Signs of the New American Revolution That's Coming

Americans used to be a patriotic lot. That was back in the days when they were operating under Mushroom Management. No more. The typical American wage-slave is close to rising up against its masters. The last straw will be the gutting of Social Security. Social Security is a government program that's worked amazingly well in spite of itself. The only thing the system lacks is the ability to say NO to the government requests to borrow money. Right now, the system is solvent and relatively healthy only if the IOUs the government has given it are actually honored. For years, the government has been borrowing money from Social Security. Now, some (Paul Ryan) would like to renege on those IOUs. It's just not convenient for the government to pay back those loans. Of course, it is convenient for the Fed to shovel trillions to banksters who should be breaking rocks wearing prison clothing. This is what will bring about the breakdown in the USA. Paul Krugman points out in Expanding Social Security that: When you look at today's older Americans, you are in large part looking at the legacy of an economy that is no more. Many workers used to have defined-benefit retirement plans, plans in which their employers guaranteed a steady income after retirement. And a fair number of seniors (like my father, until he passed away a few months ago) are still collecting benefits from such plans. Today, however, workers who have any retirement plan at all generally have defined-contribution plans — basically, 401(k)'s — in which employers put money into a tax-sheltered account that's supposed to end up big enough to retire on. The trouble is that at this point it's clear that the shift to 401(k)'s was a gigantic failure. Employers took advantage of the switch to surreptitiously cut benefits; investment returns have been far lower than workers were told to expect; and, to be fair, many people haven't managed their money wisely. As a result, we're looking at a looming retirement crisis, with tens of millions of Americans facing a sharp decline in living standards at the end of their working lives. For many, the only thing protecting them from abject penury will be Social Security. Aren't you glad we didn't privatize the program?

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