Friday, August 27, 2004
Is Alan Greenspan Grover Norquist's bastard son?
Back in February and March of this year, Alan Greenspan was telling anyone who'd listen that Social Security and Medicare benefits would need to be cut back severely because the cupboard was bare - the government doesn't have the money to pay out. He's saying it again.
He seems conveniently to have forgotten a couple of things. First, that the Bush tax cuts are the reason for the revenue shortfalls - tax cuts that he vetted and approved because the Bill Clinton budget surpluses were excessive. And second, that he himself was co-chair of the commision that revamped Social Security to prevent this very type of shortfall from occuring.
So we have the US' head banker telling us that pouring hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into Iraq - with no revenue in sight to pay it back - and eschewing hundreds of billions more a year to tax cuts that have yet to produced any job growth - are good things. But oh by the way, Boomers, forget about that pension fund you've already been paying in to for the past 30-40 years - the money's not there for you.
It's a potent combination of "Soylent Green" and the neutron bomb as applied to economics - people are disposable, so we can kill 'em off when they reach retirement age, but the business infrastructure must be left standing so the next generation of proles can take their turn on the assembly line.
He seems conveniently to have forgotten a couple of things. First, that the Bush tax cuts are the reason for the revenue shortfalls - tax cuts that he vetted and approved because the Bill Clinton budget surpluses were excessive. And second, that he himself was co-chair of the commision that revamped Social Security to prevent this very type of shortfall from occuring.
So we have the US' head banker telling us that pouring hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars into Iraq - with no revenue in sight to pay it back - and eschewing hundreds of billions more a year to tax cuts that have yet to produced any job growth - are good things. But oh by the way, Boomers, forget about that pension fund you've already been paying in to for the past 30-40 years - the money's not there for you.
It's a potent combination of "Soylent Green" and the neutron bomb as applied to economics - people are disposable, so we can kill 'em off when they reach retirement age, but the business infrastructure must be left standing so the next generation of proles can take their turn on the assembly line.
