Social Security

Rough Draft----revision coming

Over at the Real News,

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=832&Itemid=74&jumival=946

there are two economists discussing what to do about the Great Recession.
One of them , J. Minarik,  recently debated with Richard D. Wolff about Social Security.

In the new program, Minarik reproduces the claims he made during the debate with Wolff.

Richard D. Wolff has commented again on Social Security in his regular weekly program, the week after the electronic meeting with Minarik.

http://rdwolff.com/content/economic-update-tax-truths

In these new comments (starting about /roughly minute 16) RD Wolff turns to the issue of Social Security again.  He explains that the government was over-taxing the poor and middle-class while giving a tax break to the rich. Now, the loan the government took from the Social Security Fund is going to be coming due. (The government borrowed the money which they had collected for Social Security.  SS was bringing in more money than it was spending.) 
So, as Wolff explains, the current rhetoric or flurry of discussion about Social Security  (of which--I think, though Wolff did not mention him---- Minarik is an example) is part of a program to convince the American people to cut Social Security.  However, as Wolff explains, the reason is because the government does not want to pay back Social Security the money it borrowed.

(As I recall, Minarik had the nerve to say that the money can't be paid back because it's already been spent!  Try that line the next time you borrow money!)

Minarik employs a curious rhetoric; one might almost say populist.

He claims to know that the American people want Social Security to pay for itself.
(One might ask whether the agricultural sector or the defense industry pay for themselves!)

So, Minarik is trying to threaten Americans with the fear (very Puritan-individualist) that they
might be getting something for nothing--aka, a "handout".  So, he is appealing to the emotion of shame and a particular (Puritan) cultural background.

But, as Richard D Wolff (among others, including the Cambridge Economist Ha Joon Chang), have pointed out:  industry/business gets all sorts of support from the government.   (I should add a link here to a recent editorial by Chang. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/05/company-profits-welfare-payments-society#history-link-box
(Chang's examples are not USA companies; but that doesn't change the general point that the contribution of government to private enterprise is real, large, and frequently un-noticed.)

 Wolff regularly makes this point in his weekly radio program.)

So, there's a bit of hypocrisy and/or inconsistency in shaming the elderly into accepting cuts.

Secondly, Minarik employs the same pseudo-populist rhetoric in hinting that cuts to defense spending would be unwelcome to Americans.  Errr, before or after they've been propagandized with the fear of foreign enemies? 

How does Minarik know the minds of ordinary Americans so well?  Does he have any evidence for these claims?