Is Wall Street Ganging Up to Annihilate Social Security?

Dean Baker is a reputable bailout-opposing economist who is known for the very reasonable proposal to allow Medicare and Medicaid recipients to benefit from low-cost and high-standard medical care abroad.

Dr. Baker published a rousing article today claiming that Wall Street is gearing up the propaganda to convince the public that slashing Social Security and Medicare is the only way to save our children from dire poverty.

But the reality is quite different: Real wages will be more than 50 percent higher in 2040 (after adjusting for inflation) than they are today, and a genuine solution can only be found in fixing the health care system, and not in abolishing it.

Derailing the Wall Street Attack on Social Security

Emboldened by the fact that none of them have gone to jail for their role in the financial crisis, the Wall Street gang is now gunning for Social Security and Medicare, the country's most important safety net programs. Led by investment banker Pete Peterson, this crew is spending more than a billion dollars to convince the public that slashing these programs is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty.

Peterson has so much money to spend on this crusade that he can't even use it all up in the normal practice of buying think tank studies that support his position. Therefore he has sought out other mechanisms to support his attack. For example, he has funded a nationwide propaganda push called "America Speaks," which is designed to get ordinary citizens to agree with his Social Security slashing plans by giving them such a limited range of options to deal with scary deficit projections that they have no alternative [http://usabudgetdiscussion.org/]

Peterson is also funding a high school curriculum in the hopes of indoctrinating the nation's young with his quest. He has even created a news service called the "Fiscal Times". The Fiscal Times intends to plant deficit scare stories in newspapers that are desperate for copy now that they have downsized their news staffs. Peterson's son assembled the staff from the large group of journalists displaced by the collapse of the newspaper industry.

Peterson even funded the creation of a game "budget ball" to convince young people that taking away grandma and grandpa's Social Security and Medicare can be fun. Of course we haven't said a word about all the politicians of both political parties that this crew owns.

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