“Global Aging an Economic Crisis.” Beaver County Times, August 30, 2001, p. D3.
Yes, an economic crisis, according to a report “an international panel” called the Commission on Global Aging released in Tokyo on August 29. As the above one-sided article puts it, the commission thinks “[p]ension and labor shortfalls” will result from an aging world population, sending “public pensions…tottering into bankruptcy” unless “governments…rely more on market-based financing, raise the age of pension eligibility as life spans get longer and reduce incentives for early retirement.”
Privatize Social Security? Why not? Markets never crash. And only lazy bums don’t want to spend their twilight years flipping burgers at Mickey D’s.
Anyway, the article fails to note that a Washington, DC, think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), sponsored the commission. CSIS describes itself as “providing world leaders with strategic insights on—and policy solutions to—current and emerging global issues.”
John J. Hamre, a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, runs CSIS. Members (besides numerous corporate bigshots) include former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, former CIA director/Secretary of Defense/Secretary of Energy James R. Schlessinger, former Secretary of Labor William E. Brock (who helped create the World Trade Organization), and (of course) noted war criminal Henry Kissinger.
Obviously, CSIS is far from liberal. It notes in an August 29 press release that “86 political leaders, business and nongovernmental organization executives, and policy experts” served on the aging commission. No labor activists, though—not surprising, since the report lists certain “economic restructuring” proposals not mentioned in the Beaver County Times article: abolishing “incentives…to remain jobless” (such as welfare and unemployment compensation?); giving employers more freedom in “discharging” employees and in setting up union-free shops; and honoring those most sacred deities known as “market forces” by privatizing all government services, not just Social Security.
Thus, concern for corporate coffers masquerades as concern for the aged.
Circa early September 2001
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 