Almost half of Generation Z adults said they don’t expect to get any of the Social Security benefits they’ve earned, according to a survey. In a survey released Tuesday by the Nationwide Ret…
Boomers have been saying this since the 60s and continue to say it even as they cash their latest round of checks.
Social Security is crazy popular. Even marginal trimming around the edges is politically suicidal. The only way to end the program is for Congress to shut down the agency and end the distributions. That’s not going to happen so long as elections are even remotely contestable. Its the third rail of politics for a reason.
I would predict a military dictatorship before I’d predict an end to SS. One is practically a prerequisite for the other, and even then it would be dicey.
The elected officials who have to choose between tapping into the general fund and telling 70M people they don’t get a full SS disbursement is going to be in a tight spot. Especially when we’re just shitting money over the wall to a dozen ongoing military disasters.
The ole “it’s the third rail of American politics”. Ah yes Sokrin, let’s be that optimistic.
There is a party whose population will gladly accept no Medicaid expansion in their state and lose out on public option benefits, because “black man bad”.
They will parade the IRA bill results from the current administration that their own reps voted against in red states, seemingly devoid of reality.
How then is the loss of SS benefits not also hand waved away to 40% of the country, who will gladly just shoot their own foot to spite their enemies told to them by the big R?
You have a far far more faith in rationality and of the ability for democrats to control the narrative than I do. They will at best force the action to be a democrat action by waiting and doing nothing until it is dying of funds, holding it hostage as a political football for negotiating something they want. Forcing then the narrative to be that democrats have spent so much irresponsibly and broken our budget etc etc. the worst case is they get overtaken as a party by the cultural republican alt right crazies with favors owed, as we saw was eating at the current speaker’s heels just to hold on to power through the latest funding fiascos for paying our debt. This will mean actual cut integrations into SS as part of some larger bill, likely something like they did before that cannot be filibustered, like the yearly budget they rammed in for trillions in tax cuts to corporate interest.
This is not a harm the people or not harm the people play. That would be too transparent and you are right too obviously problematic for the continued hold to power. It will be more insidious and the American people have proven over and over that so long as harming them is packaged with a temporary tax cut or sandwiched between a outrage social topic of someone else to hate; they will keep on voting the assholes back in.
There is a party whose population will gladly accept no Medicaid expansion in their state and lose out on public option benefits, because “black man bad”.
I remember when Kentucky got enough blue dogs in office to put the Medicaid expansion into effect. They called their program “Kynect” and did a reasonably decent job of administering it. The program became so popular that Republicans pivoted to “defend Kynect from the federal government!” mode. Its been delivering services for over a decade and is a vast improvement over the deplorable state healthcare system.
Plans to defund or kill Kynect have largely failed and GOP efforts to cut the program have backfired on politicians that tried it, but Democrats struggle to take credit because the savvier Republicans aren’t shy about voicing their support.
So they may be good at saying “No” to proposed legislation, but the GOP is awful at saying “No” to any broad based existing program. Its the same reason they’ve had such a hard time privatizing education even in blood red states.
It will be more insidious and the American people have proven over and over that so long as harming them is packaged with a temporary tax cut or sandwiched between a outrage social topic of someone else to hate; they will keep on voting the assholes back in.
Bush Jr ran on privatizing SS and got absolutely washed in 2006.
Obama ran on scaling back entitlements and got washed in 2010.
Trump beat Hillary in part by cleaving to SS/Medicare and attacking her on her plans to gut it.
Biden is almost a fluke in so far as he’s got an anti-SS/Medi history but finally landed a successful Presidential bid. Even then, without a House willing to do deals, he can’t really touch entitlements either.
The AARP rivals only AIPAC in terms of its influence. Its a classic “do not fuck with the money” situation that also shields the Pentagon and the Financial Sector.
Not to say entitlements are bulletproof, but its been a nut both parties have been trying to crack since at least Clinton without success. Reagan was only able to land a blow by “saving” it with higher taxes and some very lukewarm meddling with retirement ages. Even then, it wasn’t a trick any other President managed to pull again.
Every President promises to reform SS/Medi and none of them do more than tinkering with the margins.
Bush Jr ran on privatizing SS and got absolutely washed in 2006.
Obama ran on scaling back entitlements and got washed in 2010.
You are proving my point here, when it’s your explicit purpose, it is a failure. When you package it as a political morality sandwich in other things, it wins.
Kentucky had to sell the expansion as their own idea, packaged up for GOP consumption. They can sell losses in service to those same people, and do, by convincing them the government is too big. Too big and you should get less services because it’s evil. Evil big government that can’t possibly and won’t possibly do any good.
It’s never direct kill, with the exception of “Obamacare”, because that was about their biggest donors, but still packaged as an illegal tax as rationale with a promise of a “better replacement”. It’s always instead of a direct removal of benefit, an affront to some idea logical sensibility and that justifies reduction in funding a service.
Of course the GOP won’t just say, my platform is killing SS. They will make it about someone else they can hate on as reason to harm them, while still harming the useless idiots that vote for it. So long as the base voters can harm someone else they dislike more than it hurts themselves, it will be allowed to die slowly as an unfunded mandate of reducing benefit while still getting the reps doing it re-elected.
Boomers have been saying this since the 60s and continue to say it even as they cash their latest round of checks.
Social Security is crazy popular. Even marginal trimming around the edges is politically suicidal. The only way to end the program is for Congress to shut down the agency and end the distributions. That’s not going to happen so long as elections are even remotely contestable. Its the third rail of politics for a reason.
I would predict a military dictatorship before I’d predict an end to SS. One is practically a prerequisite for the other, and even then it would be dicey.
It doesn’t have to end as a formal killed program.
It just has to continue unchanged, as an UNFUNDED mandate.
The elected officials who have to choose between tapping into the general fund and telling 70M people they don’t get a full SS disbursement is going to be in a tight spot. Especially when we’re just shitting money over the wall to a dozen ongoing military disasters.
The ole “it’s the third rail of American politics”. Ah yes Sokrin, let’s be that optimistic.
There is a party whose population will gladly accept no Medicaid expansion in their state and lose out on public option benefits, because “black man bad”.
They will parade the IRA bill results from the current administration that their own reps voted against in red states, seemingly devoid of reality.
How then is the loss of SS benefits not also hand waved away to 40% of the country, who will gladly just shoot their own foot to spite their enemies told to them by the big R?
You have a far far more faith in rationality and of the ability for democrats to control the narrative than I do. They will at best force the action to be a democrat action by waiting and doing nothing until it is dying of funds, holding it hostage as a political football for negotiating something they want. Forcing then the narrative to be that democrats have spent so much irresponsibly and broken our budget etc etc. the worst case is they get overtaken as a party by the cultural republican alt right crazies with favors owed, as we saw was eating at the current speaker’s heels just to hold on to power through the latest funding fiascos for paying our debt. This will mean actual cut integrations into SS as part of some larger bill, likely something like they did before that cannot be filibustered, like the yearly budget they rammed in for trillions in tax cuts to corporate interest.
This is not a harm the people or not harm the people play. That would be too transparent and you are right too obviously problematic for the continued hold to power. It will be more insidious and the American people have proven over and over that so long as harming them is packaged with a temporary tax cut or sandwiched between a outrage social topic of someone else to hate; they will keep on voting the assholes back in.
I remember when Kentucky got enough blue dogs in office to put the Medicaid expansion into effect. They called their program “Kynect” and did a reasonably decent job of administering it. The program became so popular that Republicans pivoted to “defend Kynect from the federal government!” mode. Its been delivering services for over a decade and is a vast improvement over the deplorable state healthcare system.
Plans to defund or kill Kynect have largely failed and GOP efforts to cut the program have backfired on politicians that tried it, but Democrats struggle to take credit because the savvier Republicans aren’t shy about voicing their support.
So they may be good at saying “No” to proposed legislation, but the GOP is awful at saying “No” to any broad based existing program. Its the same reason they’ve had such a hard time privatizing education even in blood red states.
Bush Jr ran on privatizing SS and got absolutely washed in 2006.
Obama ran on scaling back entitlements and got washed in 2010.
Trump beat Hillary in part by cleaving to SS/Medicare and attacking her on her plans to gut it.
Biden is almost a fluke in so far as he’s got an anti-SS/Medi history but finally landed a successful Presidential bid. Even then, without a House willing to do deals, he can’t really touch entitlements either.
The AARP rivals only AIPAC in terms of its influence. Its a classic “do not fuck with the money” situation that also shields the Pentagon and the Financial Sector.
Not to say entitlements are bulletproof, but its been a nut both parties have been trying to crack since at least Clinton without success. Reagan was only able to land a blow by “saving” it with higher taxes and some very lukewarm meddling with retirement ages. Even then, it wasn’t a trick any other President managed to pull again.
Every President promises to reform SS/Medi and none of them do more than tinkering with the margins.
You are proving my point here, when it’s your explicit purpose, it is a failure. When you package it as a political morality sandwich in other things, it wins.
Kentucky had to sell the expansion as their own idea, packaged up for GOP consumption. They can sell losses in service to those same people, and do, by convincing them the government is too big. Too big and you should get less services because it’s evil. Evil big government that can’t possibly and won’t possibly do any good.
It’s never direct kill, with the exception of “Obamacare”, because that was about their biggest donors, but still packaged as an illegal tax as rationale with a promise of a “better replacement”. It’s always instead of a direct removal of benefit, an affront to some idea logical sensibility and that justifies reduction in funding a service.
Of course the GOP won’t just say, my platform is killing SS. They will make it about someone else they can hate on as reason to harm them, while still harming the useless idiots that vote for it. So long as the base voters can harm someone else they dislike more than it hurts themselves, it will be allowed to die slowly as an unfunded mandate of reducing benefit while still getting the reps doing it re-elected.
Boomers waging a protracted people’s war from their winter homes in the everglades