Claims And Issues

WHY DO REPUBLICANS WANT YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY?

As part of the economic recovery from the effects of the pandemic, Republicans propose that people should take out loans against future Social Security payments.  The intent is to propose a loan instead of direct payments from the federal treasury to replace all or part of the wages that workers have lost during the pandemic shutdown.  This comes from concern that has developed after large corporations and their wealthy executives have already gotten their bailouts.  See, e.g., Michael Hiltzik, Column:  Republicans Seek to Exploit COVID-19 Crisis to Cut Social Security Benefits, LOS ANGELES TIMES online Monday, May 11, 2020;  Helaine Olen, Retirement in America is Already Uncertain.  Republicans Want to Make it Worse, WASHINGTON POST online Wed., May 13, 2020.

    Apparently this thought was inspired by the familiar use of taking out a loan against your life insurance policy.

    But here's a huge difference between the two kinds of insurance:  You never collect your own life insurance.  Somebody else always does.  Life insurance only pays when you die.  The proponents of this plan are right that Social Security Old Age Insurance is insurance, but they are wrong to compare it to life insurance.  Social Security Old Age Insurance is wage insurance or old age insurance.  It pays only when you reach retirement age, to replace part of the income the ordinary person loses when they reach old age.

    In essence, the Republican proposal is to make future Social Security collateral for a loan now.

    Corporations and wealthy people usually have life insurance policies available.  Corporations famously take out life insurance on their executives, pay the premiums, and name themselves as the sole beneficiaries.  Yet they are not asked to put up their own insurance as collateral to get money from any federal stimulus plan so far.  There is no reason to ask normal people to put up their retirement as collateral for the income they are losing now.

    Treating these people differently would not solve problems.  It would make them.

    Most important, it would not be American.  See generally Dennis J. Wall, § 9:38, Try Taking it Away:  Social Security as a Right, in Volume 2 of LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH (3d edition Thomson Reuters West, 2020 Supplements in process), accessible at https://www.dennisjwall.com/works.

Please read the disclaimer.   ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

 

 

"Socialism for Investors, Capitalism for Everyone Else."

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes a very informed column about the world of finance.  He knows more about finances and the people who live in the U.S. financial system than most people alive.  

    So it's worth listening when he says that it's time for the Federal Reserve to "fix" the financial system.  Fixing it, Pearlstein writes, is something that "surely the overpaid lawyers and investment bankers who created the shadow banking system are clever enough to figure it out."  

    See Mr. Pearlstein's proposed solutions here in his recent article, Socialism For Investors, Capitalism For Everyone Else in THE WASHINGTON POST.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

Opportunities Among the Ruins?

"[S]ometimes a crisis can be an opportunity as well as a danger."  Phyllis Moen, quoted by Claire Cain Miller, Could the Current Crisis Fix What's Broken About Work in America?, NEW YORK TIMES, Monday, April 13, 2020, at B7.

    This piece is eye-opening about the opportunity as well as the danger in the current pandemic crisis.  

    The policy changes that have already happened in response to the virus have come very quickly.  They have illuminated how relatively easy it would be for workers to have these rights -- employers or policymakers would just have to say so.

Claire Cain Miller, Could the Current Crisis Fix What's Broken About Work in America?, supra.

    They would just have to say so.  Change may be a lot simpler than employers and policymakers made it look before the pandemic.

Please read the disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All rights reserved.

 

MOVE FEDERAL RESERVE TO BORDER. HE WOULD NOT GET IN.

The current chief prospect for the Federal Reserve owes $75,000 in back taxes.  For 5 years.

If he were at the border trying to get into the United States, they would not let him in.

But he is not.  He is in Washington, D.C. trying to get into the United States Federal Reserve.

Odds are he is likely to make it in the current Federal Government.

See Alan Rappeport, Jim Tankersley and Glenn Thrush, Fed Pick Who Owes Taxes is Latest Example of Trump's Vetting Woes, New York Times, Friday, March 29, 2019, p. B3  (New York Times may charge for online access).

Please Read The Disclaimer.  This blog article ©2019 Dennis J. Wall.  All Rights Reserved.

"MODERATES" HIGH WATER MARK. AFTER THIS, WE GET REAL.

There are lots of words written and spoken about "socialism," and in particular that so-called "moderates" should reject anything different from  the way things have been done in the past.

In a "moderates" column today, The New York Times quotes a person at a Virginia town hall meeting who asked her Congresswoman how she could justify a party (Democrats) who "are the party of death and taxes."  This is the kind of person held up by corporate media and others as a "moderate."  See Catie Edmonson and Emily Cochrane, The Moderates Take a Grilling Back at Home, The New York Times, Monday, February 25, 2019, p. A1, apprehensively retitled online with the headline, In Conservative Districts, Democrats Have to Answer for Party’s Left Wing (the newspaper may require a subscription to access it).

Parenthetically, the reporting on town hall meetings does not mention that only Democratic Members of Congress are holding town hall meetings.

This is the high water mark of so-called moderates.  Soon reports will return to the facts, like:

• The vast majority of people in the United States favor, and will vote for, "Medicare for all" and "single-payer health care." Health insurance companies, hospitals, and many doctors are against it.  They make a lot of money the way things are.
• Increasing taxes on the rich is also favored by the vast majority of Americans. Rich people are understandably against increasing their taxes, so they spend less money than they would pay in taxes to promote campaigns seeking to make other people believe that everybody's taxes will increase.  But only their taxes will increase for the most part, and most people seem to know that in spite of the campaigns paid for by the rich.
• The Green New Deal is a resolution, not a statute. When any resolution is adopted -- and the Green New Deal Resolution has not been adopted yet -- it is a talking point, the beginning of a discussion of ways to do things.  Again, most people in this country know that the environment of 2019 is going to be way worse in 10 or 20 years or longer in terms of human existence.  The vast majority of people think that whether this will continue to look like the same country in 10 or 20 years, and what we as a nation can and should do about it, is a worthy debate to have in the United States of America.  Oil barons will turn up their air conditioners when things get too hot; many of the rest of the people will continue to die from the heat.

So, this is the high water mark of "moderate" stories disguised as reporting.  Apparently, "moderates" are "moderates" only if they keep you in power.  Inevitably, reporting will return to the actual facts.  Reality will become reality in spite of what we read and hear now.

In the end, we do not have a real choice.

Please Read The Disclaimer.  ©2019 Dennis J. Wall.  All Rights Reserved.