Quote:
Originally posted by smooth
I think our social safety net programs are the things that are going to give.
We just witnessed a previously considered sacred program receive its first real shove toward privitizing and/or dismantling our senior health care benefits.
|
Well, perhaps many people would like that to happen. But I don't think it will really happen.
Apparently there's a neo-con strategy out there called "Starve the Beast," in which you run up big deficits with tax cuts which favor the wealthy, and then 'balance' them by cutting most government entitlement and regulatory programs -- thus leaving big business and the rich under relatively few restraints. The military, of course, gets left alone.
It's a nice theory, but middle-aged people vote. When Clinton left office, apparently the self-destruct date for Social Security (because of money running out) was like 2039. Now I'm sure it's a lot sooner. The argument that the start-date for SS can be rolled back because people live longer is fallacious; yeah, they do, but a lot of them still can't work much past 65, or are otherwise disabled. So all you're doing is taking people off the SS rolls and throwing them onto the federal disability rolls, which are growing by leaps and bounds already, by the way.
At any rate, the hurt is going to come down in a few years to the general population. And no matter how the current ruling class tries to cement deficits in place by passing low taxes (raising taxes is harder than lowering them), it won't change things. It'll just make the fight harder and nastier, and in the end you'll end up with enough pissed-off voters to elect another FDR type (or worse, a Huey Long/Pat Buchanan type) to make major changes to the system that may or may not be well advised.
Intersting times, ahoy....
[edit -- at least unless the Demos get in and make substantive changes before the fit hits the shan; but I'm not sure that they have the will or the means to do so... ]