Social Security DOES NOT EQUAL Socialism
Medicare DOES NOT EQUAL Socialism
Lawrence O’Donnell should get this clear. While I respect and admire his defense of liberalism and his attempt to push back against the insanity of socialistic Republicans seeking to denigrate great words like “liberal” and “socialism”, he of all people should know the difference between socialism and collective bargaining.
Social Security and Medicare are two of the greatest examples of workers using the federal government to force employers to pay enough to cover the actual costs of retirement. Understanding this is critical to explaining to the American people why they should back these programs and expand them, rather than tear them apart.
The conceptual reasons why we need Social Security and why it is a legitimate program are particularly relevant given yesterday’s dump of the Simpson-Bowles fiscal responsibility proposal. Their calls to increase the retirement age and decrease benefits, when read in light of the fundamental goals of the program and its compelling moral demands, are clearly unacceptable. What’s particularly infuriating is that they are also unnecessary.
But, back to Lawrence O’Donnell and his spurious argument that Social Security is socialism. . . .
What is socialism? “Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.” Wikipedia. Social Security has nothing to do with the means of production and only tangentially with allocation of resources. Rather, Social Security is an example of successful collective bargaining by workers using the power of the federal government to counter the illegitimate economic power of employers.
Here are clips from the show, starting with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com and then of O'Donnell's rewrite. I'd like to find a better-quality clip of the latter. In fact, I'd prefer to link to the official MSNBC clip, but I couldn’t find one of that part. Here are the clips:
You can also see O'Donnell's interview with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com at MSNBC, which is a continuation of their tangle on Morning Joe. For the record, I entirely agree with Greenwald’s assessment of why the Democrats lost so many seats in the House and what they should do about it. Perhaps other clips from the show have been posted by now.
The power of employers to set wages lower than the living wage is an illegitimate power. This power has no moral basis and it is not related to economic value. Employers do not create additional value in the economy because they have the power to drive down wages. All this does is allow employers to make higher profits. It is legitimate and desirable for workers to use democratic processes to set conditions for wages that require employers to pay enough for workers to survive until their natural death. This is an appropriate use of governmental power to protect citizens from conditions that would cause their death or suffering. Setting such conditions is a form of collective bargaining that uses governmental power to prevent those with economic power from exploiting workers.
Social Security and Medicare are about preventing the exploitation of workers. They also create economic stability, which has the effect of improving and expanding our economy. This, in turn, helps to protect national security. Conversely, taking away these programs weakens the country. Attacking them is unpatriotic.
Neither of these programs is directly responsible for any fiscal problems in the federal budget. They are designed to be self-sustaining, depending on payroll taxes to support them. To the degree that more money should be going to retirees in the future, those taxes should be expanded. This is entirely doable and proper. Worker productivity has risen about 55% since the early 1970s while wages have fallen about 8%. This additional money has gone to employers. The proper way to strengthen retirement is to use our collective bargaining power to force employers to expand their contributions to these programs. The employer contribution should be raised at least 50%, going from 5.3% for retirement benefits and 1.45% for Hospital Insurance (the Medicare contribution) to at least 7.75% for OASI and 2.5% for HI on the employer side. (I’m intentionally leaving out Disability Insurance, which isn’t relevant to the equation.) Taxes on the worker side do not need to be raised, and they should not be, since workers have not gotten that increase in wages from their increased productivity. Raising the employer-side contributions would bring in hundreds of billions of dollars a year to balance these systems, and this contribution is entirely fair given the increase in worker productivity we’ve seen over the past few decades.
Lawrence O’Donnell got it wrong. These programs are not socialism, although they are “socialist” in a very broad sense. He ought to clarify this on his show.
What he should have said was:
Social Security and Medicare are two of the greatest examples ever of collective bargaining. They put an end to exploitation of older workers. They are not socialist programs (because they don’t require owning the means of production) but they were clearly inspired by socialism. Liberals and progressives are not afraid of the word “socialism” because we understand that sometimes society must step in to protect workers from exploitation. It is legitimate for the government to use its power to stop the illegitimate use of economic power when that power is being used to harm others. It is the responsibility of the government to protect its people. To not do so is to fail the most basic test of what a government is for.
And what of the post office? When it was formed, the government owned the means of production (the facilities and equipment to deliver the mail). In the early 1970s it was made into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States. See USPS.com. It does not receive a subsidy from the federal government, getting its money from fees for service. As the U.S. government still apparently owns the means of production, the U.S. Postal Service qualifies as socialism. That’s my last word on the subject.
Note: I would have posted this yesterday when it was probably a great deal more timely except for the one-diary-a-day limit. Thankfully, his limit will disappear with the new DK4. Thank you, web developer angels, for your work on this!
While I was waiting a number of diaries came out about this program and the Morning Joe program that inspired it. Here are some (and I apologize if I missed yours):