Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Graveyard spiral
Did bad judgment or bad luck doom JFK Jr.?
By Joan Walsh, Daryl Lindsey and Anthony York
[07/20/99]

"I am Buzz Lightyear!"
Thirty years after he walked on the moon, Buzz Aldrin wants to send the rest of us.
By Jeff Greenwald
[07/20/99]

A pilot's story
A veteran flyer recalls her near-death experience in a private plane on the New England coast.
By Phaedra Hise
[07/20/99]

The unbearable whiteness of being
This year's hate killers are weak, lonely Caucasian men who murder those who have what they don't: A sense of belonging.
By Kathy Dobie
[07/19/99]

Why Gore would censor "South Park"
In the name of protecting kids, watch for the politically correct vice president and his friends to try to shut down the trash-talking, moon-faced midgets.
By David Horowitz
[07/19/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Social Security's stellar reputation almost justifies the original whopping white lie that Franklin Delano Roosevelt told about the system when he set it up: that it is a separate fund. Many Americans seem to think that there's an ingot in Fort Knox with their name on it, waiting for their retirement. Luckily for them, with gold at its lowest ever price, this isn't so.

The government borrows the money and spends it on all the usual pork barrel stuff, just as if it were tax revenues. In return it leaves IOUs, promising to pay up when you grab your walker to shuffle toward the great beyond. However, the polite fiction of a national pensioners' piggy bank has stopped Congress from looting the fund totally, which is one of the reasons why Social Security has such low overhead and high regard from its customers.

But that has done little to deter José Piñera. The suave Chilean is the epicenter of the actuarial earthquake which will make your your Social Security funds disappear into a gaping crevasse of broker commissions and management fees. The head of the Social Security reform project of the Cato Institute, the right-wing think tank, he is also the self-appointed head of the International Pension Reform Society. This month he was awarded a medal by the International Insurance Society for his efforts at privatizing the world's pension schemes.

Piñera, the former Minister of Labor for General Augusto Pinochet, was dropping big names with heavy thuds as he immodestly recounted all the world leaders with whom he had discussed his crusade to privatize Social Security in the United States. (Pinochet's was one of the few big names he didn't drop.) Here in the United States he is optimistic: He has had dinner with George W. Bush, he finds Sens. Bob Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in favor of partial privatization and the White House invited him to chat. Now, he is trying to seduce the average American voter.

One thing is for sure: A specter is haunting the presidential race -- and its name is Social Security privatization. All the GOP likelies espouse it in some form, and President Clinton triangulated it into his own proposals. The president's own proposal is fairly low key -- but it is a foot in the door for the private-pension-plan salespeople, who would soon be looting the ruins of the Social Security system if it were adopted.

Many of this year's presidential hopefuls will be getting big campaign checks from the finance industry. There may well be a mismatch between candidates' statements at the fund-raisers and what they care to say in public about Social Security privatization, however, because tampering with the old folks' retirement money has never proven to be a winning political strategy. But since check writers usually trump voters in the final analysis, don't be too surprised when the stealth attack on your retirement patrimony begins.

Next page | Gen X angst and the legacy of Pinochet