Republicans BAD……..Democrats GOOD.

“When Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, he abandoned the traditional economic policies, under which the United States had operated for the previous 40 years”

The ‘traditional’ economic policy of ‘capitalism’ (are economists allowed to utter that word in public, or is ‘traditional’ a better oxymoron?) was rampant before 1981 and was going about its destructive business. This article paints a picture of the pre-1981 world being the ‘glory days’.

he went to war on what he termed “wage inflation”

every time you see the prime go up that means there is upward pressure on wages and he is trying to keep businesses from having money to offer higher wage

when you see wages go down it’s because wage pressure is either stagnant or negative

of course there are other factors that make the prime go up or down but wage pressure is the big reason you see it happening

when greenspan said “the economy is heating up” what he meant is “people are asking for and getting a raise”

important stuff and one of the main reasons the middle classes wages have been stagnant

“In fact, it has become conventional wisdom that Congress deliberately intended to built up large balances in the trust funds, not just for the near term, but to help finance the benefits of the post World War II baby boomers and later retirees.”…”To the contrary, a review of the record of congressional proceedings would suggest that the goal was
not to create surpluses, but to assure that the system would not be threatened by insolvency again in the event adverse conditions arose.” ( CRS Report for Congress – Social Security Financing Reform: Lessons From the 1983 Amendments – 97-741 EPW )

Or if we choose to believe Robert J Meyers:

Q: As we look at it today, some people rationalize the financing basis by saying that it’s a way of partially having the baby boomers pay for their own retirement in advance. You’re telling me now this was not the rationale. Nobody made that argument or adopted that rationale?

Myers: That’s correct. The statement you made is widely quoted, it is widely used, but it just isn’t true. It didn’t happen that way, it was mostly happenstance that the Commission adopted this approach to financing Social Security.
( http://ssaonline.us/history/myersorl.html )

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have become outraged but he was on the commission. He never realized that all cash surpluses have to be invested in debt – since Social Security began? I find that hard to believe, but he was right to recommend cutting the FICA tax, which of course went nowhere in CONGRESS.

If this new commission comes up with a plan to “extend the life” of the trust fund, as happened with the new health care bill, it’s just kicking the can down the road again. Let’s let them use the “trust fund” and run it down to zero. How? cut spending elsewhere.