Main Street

Behind the Attack on Social Security

The threat to Social Security is real. Economist Dean Barker today, writing at TPM gives us some insight into why we should be very frightened:

This effort is being led by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Mr. Peterson has personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the “fund managers’ tax subsidy,” an obscure provision of the tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than schoolteachers and firefighters. However, Peterson believes in giving back. He has committed $1 billion to an effort that is intended to take away the Social Security benefits that people have worked and paid for.

As part of this effort, Peterson set up a whole new foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He and/or his foundation created a “news service,” the Fiscal Times, which is intended to promote the view that we have no choice but to cut Social Security. The Fiscal Times has entered into agreements with the Washington Post and other credible newspapers to provide material.

Peterson is also funding the creation of a high school curriculum which is intended to tell our children that the in the future the country will be too poor to finance Social Security. He funded a silly exercise called “America Speaks,” which was supposed to convince an assembly of selected participants that we must cut Social Security after a daylong immersion in Peterson-style propaganda. (The people didn’t buy it.) And now his crew is spending $20 million on an ad campaign to convince people the world will end if we don’t cut Social Security.

Peterson’s started his own media propaganda outlet, and is actively involved in brainwashing high school students – all aimed at destroying Social Security. He’s got more money than he could ever spend in his life, but he wants to make sure YOUR retirement is spent living in a cardboard box.

Not only is this a perversion of the American social contract and the American dream, it’s also a slap in the collective faces of we the taxpayers who bailed these miserable greedsuckers out with TARP.

Tags: social security