Happy 75th, Social Security
Tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of FDR’s signing of the bill that created Social Security. Despite—or perhaps—because of the program’s popularity and success, the austerity party has its knives out for it.
Keyed to the anniversary, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published a very useful factsheet on Social Security: how it’s reduced poverty among the elderly, and how it offers quite a few services for the young.
It’s been a while since I did a piece in LBO on the preposterous assumptions behind the projections of the system’s imminent bankruptcy—I’ll be doing one very soon. In the meanwhile, here’s a link to the most recent one: Social Security: the definitive piece. The headnote has links to its three precursors; LBO has been on this case for sixteen years.
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Go get ’em, Doug.
With the increasing likelihood, Obama’s warning about Republicans privatizing Social Security notwithstanding, that Obama will use cuts to Social Security to get re-elected, your important work on this is needed more than ever.
Just as a Republican was needed to open up trade with the Godless Red Chinese, so too is a Democrat needed to cut and pave the way towards privatizing Social Security. As Clinton eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996, so too will Obama demonstrate his reliability to the Overclass by cutting Social Security in the name of deficit reduction.
After all, Social Security, as Alan Simpson had the indiscreet honesty to proclaim, is for lesser people.