Social Insecurity
It’s hardly a secret that some Republicans have been trying to destroy Social Security since its inception. But it is news that George W. Bush has held that view since he was a college student, and that he regards it as a “socialist” system. No wonder he wants Janice Brown as a judge – that’s her view too- to repeal the New Deal.
Yoshi Tsurumi was Bush’s professor at Harvard and had this to say about Bush:
Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.
In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.
Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.
There’s more.
But some right wing bloggers show the true face of the nastiness of those intent on destroying the Social Security system.
The idea that those earning $25,000 annually or even twice that much, or three or four times that much for that matter, should be subsidizing seniors who apparently haven’t had enough ambition to drag their asses down to the Wal Mart and get a job as a greeter is ludicrous. (This is, after all, about all they could do for a career besides flipping burgers or shoveling excrement out of horse stalls, to average less per year than the paltry sum of $25,000.) But the notion that we are now going to turn Social Security into a third payroll tax for those of us who make $25,000 a year or more makes my blood boil.
Not only is that nasty, it’s dishonest. Because the $25,000 income that he’s talking about would be dividends from investment income from someone who obviously has some money, not what they made in a year while they were working.
But it does underscore the point that some of these people would like to punish poor older Americans and have contempt for them.
The only Darwinism they believe in is social Darwinism.
Yoshi Tsurumi was Bush’s professor at Harvard and had this to say about Bush:
Thirty years ago, President Bush was my student at Harvard Business School. In my class, he called former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904, a “socialist” and spoke against Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal innovations. He refused to understand that capitalism becomes corrupt without democratic civic values and ethical restraints.
In those days, Bush belonged to a minority of MBA students who were seriously disconnected from taking the moral and social responsibility for their actions. Today, he would fit in comfortably with an overwhelming majority of business students and teachers whose role models are celebrated captains of piracy. Since the 1980s, as neo-conservatives have captured the Republican Party, America’s business education has also increasingly become contaminated by the robber baron culture of the pre-Great Depression era.
Bush is the first president of the United States with a Master’s of Business Administration (MBA). Yet, he epitomizes the worst aspects of America’s business education. To privatize Social Security, he is peddling a colossal lie about its solvency. Furthermore, Bush, along with today’s business aristocrats, shows no compassion for working Americans, robbing them to benefit big business and the very rich. Last year, due to Bush’s tax cuts, over 80 of America’s most profitable 200 corporations did not pay even a penny of their federal and state income taxes. Meanwhile, to pay for his additional tax cuts for the very rich, Bush is drastically cutting back several social services, such as federal lunch programs for poor children.
There’s more.
But some right wing bloggers show the true face of the nastiness of those intent on destroying the Social Security system.
The idea that those earning $25,000 annually or even twice that much, or three or four times that much for that matter, should be subsidizing seniors who apparently haven’t had enough ambition to drag their asses down to the Wal Mart and get a job as a greeter is ludicrous. (This is, after all, about all they could do for a career besides flipping burgers or shoveling excrement out of horse stalls, to average less per year than the paltry sum of $25,000.) But the notion that we are now going to turn Social Security into a third payroll tax for those of us who make $25,000 a year or more makes my blood boil.
Not only is that nasty, it’s dishonest. Because the $25,000 income that he’s talking about would be dividends from investment income from someone who obviously has some money, not what they made in a year while they were working.
But it does underscore the point that some of these people would like to punish poor older Americans and have contempt for them.
The only Darwinism they believe in is social Darwinism.
posted by Zack at 5:48 AM
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