Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Preserve the safety net

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005 | 6:21 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

WEEKEND EDITION

February 5 - 6, 2005

I can't get the picture of those bread lines out of my head.

OK, here's the test. The president is talking about changing the way we do Social Security and I am thinking about pictures of bread lines. If you understand what I am talking about then you don't need to read much further. If you don't have a clue what I am trying to say, read on. I got my lesson second-hand so there is no reason why, if I do this right, you won't be impacted as well.

Many years ago, a man much smarter and more prescient than I, talked to me about growing up. The man was my father, Hank Greenspun. He created this space in which I am writing and through it shared many life lessons with his readers, as well as a few of life's pointers --- aimed directly at the bad guys, the greedy people and those who preyed upon the weaker members of our society.

I remember Dad telling me how fortunate my generation was. For the most part, he said, we had safe homes, plenty of food, an opportunity for a good education and parents of a generation who understood the rewards of hard work and who were determined to make our generation safer than theirs. And while he emphasized the fact that no parent would ever wish a world war or a worldwide depression upon his children, he did lament the fact that we would grow up without a "steeling" event in our lives to help us understand who we were and what we were capable of achieving.

The steeling events, of course, were a worldwide depression that left grown men, young and old, in bread lines and a world war against the Nazis that threatened the globe with a future of tyranny. In both cases, the stakes were as high as they could get -- liberty, starvation and death. No American came out of those years without a very clear understanding of what he or she was capable of and with a very clear notion of what fear actually meant. The idea that my generation would not know those challenges was both very good and a matter of some concern to my father.

Of course, he was right. The first challenge my generation ever faced was the Vietnam War and, regardless of any individual decision my peers and I made during those years, we are still fighting the ghosts that divided and have not yet united this country --- 30 years later! Then we had three heart-rending assassinations, Watergate and the resignation of a president, the Iran hostage situation, the fall of the Berlin Wall and a few other minor challenges.

We muddled through them, of course, because we are Americans, but at no time did we have to reach deep inside and find out what we were made of and how much we could handle. That's the good news.

The downside is that we have little or no sense of history like our parents and grandparents did. They lived through those times and we didn't.

So now comes the time when my generation and the next may get to make a decision that will change -- for good or bad, who knows? -- the most significant social services program ever created in this country. And the people who will probably decide on those changes are the only folks in this country who have little or no knowledge about why the program exists and why, if at all, it should remain.

President George W. Bush is traveling around the country advancing his plan to change the Social Security system in a most fundamental way. He wants people to have their own private accounts within the system through which they can determine the kind and quality of investments to make with their retirement funds rather than leaving that decision up to the government, which has handled the investment side since the program first began some 70 years ago. It is a bold move, to be sure, and one that I cannot yet determine is good or bad for the program or, more importantly, for the people who will rely on those dollars decades from now when they retire from the workforce.

But, while I am listening to the arguments which, I hope, will be forthcoming in significant detail rather than the normal political one-liners that generally assuage a not so curious public, I can't help seeing those bread lines.

If I understand the lessons of the Great Depression, they included the concept that financial ruin can come suddenly, without warning; that people tend to save miserly and spend as if tomorrow will always bring a brighter day; that the folks on top of the world are just as vulnerable -- if not more so -- than those at the bottom of the economic ladder (for certain they have a lot farther to fall, which they proved over and over again from those tall Wall Street buildings); and that when the hard times come and people desperately need help, the federal treasury is least able to respond.

It is those lessons, that have been learned by the older generation and either never learned or not understood by the younger ones, that need to be appreciated before the political maneuvering starts in earnest.

For the younger generations who do not yet feel their own mortality -- physical or financial -- the concept of bread lines is as foreign as the idea that there will never be economic hardship is to those my age and older. And that is where the friction will be as the country moves forward with this debate.

I am certain there are political motivations attached to the president's desire to move trillions of dollars from government control to Wall Street's private stewardship, but that alone should not be a show stopper. There should be ways to ensure that the Enrons and the Boeskys get nowhere near our money (if there aren't such safeguards then Bush's plan deserves to be DOA).

But politics aside --- and in dealing with the futures of millions and millions of hard-working Americans, there is no room at all for politics -- there is still this picture that is in my mind and should be seen clearly by all of us before we move too fast.

Bread lines full of people -- young, old, men, women and children -- have no place in the United States of America. Ever. So anything we do to "save" Social Security must first do, as the doctors say, no harm to the people.

Very few of us alive can remember the really bad times in this country. Before we jump over President Bush's private accounts' cliff, let's make sure we know what is on the other side. If it has the potential of a bread line, let's not go there.

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