[lbo-talk] Krugman: The Zombies Who Ate Alan Simpson's Brain

[socialismorbarbarism]

Doug quoting Doug quoting Keynes: “But the whole notion of private
pension funds, either of the sort that prevail now or would prevail
under a privatized system, depends on an economic illusion. In one of
the more profound passages of the General Theory, Keynes (CW VII, pp.
104–105) made an argument that has been virtually lost to modern
economic thought:

  We cannot, as a community, provide for future consumption by

  financial expedients but only by current physical output. In so far

  as our social and business organisation separates financial

  provision for the future from physical provision for the future so

  that efforts to secure the former do not necessarily carry the

  latter with them, financial prudence will be liable to destroy

  effective demand and thus impair well-being....”

Fine fine fine. But *general questions of the economic wisdom of
various state pension fund policies are not the point here*, and, more
importantly, treating them as if they’re the point here plays into the
hands of the enemy. That’s the field they want to play on.

The question is much narrower: Must the United States fulfill its
Social Security obligations? Or, if you want, are they not really
obligations—are they bullshit?

The unsophisticated, common-sense reaction to being told that the
Social Security trust fund is no such thing, that it’s not going to be
there, that maybe you’re not going to get your benefits, is: Those
fucking lying thieves! And sometimes the unsophisticated, common-sense
reaction is the correct one.

The United States isn’t suggesting anywhere that its debt obligations
to other nation-states and to private debtors are somehow open to
question. (And all hell would break loose if it did.) So, why is
question acceptable when discussing Social Security?

Yes, we are leftists here, so this is at some level a rhetorical
question. It’s all about class power: What’s for the capitalists is
due the capitalists, what’s for the workers is negotiable. Sure. *But,
when the subject is Social Security, that in itself is a non-trivial
shift in the relation of the United States government to the great
mass of its population.* This is the US federal welfare program that
is worthy of the name.

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 6:23 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 23, 2010, at 12:13 PM, Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>> Why disparage the defensive institutions and benefits won by the working
>> class?
>
...