Doug wrote: > You're basically conceding that the idea of a SS surplus is a fiction, and > making good on promised benefits will require new borrowing. There's no > reserve > to be drawn down. Benefits will have to be funded by future incomes - the > whole > thing is pay as you go.
I would not call this a "concession." I view financial obligations as flowing from legal contracts and political configurations -- e.g. the political and legal conditions that led to passing the 1935 Social Security Act and then reforming it as it stands today. So financial obligations that flow from legal contracts and political configurations are necessarily contingent, because legal and political conditions are in flux (with short-run stasis and all that, but overall in flux). In plain terms, these obligations (and all other obligations) are contingent upon the ability of the parties and ultimately of the state to make them bind, to enforce them. Karl Marx used the term "legal fiction" to refer to private ownership contracts (i.e. to what we call financial assets) in contrast with the effective economic power of private individuals in a given social context to exclude others from snatching their wealth without their consent. But Marx wasn't referring here to a mere illusion that can be dispelled by people merely changing the notions in their heads. Marx was referring to an alienated social fact with a certain degree of hardness or objectivity (with or without the quotation marks). Social objectivity is illusory and then it is not. A point that Max (not Marx, but Max) has made here before (or at least, that's how I have construed his point) is that it is incumbent upon the left to promote the idea that financial obligations (tacit or explicitly legal) contracted by the federal government with regular people (the safety net) are as sacred and hardwired as the financial obligations between, say, the Treasury and the holders of regular Treasuries or between GE and its bondholders. Max has suggested that leftists tend to acts *as if* these obligations between society (as represented by the federal government) and working people are second rate, for some reason much more contingent than the other ones out there. If that is the case (and it seems that it is), we are helping a self-fulfilling prophecy to be realized against our own interest. So, I agree with Max, Absolutely! In fact, if it is really up to us, then we should promote the notion that financial obligations between society and working people are the only ones that deserve to be honored. All other ones, well, we'll see about that.... Now, I agree with you: the outcome will depend on the class struggle. But, for some reason, you seem to suggest that if the government had a portfolio containing, instead of some rather peculiar type of Treasuries, private assets (e.g. "real" securities like real estate or commodities, or at least bonds and other obligations issued by private individuals, corporations, or foreign governments) and dutifully labelled it "SS reserve portfolio," then SS would be solvent. Since that is not the case, then SS is very iffy. Well, indeed. But those private financial assets are also contingent and, hence, they are also iffy, "fictional." The outcome of those financial obligations will also depend on the class struggle! If society as it is doesn't gather the productive force required to make these (or other) obligations effective, if they are left unenforced for whatever reason (reasons that are all contingent on political conditions), then they will all prove to be entirely fictional, and that's that. Why is my house ownership deed more binding than, say, the legal responsibility of the Fed to ensure the "full employment" of the labor force? Well, ultimately, because we all politically make it so. If we are going to go against the fetishism of U.S. capitalism, then let's do it across the board. ¿No? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
