned.
> >
> > Me:
> > This is news to me. Do you mean during the negotiations in the 30s?
> > Could you give me some pointers?
>
> >From my webpage, The Conservative Attack on Social Security
> (http://home1.gte.net/rad/ss_inf/ss_inf_1.htm):
>
> Claim: Social Security is a liberal bureaucratic waste. We'd make much
> more money investing it in the stock market.
>
> Truth: It was CONSERVATIVES who originally prevented Social Security
> funds from being
> invested in the stock market. This was part of their long-term efforts
> to undermine Social Security.
>
> "Social Security has been a fixture for so long -- since 1935 -- that we
> take it for granted. But until the 1950s, it was hotly contested. In its
> early years, conservatives pursued two strategies to undermine it: They
> tried to limit who could benefit from it, and they opposed the
> accumulation of a vast government-managed pool of investment funds for
> Social Security."
>
> "These early critics of Social Security claimed that aiding the least
> privileged of society was their top priority. They advocated minimal
> 'flat-rate' pensions for anyone in extreme need, while arguing that the
> nation could not 'afford' to pay for pensions calibrated to middle-class
> incomes. Why would conservatives want to help the poor first? Because it
> made political sense. The last thing Republicans and business leaders
> wanted was for middle-income Americans to gain a stake in a large,
> popular federal government
> program. Conservatives, then and now, know it's far easier to minimize
> -- or eliminate -- programs that benefit only the poor."
>
> "Critics also campaigned hard against the government investing
> accumulated payroll taxes in interest-generating securities -- even
> though that would have been the most fiscally sound plan for the long
> run. Again, their political logic was paramount: They wanted to minimize
> government's role as much as possible."
>
> "Conservatives largely prevailed on the matter of investments, but over
> the decades they lost the struggle to keep the middle class out of
> Social Security. By the late 1970s, most American families had a big
> stake in Social Security."
>
> Theda Skocpol, "Déjà views: Attacks on Social Security are as old
> as the program Itself." Mother Jones, Nov-Dec 1996
> (http://bsd.mojones.com/mother_jones/ND96/deja.html)
>
> --
> Paul Rosenberg
> Reason and Democracy
> rad at gte.net
>
> "Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"