Carrol Cox wrote: > Go back several centuries or even a few decades in some places, and many > places still -- and children support their parents! How could it be > different? Social security is simply social rather than familial.
J.D. responded: right. the basic idea is families used to take care of their own parents (often in the same house), while now there's a big pot of money which allows large numbers of families to share risk in taking care of their parents as a group. To some extent, it reduces income inequality, because it keeps most retired people out of poverty. It also gives the retired more autonomy from their offspring. If the social security privateers had their way (replacing the system with 401k accounts and the like), most people would have their parents moving back in with them. the trust fund allows the possibility of using other government funds to make sure this all balances. Since the "Greenspan reforms," however, we taxpayers have been putting more into the trust fund than is taken out. -- ************************************************************** The way I see SS is that the working class produces all the wealth outside of nature. Its entitlement to retiring from wage-slaving away for their whole lives is shored up by having some of that wealth invested in government bonds. That's what has happened. We worked. We put the money away via taxes. We're entitled to all the wealth we produce; but of course, the cappos disagree because they took risks with the wealth we produced in the first place. Are we that dumb? If some cappos, like say this Petersen fool, whine that we aren't 'entitled' to the funds in SS because they ain't there because in turn, the cappos had to spend $12 trillion to 'save the economy' during the GFC, I say, "Fuck you assholes." BTW...this is good. More Petersen types trying to tell workers to 'get serious': http://www.truth-out.org/files/images/TomTomorrow8-18.png Hi-ho, Mike B) *********************************************************************** http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
