Here’s what I don’t understand. Does anyone seriously think that people are saving enough for retirement? Moreover, no one makes any money off their money anymore. If you want to make interest, you have to invest, and your investment has to be at least somewhat risky. So, why would anyone talk about cutting people’s Social Security benefits when it is as clear as day that the current benefits are going to be completely inadequate for a whole lot of people?
Jim Kessler, senior vice president for policy and a co-founder of Third Way, said Friday morning that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) backing of a plan to expand Social Security compelled him and the president of the group to hit back with a Wall Street Journal op-ed lambasting the plan and economic populism.
“The impetus was really — we saw after the most recently, this push that okay, it’s time to really move the national Democratic Party to a much more liberal agenda, in this case, Senator Warren was the standard bearer — she’s on the cover of a lot of magazines,” he said in an interview on Sirius XM with Ari Rabin-Havt. “We were a bit alarmed by that.”
He added that Warren was an excellent senator from Massachusetts but questioned whether she could be good for the party nationally.
“That Social Security plan was the final moment for us,” he said.
“That Social Security plan had been out there but really languishing — because Senator Warren has such a powerful compelling voice, she started talking about it, and it suddenly it became much more talked about and viable alternative.”
These Third Way folks have been flogging this horse for decades at this point. It is a dead horse.
It’s why SiDc comes here flogging his bullshit. He’s just as afraid as Kessler. As I said before, put your investments in that Roth now, assholes, because your tax rates will be going up tremendously.
No doubt.
Every time I read his puke, I can imagine him smiling in his little NOVA/DC swampland hoping the rest of us hurry up and die.
They think that just because they aren’t pro-forced birth that they’re safe and will be left alone, even while they’re pulling the garrote against our necks and pretending to be less evil than the fascist Republicans.
1793 can’t come soon enough.
These Third Way folks have been flogging this horse for decades at this point. It is a dead horse.
You do realize someone who wants to be your Governor is part of this crew, right Boo?
So glad folks fought back for Senator Warren.
Go Senator Warren!!
Fuck them mofos.
Everyone in the country will be better off when walking trash like Jim Kessler and his ilk are done mooching the 99%’s oxygen.
Wow, I just read that column. Cowan and Kessler are hungry to steal the retirement money of more than 300 million people. Yes, please publicize your leadership in Third Way, guys. We need to marginalize that hateful organization more quickly than ever.
Also, their argumentation is horrible. They drop in the mention of 2013 electoral results in Colorado in the last paragraph without establishing what happened there. Those of us who know what happened in Colorado this year (with no help from the writers) are aware that those campaigns had absolutely nothing to do with economic populism, unlike de Blasio’s campaign, which was centered on economic populism.
If there is a God as described in the Bible, these two assholes have Satan waiting for them.
The full quote from Warren was hilarious and is as follows:
“Oh please. I’m out there working for Jamie Dimon the same way Dick Cheney is out there trying to save the environment,” Warren said.
Does anyone have a link to the plan Warren is supporting? I haven’t been able to see much of the details from the limited sources I found.
http://www.harkin.senate.gov/press/release.cfm?i=341035
Yeah, let’s push economically marginalized retirees and near-retirees even farther out on that limb. The idea that working Americans should be a little more financially secure in retirement makes Third Way fuckheads “a bit alarmed.” And they’re worried about whether it’s good for the party nationally if older people aren’t choosing between heating and eating, and their offspring aren’t pondering just when Mee-maw is going to have to move in because she can’t afford her apartment anymore.
News flash for Third Way dipshits: People living out their lives with dignity and financial security is good for any political party that can deliver on that promise.
Warren is scaring not only Wall St but also some high mucky-mucks in the Democratic Party. Guess they haven’t noticed that she’s incredibly articulate and tough as nails and declaring a War on Warren was one really dumb move.
If our Third Branch is going to continue to void contracts public and private on deferred wages, no one should expect any defined benefit pensions to be worth the ink that signed the contract.
Who owns WSJ Now?
Hint think Pox… um I mean…..
Get with the pattern folks…fox news is to influence the plebs and encourage them to watch the flashing lights and boobs (remember he’s famous for saving the English ‘Sun’ news paper by introducing page 3 topless girls… it was this that made his empire. In Australia [from whence he came] he started with a daily the “financial review”[Aussie version of WSJ] and the “Australian”[a broadsheet for right wing readers who like big words. BTW they’re all losing readership )
WSJ simply completes the pattern.It is simply another way for him to ingratiate and cement himself as the mouth piece for the selfish status quo.
He’s publishing to/for a committed right wing demographic…Business leaders.
In marketing terms he’s fencing his market.
Anyway, There is some modicum of truth in the WSJ article in that Warren’s plan has a fatal flaw it doesn’t take into account Human nature and its inherent toxic selfishness particularly in a uber Capitalistic country.
By that I mean
Those who have the wealth will simply hide their money elsewhere… look at Haliburton they moved their head office off shore…don’t be fooled they we in the smelly brown stuff because of their gouging in the Iraq war etc.
Those who have money will not allow it to be taken.
Capital Flight V 2.0 is a possibility.
The capital market isn’t like say coal or iron ore mining they remain where they’re found. The capital market can operate from from almost anywhere in a world economy.
Imagine the poor cash strapped countries who would happily want major capital markets in their territory and would legislatively co operate.
Americans need to wake up and look out the window Business today isn’t bound by any sense of loyalty other than to themselves. Capitalism was originally conceived with nationalism stopping off shoring… well we can see how that didn’t work.
In truth what is needed is Capitalism V3.0 in which inanimate entities like businesses/corporations are tools not masters (much less the BS SCOTUS ruling to the opposite.)
The hard fact is that by being forced to invest and risk our life savings in private entities as mentioned above we the great unwashed/unskilled and with limited capital will always be operating in slot machine mathematics… we will never as a population get back enough to make Social security obsolete or even to reduce it.
I would prefer to have my savings government guaranteed and be national bonds that create infrastructure.. period and know I have a guaranteed liveable retirement income.
The problem is with the any discussion in the US is the inherent assumption that the US system is best and shouldn’t be changed. To ensure that the recalcitrant right have changed (limited) the language available to have a meaningful discussion by linking terms with binary absolutes. i.e. Social Security is bad period! it’s part of socialism another evil.
What they cover is that most styles of governing philosophies share features even capitalism has SS.
The list goes on. By defining the available language one defines the limits of the debate particularly to the largely ignorant public.
Well, restricting the ability to bid government jobs might go a ways towards curing that ill.
The Wall Street billionaires who fund Third Way just seethe with envy and resentment over the huge amount of money that flows through Social Security, instead of the FIRE sector. They could have billions more in fees and returns, and then when they inevitably fuck things up and cause the next big crash because they’re buying and selling products they don’t understand, they can ask us for even better terms on the bailout, because hey, people won’t even have Social Security to fall back on anymore.
Don’t you just get tired of the moral hectoring about the baby boomers not saving for retirement like their parents did as if they are profligate generation. At the same time that news articles repeat the fact that wages and salaries have been stagnant for forty years, unlike the economy of their parents.
People save when they have substantial excess income over expenses.
And highly-leveraged corporations have set the pattern for the society. Highly-leveraged corporations like the financial institutions pushing the Third Way nonsense.
About that “greatest generation savings …” They were able to save not only because the economy jumpstarted the world, but because THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO SPEND THOSE SAVINGS ON MOM AND DAD.
Prior to 1930, the single largest cause of poverty was old age
With the advent of Social Security and other gov’t programs for the elderly, the $$$ that previously went to Grandma went into education, housing and consumption.
Getting rid of SS will cause a catastrophic decline in the available consumer funds … causing the Walton’s to end up in the poor house.