Gary Rumor’s Anti-Entropic Continuum

William Greider has reported that there is a move to loot social security.
“Obama Will Fight with Us to Quash the Campaign to Loot Social Security — Right?

By William Greider, The Nation. Posted February 14, 2009.
Behind closed doors, powerful interests are pushing Obama to tap Social Security to pay for bank bailouts. How he responds will shape his presidency.

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever “grand bargain” they want President Obama to embrace in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea–Washington’s leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.”

He goes on to say how the government borrows regularly from Social Security to reduce the deficit but it has to pay back these loans.

“Uncle Sam owes these trillions to Social Security retirees and has to pay it back or look like just another deadbeat. That risk is the only “crisis” facing Social Security. It is the real reason powerful interests are so anxious to cut benefits. Social Security is not broke–not even close. It can sustain its obligations for roughly forty years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, even if nothing is changed. Even reports by the system’s conservative trustees say it has no problem until 2041 (that report is signed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the guy who bailed out the bankers). During the coming decade, however, the system will need to start drawing on its reserve surpluses to pay for benefits as boomers retire in greater numbers.

But if the government cuts the benefits first, it can push off repayment far into the future, and possibly forever. Otherwise, government has to borrow the money by selling government bonds or extend the Social Security tax to cover incomes above the current $107,000 ceiling. Obama endorses the latter option.

Follow the bouncing ball: Washington first cuts taxes on the well-to-do, then offsets the revenue loss by raising taxes on the working class and tells folks it is saving their money for future retirement. But Washington spends the money on other stuff, so when workers need it for their retirement, they are told, Sorry, we can’t afford it.

Federal budget analysts try to brush aside these facts by claiming the government is merely “borrowing from itself” when it dips into Social Security. But that is a substantive falsehood. Government doesn’t own this money. It essentially acts as the fiduciary, holding this wealth in trust for the “beneficial owners,” the people who paid the taxes. This is the bait and switch the establishment intends to execute.”

You can see the rest of the story on today’s alternet.

What we need is to nationalize the banking industry and finance in general, have accountants who are qualified to go in and check their books and write off the bad debt and reopen the institutions that are worth keeping as community banks run as coops for the people who live and work in each community providing safe places for financial exchanges and loans for investments in production and other social needs.

The entire speculative financial system needs to be reined in and brought under tight public scrutiny. If someone has an idea and wants capital to invest in it the money should come from community banks that have boards of directors who represent all sectors of the community, or from a special government fund set up for such purposes. Using the stock market to finance speculation is in my mind a destructive use of the peoples wealth. We must always remember that wealth is a social product of the aggregate of all of a peoples productivity in this and past lives. It is not the property of some capitalist speculator and we need to end that mode of the generation of wealth with all its attendant social distortions, booms and busts. We need a rational planned economy run not by captains of industry and financial speculators but by the people who are the producers of the wealth. The must be elected, re-callable officials who act as the trustees of this social wealth a government that acts as a socially responsible body reflecting the interests and needs of the people at large.
This means a social democracy, with experts hired to perform functions as required and compensated as is socially determined.
There may not be an easy path to this but it must come from the people who are willing to stand up for their rights and for a more equitable distribution of the social wealth. It should not go to capitalist speculators but to representative bodies of the people who may appoint specialists or not as they wish to direct the surplus after the basic needs are taken care of. But the basics of health, housing, clothing, transport, education and food should be considered social necessities and taken care of first with the surplus for research and development and then perhaps space exploration and more sophisticated communication devices, manufacturing processes etc being dedicated as is allowed by the community as a whole.
The various workplaces, municipalities, county, state and federal bodies must reflect the social needs of the producers and their dependants, ie the sick, students, mentally unfit, elderly and young.
This may be called council communism, workers control, social democracy, whatever you want, but as society evolves into more complex forms it must develop more sophisticated methods of determining how surplus value is distributed. Under capitalism we have had markets and investors, under state capitalism we have had bureaucrats. Neither is efficient or effective. They both have distortions, inefficiencies and produce uneven development.
The problem with democratic control has been one of a lack of efficient methods of development as well as resistance from elites who manipulate others to block the implementation by fear mongering through racism, nationalism, elitism, etc.
But in this age of instant communications and access via the internet and cell phone technology there is no reason why we cannot have direct democracy. Just as congress is notified when there is a vote so can we each be notified for a vote on relevant issues of whatever constituent body we belong via cell phone with a GPS system. If the government can use cell phones to survey us simply by making sure software has been downloaded into our cell phone to insure we cannot turn it off when it says it is off, such technology can be turned into a vehicle for democratic process.
We can also use technology to register opinions, as well as votes, it all exists as things stand all we need to do is to implement process and programing to make it a reality for all interested humans and if we could figure out how to communicate with other life forms we could add their votes.
That would be something if we could have the opinions of dolphins and whales and birds, and our cat and dog as to the environmental efficacy of a new technology. It would certainly change the ethical basis for the consumption of meat if we could communicate intelligently with cows and get their opinions. Talk about Animal Farm, but I am postulating beyond the present.
What is realistic is that humans can communicate intelligently and have devised the technology for instant processing of information and therefore direct democracy is practical in the same way that is was in ancient Athens. Now do we want that? There would certainly be the problem of a lack of expertise on issues, although we can comprehend an amazing amount of data, just look at sports nuts with their statistical knowledge of teams, or gambling experts or stock market players, it is simply a matter of developing a skill. But there is the issue of interest and time, not everyone will have the time or interest to devote to every issue and that can be as much a burden on the public if there was constant bombardment of issues to vote on, so there has to be some degree of delegation, automation of rote processes, and summarization of issues for people who are too busy in other areas to become fully proficient in political process. But that is all a matter of detail and there must be an insistence on due diligence on the part of the new explaining class, these would probably emerge out of the media, journalists already have certain skills and this could be a way to revive the flagging fortunes of journalists, they now become a commentary class and explaining class in the democratic process, an integration of the function of the 4th estate in government. The problem is of course maintaining transparency, access to raw data to anyone who has an interest to investigate beyond the summaries prepared for votes and also an independent ombudsman class whose job it is to investigate failures of process. With much of the data stream out of the hands of personal interest there would be less ability to corrupt. But there will always be the temptation for demogogary and deliberate falsification on the part of those who have an axe to grind or an interest in a particular view especialy when there is an economic incentive.
But if society is restructured so that wealth is shared, that there is not incentive economically to want to corrupt the system to gain an advantage that way then there is the matter of power mongering and that can be limited by the recall process, and if there is a constant debate alive in society then there will be little chance for a power hungry demagogue to take control. Ancient Athens had its share of those, witness the foolish expedition to conquer Syracuse and the prolonged war with Sparta.
Some had tried to reproduce ancient Athens and Sparta as rivals as the model for the USA and Soviet Union rivalry in the 20th century. Fortunately that analogy never held water and now we must admit that we have a unique situation in history where democracy can be direct and immediate. Workplace decisions can be made by the workers on all levels, community decisions can be made on all levels. There will be no need for private capitalism except perhaps in small ventures.
But what of fundamental differences, such as over religion. People go to war normally because there is some demagogue who is going to gain some advantage by inflaming the passions of otherwise reasonable people. If the profit in such venture is taken out by a lack of financial incentive then that leaves only blind prejudice and as we all become more educated and informed we can only hope that such tendencies die out and become the domain of specialists interested in ancient ways of thinking.
There is no need for a god of Israel or an Allah or a Vishnu or what have you except as the private conceit of an individual. On the other hand there are greater beings that may exist on other dimensions of reality that would seem to be gods to us just as we may seem to be to an ant. We cannot assume that simply because we have out grown irrational and childish fears of the dark and the unknown that we are alone in the universe or that there are not more intelligent and organized bodies out there that have made their presence known only in a manner that was interpreted as supernatural by those who saw some profit in such concepts as a means of social control.
It is easy to tell people that god said don’t do this or that, when there may be a perfectly rational reason to do or not to do something but calling in an unseen deity may simply be an intellectual expedient. Like Moses leading a group of former slaves from captivity to an unknown land crossing a dessert in the process, he could have said, no partying, it wastes precious resources, causes unneeded fights etc, but it was easier to come up with the 10 commandments and label the author a god, when there had been a Pharoah. It also would give some kind of a moral boost to his band to call themselves gods Chosen people when the went to Canaan to kick out the previous inhabitants, a lot better for justification than to say we are runaway slaves who want your land.
Simply to say the Bible is a massive work of propaganda might be overstating the case, but it certainly is a book that describes how a group of people managed to maintain group cohesion in a tough world. Whether they were justified is another matter, but they left a record and that has been enshrined as the justification for everything from the enslavement of millions of Africans to the civil rights movement to the attempts to force women to give birth to unwanted children.
Personally I will simply say that there may have been alien interventions at points in human history that have been described and the interference of the gods, but for the most part I will leave that field to those star gazers who look for alien life, people like the SETI Project. And out of body experience researchers and tribal medicine men.
And that is all I have to say about that today, happy valentines all.