Social Security: Bush creates a false crisis so he can create a real crisis...

Bush had a lovely town hall style forum this week on social security. Of course, as is everything in Bushworld, the forum was staged and everybody pre-screened complete with perfectly written questions and responses straight out of Karl Rove's pen. ("Real" forums under the GOP is like "reality" TV: it's all scripted and acted out.)

Bush wants you to believe that Social Security is on the verge of collapse. This doomsday talk is to get you scared enough to accept his "fix" for it. But is Social Security in a crisis? Or is Bush selling a bogus crisis (like Iraq) so he can create a real crisis?

First, is Social Security on the brink of ruin? Not according the the Congressional Budget Office, the non-partisan group whose calculations are not challenged. It's the closest thing to a reliable source of number-crunching in our whole government.

The CBO says that if Social Security is NOT TOUCHED, it will continue to make FULL payments to everybody all the way till 2052. And even after that, SS will still be paying out more than they do today.

Keep in mind, the whole notion of a SS problem was because the Baby Boomers were supposed to drain it dry. But as CBO tells us, SS will be able to pay them just fine.

But for some reason, Bush and the GOP insist we must "fix" it now before it's too late. Too late for what? Too late for sharks on Wall Street to cash-in big time off of broker's fees and indiscriminate (i.e. unwise) investing. The Dow would shoot back up past 5000 and they'd be living the high life again, just like the 1990s. And we saw what happened when THAT bubble burst. Lots of regular people who invested their savings went broke. But did any of the rich folks, traders, and bankers go broke? No. You can tell because nobody was jumping out of windows like 1929.

Second, even though there is no real crisis would Bush's plan actually help anyone? Well, it would help the aforementioned professional money people. And it would help a very few regular folks who got lucky and struck it rich. But the vast majority of people would end up on the short end. Once the young people take out billions from the system, THEN you'll see a severe crisis. The program will immediately have to resolve inadequate funding issues. People will start suffering immediately.

This discussion cannot continue without some frank honesty. Investing is just high-class gambling. When you buy stocks, you are gambling that their value will go up instead of down. Everybody crunches the numbers, but nobody knows with any certainty. The only sure winners are the brokers and the boards of the companies invested in. (Even if the company collapses later, those in the board room get fat bonuses when stock values go up.)

It is also true that most Americans don't know squat about Wall Street. They're suckers ripe for the picking. I know working folks who invested their savings in the 1990s because they were sold a bill of goods that they were assured to make more money in stocks than they were in savings interest. Every single one of them lost at least half their investment. Now, they're at retirement age and suffering from the vicissitudes of the market. They need Social Security now more than they ever thought they would.

THIS is what Bush's plan will bring. Bush will CAUSE a crisis that would not otherwise have existed.

Why would he do this? Because it is a basic Republican belief that the government should never pay out money directly to people. It should have to filter its way down through any number of corporations first. Bush's SS plan is a new nuance to "trickle down economics."

UPDATE: For Paul Krugman's explanation of this hoax, look here.