Marc -
I am sure that you know, but should there be any confusion, the labor
movement is unalterably opposed to the privatization of the social security
system. It has been and is by far the most important and effective
antipoverty program in the United States.
The "crisis" is being engineered by those who want Wall St. to have an
enormous opportunity to move into the system for its own enrichment, and those
in the U.S. to whom the Administration has been giving back their taxes and who
have lost whatever sense of social responsibility they may once have had.
There are many ways to solve the "crisis". Removing the income
cap on those who contribute is one direct way. Seeing what happens with
economic growth is another. Those who make the dire predictions do so on
the basis that there will be little or no economic growth but economist Paul
Krugman has pointed out this week that the same people, in predicting the great
succes of private accounts, use estimates of stock market growth that have never
been remotely achieved. If those same growth rates are used in predicting
the future of the present system, Krugman says, there will be no "crisis" for
generations to come.
The wealth being generated by dramatic increases in productivity is being
distributed far too inequitably. Were it being shared more equally, the
present level of payroll taxation would obviously provide a much more
substantial income for the social security system.
I do not think we should be looking to the destruction of social programs
as the basis on which to build an emloyee ownership based economic
structure.
Lynn