The Commission to Strengthen Social Security (mailto:comment@CSSS.gov)and their co-cjair from AOL in particular, stress that future pension payments are up against the need for each pension to be paid from taxes on two (or fewer) worker's wages.

Obviously, future purchasing power of pensions will also come from the output of robots and automated systems. So the work of two wage earners will recede in importance compared to the work of automated systems.

The CSSS also avoids the obvious source of nominal financial flows to pay pay future pensions, namely, general revenues. These general revenues from whatever tax (or more modern system comes will support all government spending in future decades) may be involved can cover any financial shortfall when payroll tax rates stay level or are greatly reduced.

The Microsoft pyramid approach to earnings and cash flows reminds me of what the CSSS is now doing. Is the CSSS they just trying to reduce nominal benefits to retired wage type workers as they enjoy ever increasing wealth flowing to the very few whose greed knows no bounds? That is what Gephardt claims -- and I think he is right.

If it is an estate that the CSSS wants workers to have -- and I agree with this goal even if I doubt that they mean it -- the way to accomplish this would be to guarantee higher returns to any social security investment and higher benefits to baby boomers based on the higher economic output automation will bring and the need for it to be distributed to such workers and their families.

Do you see a tie between dishonesty that allows pyramid schemes to last as long as they do and the dishonesty that infects the CSSS today?

-- john gelles (john@1944.org), July 26, 2001

Answers

For automation, think "software." Most automation today is the removal of white-collar jobs by using software instead of people. Blue-collar service jobs are still in high demand, while the current recession is 70% a "white-collar white-out". So the software companies and other high-tech powers who provide automation tools that put the middle class out of work are the ones who should be paying the difference to replace lost Soc. Sec. revenues.

But amazingly, it is the high-tech companies who are most adept at avoiding taxes.

-- Tom Nadeau (pcassembler@mindspring.com), July 30, 2001.