Elizabeth Warren vs. the neoliberals

[NorthCarolina]

Elizabeth Warren vs. the neoliberals: The battle over Americans’ retirement security

The left’s plan to expand Social Security butts up against old “centrist” ideas
that favor the small-bore and cheap



In the last year or two, something remarkable has happened in American politics. After decades in which future deficits, mostly caused by healthcare costs and conservative tax cuts, were invoked by those seeking to slash Social Security benefits for reasons of ideology or pecuniary interest, the national conversation has changed. Preceded by intellectual pioneers like Atrios and Social Security Works, Sens. Tom Harkin and Mark Begich have proposed to slightly expand, rather than contract, Social Security benefits. My New America Foundation colleagues Robert Hiltonsmith, Steven Hill and Joshua Freedman and I have proposed a more radical expansion, coupled with caps on 401(k)s and other tax-favored retirement savings programs, which chiefly benefit the richest Americans. By endorsing the concept of expanding Social Security, Sen. Elizabeth Warren lent credence to an idea that has gained the support of mainstream pundits like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias.

Unfortunately, nobody has told President Obama.

In a speech in Pittsburgh on Jan. 29, the president fleshed out the My Retirement Account (MyRA) proposal he mentioned in his State of the Union address. The president’s remarks begin promisingly enough:

Today, most workers don’t have a pension in America,” he added. “Just half work for an employer that offers any kind of a retirement plan. A Social Security check is critical, but oftentimes, that monthly check, that’s not enough. And while the stock market has doubled over the last five years, that doesn’t help somebody if you don’t have a 401(k).

All of this seems like a lead-up to a Warren-like endorsement of proposals to expand Social Security benefits, right?

Well, no.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/12/elizabeth_warren_vs_the_neoliberals_the_battle_over_americans%E2%80%99_retirement_security/

Elizabeth Warren: bringing 'Liberalism" out of the dark and back into your living room.

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[Scuba]

2. Spin alert: "... deficits, mostly caused by healthcare costs and conservative tax cuts ..."

Um, war cost trilliions.

[djean111]

3. Excellent article.

The meat of it, for me....

Obama’s MyRA proposal (already being pronounced “Myra” as in Gore Vidal’s famous transsexual Myra Breckinridge, rather than “My RA”) is an unintentional parody of Clinton-Obama neoliberalism. To satisfy the requirements of classic neoliberalism, a proposal has to meet the following tests:

It must be symbolic rather than serious. Rather than actually solve a major social or economic problem, the policy should merely signal that the neoliberal politician “feels your pain.”

It must be small-bore and cheap. A token gesture of neoliberal reform must not cost very much money, because, in the words of Bill Clinton, “The era of big government is over” and neoliberals do not want to be confused with big-government tax-and-spend progressives.

It must be unnecessarily complex and easily gamed. Alexander the Great, who cut the Gordian knot with a single swipe of his sword, was more like a New Deal liberal than a New Democrat. Neoliberal Democrats are more like Michael Meyers’ Dr. Evil, who prefers devising an overly complicated death by contraption for an enemy he could dispatch more quickly and simply with a bullet. Neoliberals love what the political scientist Steven Teles calls “kludgeocracy” — that is, the design of public policy equivalents of Rube Goldberg machines.

If possible, it must funnel money from taxpayers to rent-seekers in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector, where the donors behind neoliberal Democrats tend to be found. Neoliberals never want government to carry out a program directly, simply and cheaply, when it could be contracted out at greater expense to fee-collecting private corporations or banks or, as in the case of the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare, to rent-seeking private insurance companies, who might, just might, recycle some of their rents as campaign contributions to serving politicians or corporate board pay to former officials.

President Obama’s MyRA proposal meets all four criteria. It is the reductio ad absurdum of token, small-bore, unnecessarily complicated and crony-capitalist Democratic neoliberalism.

To begin with, Myra (as we’ll call her henceforth) is symbolic, cheap and small-bore. The president proposes that qualifying employees be allowed to hold some safe government securities for a maximum of 30 years or a mature investment of $15,000. Divide $15,000 by 30 years of retirement and you get $500 a year or an extra $41.66 a month. I’m sure the poor elderly will be grateful for the small but kind neoliberal gesture.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. She is a courageous Democrat.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. She's ruining it.

She's ruining *everything*. Everything that we've worked so hard to do to you people will be destroyed.

Regards,

Third-Way Manny

[NorthCarolina]

6. We can only hope. nt

[HappyMe]

7. How I wish she were running instead of Clinton.

I would be fired up to work for her campaign.

[daybranch]

8. At last a democrat

to vote for than them centrist corporatists .I will work so hard to get her elected.