PAUL RYAN: “Do you believe that personal retirement accounts can help us achieve solvency for the system and make those future retiree benefits more secure?”
ALAN GREENSPAN: “Well, I wouldn’t say that the pay-as-you-go benefits are insecure, in the sense that there’s nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase.”
Seems to go right over Paul Ryan's head. In one ear, and nothing blocking exit out the other.
Many thanks to Selise for for finding and clipping this video, and Senexx for adding it to the YouTube MMTChannel.
MARCH 2, 2005, house committee on the budget hearing:
transcript:
full cspan video:
quote is in clip from 02:42:00 to 2:42:57
This should open up a can of worms for every person in America capable of rational thought.
And that rational thought leads inescapably to the conclusion that FICA taxes to "fund" a national elder-care policy were never needed, and should never have been enacted.
"We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren't a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” FDR
FDR's Cabinet realized early on that FICA taxes had been a mistake, and in any event discussed removing them in the case of another depression. Then admitted they were all politics, not for any real economic reason.
Sane policy should have been the best reason - from the start - for not enacting FICA taxes. [Sounds more like the best face FDR could put on a policy debacle & political loss - and also an act of either personal cowardice or baffling ignorance.]
[We got off the gold std, but stayed on the class-war & Control Fraud standard!]
Our entire political operations are built on Control Frauds, ... frauds that simply can't scale with the diversity of our national expansion.
With scale, we end up in the disastrous position of being afraid to jettison known frauds, for fear that the future might be worse!
A nation started on courage, and now stalled by outright cowardice, afraid of all the options the future holds.
Yet what do we do when the kinetics of politics is a generation ... or two ... behind the kinetics of most other operations?
Build "cathedrals" anyway? When any honest person knows they won't scale? And that lives will be ruined, if not sacrificed?
What happens when that divergence exceeds survivable tolerance limits for the nation? Slink out of town, with funds sequestered in hopefully safe Swiss bank accounts? If the truth were known, no Swiss citizen would be welcome in any country on earth - simply for endorsing that global fraud as a national policy!
It's clearly time for new methods. Another Constitutional Assembly? Something better?
Or something worse?
How would YOU tell 150 million salaried adults that their wages needn't ever have BEEN taxed for FICA their entire life? And that they were taxed ONLY to keep one class of people over-taxed and under-funded relative to another class of people? Worse, that the same was true of the FICA taxes levied on their parents & grandparents!
Them's fightin' words! There will someday be hell to pay for all that have contributed to that truly disgusting crime, through silence, fear or complicity. If that's not treason of the highest order, then we may as well all emigrate to some country where honesty, courage, morality & national ambition still reign.
The scale of the "FICA-tax for Social Security" fraud leaves one nauseous. It's not what one wants to think of one's own country.
To realize that there are whole Foundations dedicated solely to maintaining a regressive tax on labor, only exacerbates the shame. Taxing labor cannot be accepted as the prerequisite for any public policy whatsoever. If we can - as simple policy - vote subsidies for highways, space exploration, worldwide military capabilities, corporate farming, and endless corporate supports - from agriculture to research - then we can also support our own citizens as a simple policy. That's not even mentioning bailouts to frauds under the guise of the FDIC negotiating reductions in corporate debts to FDIC-seized banks.
For any person who perpetuates a fraud after being advised of operational reality, the fraud is no longer innocent. It is self-defeating for their own family, children & country. That is, it is treason.
FDR's words, and SocialSecurityWorks current adherence to them, are a Big Lie that would make any Fascist proud. Certainly more fiendishly distributed & hidden than most fascist strategies. And, it's worked! Tens of millions of Americans have proudly walked into voluntary indentured servitude. Right now it's too nauseous for me to expand on it further. The whole topic just makes me want to cuss & kick something. It's on the scale of the Pope & Warlords inventing permanent royalty, for the masses to permanently revel in serfdom to.
Worse, it's so damn stupid it's insulting to America. What happened to American ingenuity?
Our entire political operations are built on Control Frauds, ... frauds that simply can't scale with the diversity of our national expansion.
With scale, we end up in the disastrous position of being afraid to jettison known frauds, for fear that the future might be worse!
A nation started on courage, and now stalled by outright cowardice, afraid of all the options the future holds.
Yet what do we do when the kinetics of politics is a generation ... or two ... behind the kinetics of most other operations?
Build "cathedrals" anyway? When any honest person knows they won't scale? And that lives will be ruined, if not sacrificed?
What happens when that divergence exceeds survivable tolerance limits for the nation? Slink out of town, with funds sequestered in hopefully safe Swiss bank accounts? If the truth were known, no Swiss citizen would be welcome in any country on earth - simply for endorsing that global fraud as a national policy!
It's clearly time for new methods. Another Constitutional Assembly? Something better?
Or something worse?
How would YOU tell 150 million salaried adults that their wages needn't ever have BEEN taxed for FICA their entire life? And that they were taxed ONLY to keep one class of people over-taxed and under-funded relative to another class of people? Worse, that the same was true of the FICA taxes levied on their parents & grandparents!
Them's fightin' words! There will someday be hell to pay for all that have contributed to that truly disgusting crime, through silence, fear or complicity. If that's not treason of the highest order, then we may as well all emigrate to some country where honesty, courage, morality & national ambition still reign.
The scale of the "FICA-tax for Social Security" fraud leaves one nauseous. It's not what one wants to think of one's own country.
To realize that there are whole Foundations dedicated solely to maintaining a regressive tax on labor, only exacerbates the shame. Taxing labor cannot be accepted as the prerequisite for any public policy whatsoever. If we can - as simple policy - vote subsidies for highways, space exploration, worldwide military capabilities, corporate farming, and endless corporate supports - from agriculture to research - then we can also support our own citizens as a simple policy. That's not even mentioning bailouts to frauds under the guise of the FDIC negotiating reductions in corporate debts to FDIC-seized banks.
For any person who perpetuates a fraud after being advised of operational reality, the fraud is no longer innocent. It is self-defeating for their own family, children & country. That is, it is treason.
FDR's words, and SocialSecurityWorks current adherence to them, are a Big Lie that would make any Fascist proud. Certainly more fiendishly distributed & hidden than most fascist strategies. And, it's worked! Tens of millions of Americans have proudly walked into voluntary indentured servitude. Right now it's too nauseous for me to expand on it further. The whole topic just makes me want to cuss & kick something. It's on the scale of the Pope & Warlords inventing permanent royalty, for the masses to permanently revel in serfdom to.
Worse, it's so damn stupid it's insulting to America. What happened to American ingenuity?
