New Nonprofit Almanac and Desk Reference The Essential Facts and Figures for Managers, Resea... Book

Another neat economics book review by Michael Emmett Brady

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The problem started with the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts

Smith is correct that counting the social security trust fund surplus as part of the federal government's general revenue, in order to mask the size of the budget deficit, is dishonest .

Although Smith correctly mentions that it was President Johnson who started this practice, he doesn't emphasize it sufficiently, in my opinion. Johnson implemented Kennedy's mistaken and misguided tax cut plan (similar to the error filled tax cut plan of Warren Harding and Andrew Mellon in 1922) of 1964 at precisely the same time that he was planning massive increases in federal spending to fight the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty.

Johnson started the practice of including the social security surplus in the federal budget revenues to hide and mask from the American people the size of the budget deficits he was creating.

[It will be noted her that J M Keynes was an opponent of deficit financing. Deficit financing is part of the functional finance approach of the American Keynesian-Neoclassical Synthesis economist Abba Lerner. Keynes expressed severe disagreement with Lerner's approach in 1944. Nor was Keynes in favor of income tax cuts. The only tax Keynes would cut would have been the social security tax for workers only].

The Reagan and Bush presidencies have simply copied the approach of Kennedy-Johnson but on a much, much larger and much more damaging scale, increasing the national debt by a factor of nine.

Smith should have stated the problem in the following fashion:

'The deficit finance problem of excessive tax cuts, combined with excessive spending and borrowing, was started by Liberals and then greatly exacerbated by the 'Supply Side-Libertarianism' of the Reagan and Bush Presidencies. It is time to return to the safe, sane, and sound fiscal and monetary policies of the Eisenhower Administration.'

Michael Emmett Brady

Rating 8/10

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One review goes into the history of this book getting temporarily silenced

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This is a new release of a book that was censored and pulled from the market in 2004 because it exposed the government’s ongoing misuse of Social Security funds.

During an appearance on CNBC morning news, to respond to Alan Greenspan’s call for cuts in Social Security benefits, the author held the book in front of the camera and said, “Alan Greenspan should be ashamed of himself for what he is not telling the American people,” which did not set well with the Bush administration. Also, the AARP was opposed to the publication of this book

The author received a personal letter from AARP CEO, William Novelli, scolding him for daring to publicize the looting of Social Security. Novelli did not deny that the looting was taking place, but he was opposed to any action that would inform the public of the looting.

There were many individuals, organizations, and government agencies that did not want the public to read this book, and a few months after the book’s release, the book mysteriously disappeared from bookstores throughout the nation, and was listed as “unavailable” by Amazon.com.

The publisher refused to revert the publishing rights to the book back to the author for a period of three years, so the author’s voice was effectively silenced during the Bush privatization campaign.

For the past 25 years, the government has been diverting surplus Social Security revenue into the general fund and using it to fund tax cuts, wars, and other government programs.

Every cent of the $2.6 trillion in surplus revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike, has been spent by the government on other programs, leaving the Social Security trust fund empty.

Smith believes that the looting of Social Security is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people by their government, and he believes that, when the whole story comes out, it will result in a national scandal that will make Watergate pale by comparison.

Every American needs to read this shocking book, which reveals government actions that are both a betrayal of the public trust and a violation of federal law.

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