I protest.

What "Social Security crisis?"

Via the Angry Bear, who himself got it from Brad DeLong, the following chart, which neatly illustrates the fact that when Bush and the rest of the Republicans speak of a "Social Security crisis" they are lying:

So as we all knew to begin with, and despite the lies from the Right, Social Security is in perfectly fine shape. The Republican desire to "fix" it is entirely and solely motivated by their desire to do away with it entirely. Part and parcel of their desire to roll back not only the War on Poverty but the New Deal and take us back to the days of laissez-faire capitalism and the Robber Barons (the so-called "Captains of Industry" such as Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan and a number of others, who made such innovations as the company town and who from time to time employed Federal troops as strikebreakers). Which makes a certain amount of sense, I guess, since Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to preside over such a large increase in unemployment.

My mother is 74 and lives on the Social Security check she receives because she and her husband (now deceased) worked for over fifty years. They were never even middle class, much less wealthy, and without Social Security she would have to depend upon her family for all of her support. While I could, if necessary, afford it, I'm in the distinct minority; most families could not. Further, I myself have worked (and have paid into Social Security) for some twenty-seven years, now. Bush wants to take the several thousands of dollars I have accumulated in my Social Security account and invest it in the stock market.

For those who cannot normally afford to invest in stocks, there is one maxim one learns very quickly when so doing: Don't invest any money you can't afford to lose. In other words, don't invest the grocery or rent money, and don't invest the savings that you'll be depending upon for your retirement. Why? Because the stock market is volatile, because the value of your investment can drop to nothing in less time than it takes me to write this. Just ask all those who held NASDAQ stocks in early 2000. I was one of them and thanks to the fact that I foolishly trusted someone whom I shouldn't, I lost some $15,000 or so. And at that, I was lucky, since that was, in fact, money that I could afford to lose. It hurt, yes, but it didn't put me on the street. And at the time I still had that Social Security fund sitting there waiting for my retirement.

But if Bush and the Republicans have their way, we'll all know the hollow sensation as the value of an investment plummets. And we'll all get to see our retirement vanish into thin air, while the wealthy (that is, Bush and his friends) laugh at us for trusting them.