Noam Chomsky and George Carlin on Republicans and Social Security

Noam Chomsky and George Carlin on Republicans and Social Security


Republicans want desperately to privatize Social Security so that their Wall Street/banker friends can have your safety-net money for their financial schemes, all the while wanting to sink more and more taxpayer money into the already massive "defense" spending. Republicans also appear to be attempting to demonize the term "entitlements" so that we equate Social Security, along with "welfare," as "Liberal" entitlement programs to be viewed as the internal "danger" facing the American way of life.

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly . . . it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
[Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda]

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years comments
on the Republican's Party's ongoing effort to privatize the Social Security fund.

Quoted from the video:

"Social Security's not in any crisis...the trust fund alone will fully pay benefits for another thirty years or so...to worry about a possible problem thirty years from now which can incidentally be fixed with a little bit of tampering here and there as was done in 1983 -- to worry about that makes absolutely no sense unless you're trying to destroy the program. It's a very successful program, a large number of people rely on it...very low administrative costs, extremely efficient and no burden on the deficit, it doesn't add to the deficit."

"The effort to try to prevent the Social Security program...that's just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it. Now there has been a lot of opposition to it since the 1930's on the part of sectors of extreme wealth and privilege, especially financial capital -- they don't like it for several reasons. One is, for the rich it's meaningless...another is if the financial institutions, the insurance companies can get their hands on this huge financial resource -- for example, if it's privatized in some way or vouchers - that's a huge bonanza, they'll have trillions of dollars to play with -- the banks, the investment firms, and so on."

"But, I think, myself, there's a more subtle reason they're opposed to it...the Social Security's based on a principle -- it's based on the principle that you care about other people -- you care whether the widow across town, the disabled widow's going to be able to have food to eat. And that's a notion you have to drive out of peoples heads -- the idea of solidarity, sympathy, mutual support -- that's doctrinally dangerous. The preferred doctrine's are just care about yourself - don't care about anyone else. That's a very good way to trap and control people. And the very idea that we're in it together, that we care about each other, that we have responsibility for one another -- that's sort of frightening to those who want a society which is dominated by power, authority, wealth, in which people are passive and obedient. And I think that's a considerable part of the drive on the part of small privileged sectors to undermine a very efficient, very effective system on which a large part of the population relies -- actually relies more than ever...they have nothing to else to rely on but the pittance they get from Social Security. To take that away would be just disastrous."