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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239914)	12/15/2013 10:13:31 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542147

"And again I say - Obama put the first nail in the coffin of SS when he reduced funding. " Yes, he did. Only Nixon could go to China, and only Obama can fuck up SS. Or, he could propose removing the earnings cap.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239914)	12/15/2013 11:08:40 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542147

Well he didn't privatize it. He appointed a commission to fix it. Then when the Commission came back with suggestions he didn't balk, but implemented those ideas and made SS work. lol, anyone would have done something like that. He didn't privatize it because no one could have privatized it then. It would have been politically impossible. Implementing the commission's recommendations wasn't genius, it was necessity. Furthermore... And again I say - Obama put the first nail in the coffin of SS when he reduced funding. The real attack on SS is the "Starve the Beast" philosophy that Reagan's team began to implement. Run up deficits as high as possible, make it impossible for the Federal govt to pay for anything or do anything. That will kill the beast. That was the long term philosophy that drove that group. They bloody well knew what they were doing when they put in those steep tax cuts in his first term. If you read Stockman's The Triumph of Politics, you will see that when Stockman put together his budget, he knew that Volcker's policies was reining in inflation, but he was forced by the others to use higher inflation projections for the out years of the budget in order to make it appear that the steep tax cuts wouldn't result in unacceptable deficits. When, as he predicted behind the scenes, those deficits did happen, even Reagan's team had to agree to higher taxes (or "user fees" as they called them) in order to undo some of the damage that they had done. But Bush's tax cuts and his unpaid for wars were the second sally of "Starve the Beast", and succeeded beyond their dreams when combined with the financial crisis. Those were the real "nails in the coffin" if anything was. Even that damage might be undone if the Republicans can be kept from controlling the Congress and Presidency. But it will be really hopeless if they do gain control in 2016. Inflation was high and kept going higher all through Carters administration. To give Carter credit for fixing inflation is ludicrous. No one gives Carter "credit for fixing inflation" except insofar as he appointed Volcker to be head of the Fed. The fact is that, given the energy shocks of the 70s no one was going to control inflation without also sending the country into a deep recession. The high interest rates that Volcker had to courage to put in place and maintain despite calls for his head and despite the fact that, politically, it was damaging to very guy who had appointed him were what in the final analysis broke the inflationary spiral, along with the usual "cure" for high energy prices--i.e., high energy prices ("the cure for high energy prices is high energy prices, the cure for low energy prices is low energy prices").

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239914)	12/15/2013 1:57:59 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542147

Show me where he campaigned to privatize SS - I back my stuff up with facts. As usual, reading ahead, I see Sam has already done the trick for me. Greenspan was already on the record as favoring privatizing ss by that point as well. But I also agree with Sam's point that the politics wouldn't let it happen. The only good thing Reagan did at that point is accept the political realities.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239914)	12/15/2013 2:07:21 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542147

Obama put the first nail in the coffin of SS when he reduced funding. Dropping all show of context aren't you. Hmmm. It was hardly the first nail; been quite a few nails. But it was a nail; I'll certainly grant you that. But while I would not have done it, I understand the sense of necessity that pushed the Obama folk to do it. When the Congressional Reps refused to fund any stimulus and rather pushed spending cuts, the Obama folk had to find some way to get money back into the economy.