Few things have been more unsettling about our political discourse recently than the worship of Stupid on the part of the Republican Party. I'm all for cogent debate about ideological differences, economic policy and it's effect on the job market, the role of government and regulation in our society, but the embrace of mind numbingly idiotic ideas to turn voter frustration into votes is a reflection of how little the Republicans care about the greater good and how much they care about themselves and their corporate sponsors. To my added dismay, Nan Hayworth is a card carrying member of that club.
Perhaps no other policy position exemplifies the embrace of rock brained dumb more than the "privatization of Social Security." (Okay, climate change denying comes close.)
Now, Social Security is, arguably, the most successful and popular program this country has ever created. It has kept millions of American seniors out of poverty and helped them retire with dignity. It is incredibly efficient and cheap to operate. It hasn't added a single dollar to the federal deficit in it's long history. It has been safe, secure and given the American tax payer more bang for its buck in terms of improving our society than any other private or public endeavor.
Here's the embrace of Stupid: Nan Hayworth and the Republican Party want to dismantle it!
They want to dismantle it by, wait for it, handing over billions of retirement dollars to Wall Street investment bankers. Yup, THOSE Wall Street investment bankers...the very same people who lied and deceived us into the biggest recession since the 1930's and the very same people who are bankrolling Hayworth's campaign.
To prove my point, here's a taste of some real, first-class, rambling Hayworth Stupid. See if you can follow the twisted, Palinesque logic in the answer to the attendee's question. I've added the transcript below the video because it's tough to follow.
Attendee: Do you support making social security more solvent and secure by allowing people to invest in voluntary, personal accounts?
Stupid: Yes. Yes, ma'am. I would. I think we have to. Yes. Yes. It's, again, I, uh, I would touch on it anytime soon. It's worth saying again. Um, it's about our having the power, and actually, the obligation, personally, as citizens, to think about what we are doing to be responsible within our own lives. And it is, it is, a cultural phenomenon; it is something that our government can influence, through the way in which, it, uh, it institutes entitlement programs. If we don't reward responsible behavior, we'll get less of it. If people expect that they'll ever need an American consumer again, y'know, we're a consumer economy. We started out, the reason, one of the reasons we do it so very well, is because we did say, to our, to our, enterprising citizens, 'go, and think about what you can do well within your community, think about what your fellow citizens would like to have available to them, uh, you know, think of the business that, that you'd like to run, the services you'd like to provide, the improvements in goods, the innovations that you can then, you know, sell across the country and sell across the community, and you will, you will thrive. And you know, you will have the world ahead of you. But, you know, the other side of it is, you know, that you'll have, you'll have, to make sure you have put away enough for a rainy day. You know, you'll have to make sure that you're taking care of yourself because, you know, we're not, as a government, gonna be doing it for you. Um, and, that social security option, um, returns as to that kind of frame of mind. That's the most powerful and empowering frame of mind you can possibly have. It makes us stronger, not weaker. We are not sheep, we are men and women. Uh, and yes, I do feel like that way...yes sir?
And I can see Russia from the Newburgh/Beacon Bridge.
Let's leave Stupid for a second and look at what a reasonable answer might be:
Reasonable, non-Hayworth Response: First of all, let me correct the premise of your question. It's impossible to make Social Security more solvent and secure by investing in personal accounts. Period. Personal accounts means risk. Risk is NOT security or solvency.
The program's overwhelming success over the past 70 years has been that the money funded by the tax payers HASN'T been put at risk and handed over to the very people who ran us into the economic ditch over the last decade. Quick question for you...Would you want to trust your money to the likes of Ken Lay and the Wall Street insiders who lied us to the brink of economic disaster? That is exactly what you would be doing if you privatized Social Security.
Or, if one wanted to leave the risk factor aside and look at costs, one could mention that the operational cost of Social Security is a minuscule 0.9% of the budget. It's cheap to run. When the Bush administration last presented this harebrained idea, they conservatively estimated the operational cost of a privatized Social Security to be at 5.0% of the budget. And where would that 4.1% of billions of dollars go? To the investment bankers who killed Lehman Brothers, AIG, the mortgage industry and almost destroyed the entire worldwide banking system.
Let me say again, few things have been more unsettling about our political discourse recently than the worship of Stupid on the part of the Republican Party.
