Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again
Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again
Yet again.
I grant that he did not do it at length or present a lot of clearly incorrect nonsense. But bash Social Security he did, using an old ruse to do so, combining it with Medicare to invoke a long term deficit danger due to the two of them together, when in fact it is well known that it is the Medicare part of that projection of future spending that leads to all the scary looking deficit numbers, not the Social Security part.
Most of the column by Robert J. Samuelson today, “Everybody’s mad at somebody,” is a lament about political polarization in the US today, and the obnoxious effect this has policy making. Fred Hiatt has a similar column, “Trump’s wasted opportunity,” although I would say that for once Hiatt avoided saying anything too silly, noting possible political compromises on a carbon tax, immigration policy, and tax reform, that might have been possible if Trump had been willing to be a nonpartisan leader, but that look unlikely to happen given his descent into cheap partisanship, as well as his general ignorance and incompetence. Most of Samualson’s column deals with past history of compromises made and how we got to not doing that anymore. However, his misguided statement on Social Security appears in a single paragraph, which I shall quote in its entirety now, regarding supposed compromises or issues that need compromising that are not likely to be.
“To take two familiar examples: The Republican promise to repeal and replace Obamacare while also reducing premiums and expanding coverage was never possible. It was make-believe. Similarly, the Democratic refusal to deal with the escalating costs of Medicare and Social Security is crushing other worthy government programs – a strange position for a pro-government party.”
So here is RJS back to playing the role of WaPo Very Wise Person, or whatever, calling for a compromise between the supposedly equally unwise positions of the two parties. But, the hard fact is that his analysis of the impossibility of the GOP position is completely accurate. He falls down when he gets to the Dem side. Again, there is a rising trend of medical care costs, which affects Medicaid as well as Medicare. If he had replaced Social Security with Medicaid, he would have been much more accurate, and clearly we need some sort of program to get rising medical care costs under control
But throwing in Social Security there instead of Medicaid (which the GOP is trying to cut without cost controls, just throw people off) as part of their Obamacare repeal and replace, muddies the waters, although it fits in with the longstanding campaign by the WaPo ed board to slash Social Security. And it does have RJS back on his regular Monday spot playing that old game, even if he did not make too much of a silly fuss about it this time. But some of us have our eyes on him, and will call him out when he pulls this nonsense, when we catch him. And he was at it again here.
BTW, Happy Fourth of July, you all.
Barkley Rosser
I think all of Samualson’s wealth should be confiscated and used to feed the homeless, but I’m willing to compromise and say that just half of it should be confiscated–just so long as he’s never allowed to work as a “journalist” ever again.
Barkley
“compromise” is apparently the only way journalists, politicians, and social scientists can think. it never occurs to them there might be a “right” answer.
in the case of Social Security: it has NO effect on the federal budget whatsoever. it is paid for entirely by the people who will get the benefits. AND the “actuarial deficit” faced by Social Security itself (because people are going to be living longer and earning less) can be presented in a way that makes it look huge: just present the “cost” as the entire cost of 200 million people over seventy five years (or the infinite horizon) and you can get a scary number. but if you do the arithmetic the scary number turns out to be about one dollar per week per taxpayer per year over about twenty years while their incomes are going up about ten dollars per week per year.
krasting looks at this as a ‘tax increase every year.” he can’t look at is as a “gradual” tax increase to balance growing costs with growing income. and most people, apparently, can’t look at a “dollar a week” and understand just how small that is. and i am afraid to even try to explain that the eventual twenty dollars per week will come out of an extra two hundred dollars per week income, because human brains automatically compare the eventual cost with “today”s” income, and in any case regard a future cost as something like being robbed of what they have today instead of recognizing it as a rather small increase in what they have to set aside in order to be sure they don’t fall into real poverty when they get too old and it’s too late to do anything about it.
didn’t mean to run on, but while I think samuelson is a paid liar, i have to make allowances for the inability of human brains to actually comprehend a problem. they get hung up on their emotional (irrational) response to a few words that look to them like they are going to get hurt. which, of course, is the business of liars to promote.
note
the actual “average cost” of the projected SS deficit is about thirty cents per week per taxpayer per year. i have been talking about a dollar per week because that is what it would take to avoid the need for a sudden twenty dollar increase (one time only) if nothing is done for the next fifteen years.
but i have watched grown senators when confronted with the simple arithmetic facts in a public meeting dodge it with “i like to think of Social Security as insurance” (so do i, but what has that got to do with the cost of paying for it?) and when pressed with the dollar per week figure they say “I get it.” in an exasperated tone. But they don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. They don’t know how to get it.
just to try, desperately, one more time to try to drive this into some human brains:
the Trustees Report last year said the cost of closing the projected deficit would be an “immediate and permanent” increase of about 13 dollars per week. now. one time only.
but then they say, “not really”. after seventy five years another “significant” increase would be required. That significant increase would be about another ten dollars per week.
and what do people do with this?
they scream that 13 dollars a week would cripple them. out of an income of a thousand dollars per week, it is unfair and hugely burdening to ask them to set aside an extra 13 dollars to guarantee they will be able to retire when they get old.
AND they look at that additional ten dollars seventy five years from now and scream as if they had caught someone picking their pocket today.
me, i’m willing to bet that the people paying taxes seventy five years from now will be able to, and maybe even smart enough to, find an extra ten dollars a week to keep Social Security running to the infinite horizon. but in any case i am absolutely sure no one alive today really needs to worry about that.
“the Democratic refusal to deal with the escalating costs of Medicare and Social Security is crushing other worthy government programs ”
Like reducing taxes on the rich. In fact the “age burden” could probably mostly be covered via inheritance taxes – and I use inheritance taxes deliberately because I have seen in Australia what can happen to estate duties. (Estate duties were raised by states in Australia and so suffered a race to the bottom. Federal inheritance taxes would have no such problem.)
P.S. Inheritance taxes would have other good results, like pushing down asset prices making them affordable to younger generations (at least a larger proportion of younger generations now that bequests are smaller).
Reason
there is no need to raise inheritance taxes to “save” Social Security or even Medicare or even pay for Medicare for all. And it would be a mistake to even try to do so.
Social Security works exactly because it is NOT a “tax on the rich,” otherwise known as “the dole.” Medicare doesn’t work quite as well as SS because it has been hybridized from “insurance for workers paid for by the workers themselves” into half paid by workers and half paid for by “the rich.” and Medicare for all could be paid for by the workers themselves. It would be expensive, but since it would lower their health care costs overall it would end up saving them money. Any tax the rich scheme will end up with the rich passing the costs on to the workers in the form of lower pay. Moreover it will give “the rich” the “talking points” they need to destroy SS itself, entirely…by turning it into “the dole.”
As long as the Democrats… the workers… fail to understand this they will fail to “save” Social Security” and fail to solve the health care problem.