AARP vs. Social Security?
by Dale Coberly
AARP vs. Social Security?
Last week Huffington Post
reported that AARP was embarking on a
“Social Security and Medicare “listening tour” called “You’ve Earned a Say and We’re Listening.” Through “town halls, community conversations, bus tours and other events,” the influential organization promises to offer members a chance to speak out on the simmering debate over the future of Social Security and Medicare.
“The outreach is part of the group’s campaign to restore trust it lost during last year’s spending debate, when a top AARP official told the Wall Street Journal the organization was open to cuts to the entitlement programs. “The ship was sailing. I wanted to be at the wheel when that happens,” AARP policy chief John Rother said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“But while AARP staffers fan out across the country to hear from members, the group’s CEO, Barry Rand, will be listening to a different cast of characters.
An AARP invitation to a secret “Relaxed and Robust Evening of ‘Salon Style’ Conversation” to be held at a Capitol Hill home on March 27, obtained by The Huffington Post, indicates that the organization is still very much interested in a “grand-bargain” style deal that puts Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table.
“”AARP is not pursuing any closed door deals or grand bargains,” said an AARP spokeswoman. “Our main focus is hearing from our members, and all Americans, what they think about ways to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. That’s precisely why we’re launching ‘You’ve Earned a Say.’ We are interested in hearing from all sides and having civil discourse on these issues.”
“The invite list for 2012 suggests that AARP is still very much open to cutting Social Security and Medicare, as a majority of this year’s expected “thought leaders” have thoughts that involve slashing Social Security.
“”They want to be at the table when a deal is cut,” said one person who declined to be named because he continues to work closely with AARP. The irony is that while AARP’s legislative team may be convinced that a deal is inevitable, a grand bargain actively opposed by AARP would be effectively impossible for Congress to pass.”
What this amounts to is that AARP, granny’s lawyer, sees granny being raped by a bunch of thugs. But instead off rushing in to help her, he waits to see how the struggle is going. If it looks like the rapists are going to win, he will rush in to help them. Just in case, you know, there might be something in it for him.
There were 3700 comments on Huff Post to this article. Most of them understood that AARP is not one of the good guys, and their “we want to hear from you” is just a cynical smokescreen..no more than a survey to see how effective the lies have been. But sadly, not one of the 3700 comments showed any real understanding of Social Security or the “crisis” surrounding it. They have all grown up hearing the lies, and no effective answer to those lies. Not surprising when the politicians and the press are effectively owned by the Liars, and the “liberals” who defend Social Security always start out by talking as if the lies were true.
Rather than attempt to counter the lies, I will just repeat the simple truth here one more time and hope that someone finds a way to tell the people:
Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, and it never will. Social Security is not going broke, and it never can. Social Security is not paid for by “the government.” It is paid for by the workers who will get the benefits.
With no change whatsoever Social Security can continue to provide “adequate” benefits so workers can afford at least a basic retirement after about forty years of work… that is when they reach 62, though they can get a larger monthly benefit if they choose to retire later.
IF those same workers as a voting majority decide they want the “same replacement rate” (monthly benefit as a percent of of their average lifetime real working wages) … over a longer life expectancy in retirement… they can raise their own payroll tax one half of one tenth of one percent per year… or about forty cents per week each year in today’s terms while their wages are increasing over one full percent per year… or about eight dollars per week per year.
Pretty much everything else you hear about Social Security is Lies or nonsense. There is no need to raise the cap, cut benefits, raise the retirement age, means test, or tax the rich. At most just a tiny raise in what amounts to an insurance premium to cover the increased costs associated with living longer in a richer society.
Well you are ight Coberly except that Obama keeps cutting the payroll tax so that everything you say is less true. As a result, I am not supporting Obama either financially or at the ballot box and my support of Democrats generally is on a case by case basis. I also do not support or belong to AARP although I have been eleigible for some time now. Its stance on issues like social security makes them anathema to me. You are quite right however that many of the elderly are simply utterly clueless about social security. I recall here in Wisconsin the letter to the editor that an elderly woman wrote indicating that she was voting for Johnson rather than Feingold because the surplus funds in social security’s trust fund had been spent by the federal govern,ment on Feingold’s watch and she thought Johnson would better protect her social security. Johnson of course wants to end all government spending except for the military and subsidies to his company.
terry
yes.
the people are clueless. and the payroll tax holiday is the death of Social Security.
it doesn’t really make what i say less true. it’s just that now we have to convince the people that going back to paying for their Social Security is not a tax raise.
but the people are clueless.
one possible, but just barely, good result of the holiday could be that when people realize they do not notice 2% of their income one way or another, it might make it easier to increase the payroll tax 2% all at once in 2036 or so when it would be needed as the the Trust Fund finishes paying for what it was created to pay for.
my sense of this is that there’s something we dont know…like maybe AARP leadership getting paid off under the table…
either that, or they’re completely senile & have been sold a bill of goods…
1) You clearly do not understand present value
2) You clearly don’t understand dependency ratios
3) If you believe that there is a trust fund I have a bridge to sell you
I will concede that SS is fixable. Medicare is not.
AARP is in the business of selling insurance. The elderly is just an excuse.
z wolf
you clearly do not know what you are talking about. but a rich fantasy life is one of the benefits of being a fanatic.
the Trustees Report accounts for dependency ratios, and the Trust Fund is being used as we speak to make up the “cash flow deficit” long predicted and for which it was designed.
SS is easily fixable because it ain’t broke.
In my own opinion the way to fix Medicare is to bring it back entirely to the SS model: a dedicated tax, pay as you go, capped, to pay for the actual costs of all legitimate medical care after retirement. paid for by the people who will need the care. the advantage is that you get to pay for your future medical care while you have the money, protected from inflation, even “medical inflatoin” by pay as you go financing. the “disadvantage” is that the people would have to face up to the fact that if they are going to want the medical care they are going to have to pay for it. one would hope a combination of serious cost control and higher wages for workers would do the job. it won’t be “unaffordable” unless, of course you need to have a sexier car every other year more than you are going to want a longer, healthier life.
oops
i forgot “present value.” you clearly do not understand why present value is not a good way to understand the cost of dinner. it is however a good way to mystify the cost of future dinners to those who haven’t got a clue.
AARP is in this for the money. SS pays about $700 billion dollars a year in benefits financed primarily by FICA payroll contributions. That’s a lot of revenue that people in investment banks and bond markets want to get their hands on. Even a small slice of the FICA revenue would be enough to make billionaires in the financial industry like Pete Peterson delirious with joy. Mind, he wants it all. But, a little will do to begin with. AARP is looking for a piece of the action, probably on the full life insurance/annuity end of the business.
If you’re interested in reading more about this issue, I suggest you take a look at the website of organizations like National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM at http://www.ncpssm.org/) or the Center for Economic Policy and Research at http://www.cepr.net/.
Too also–z wolf, people here actually do understand present value and dependency ratios. Do try to be civil on this blog. Rudeness just won’t do. NancyO
using “present value” to talk about Social Security is iike
calculating the present value of your daily bread for the next seventy five years, or infinite horizon
deciding you can’t afford it and cutting off your head to save on the cost of dinners.
the present value assumes you have a magic bank which will pay a magic interest at a magic zero risk forever. then you can ignore the insurance value of SS, retirement, disability, death… and tell all your friends that because the richest possible worker will get less from SS than the “present value” of is taxes, SS is a bad investment. you don’t need to tell all your friends that average, and most definitely lower than average earners, get a great deal more than “present value” from their “investment in SS. and the whole point of SS is insurance, for you, in case you end up among those lower than average earners.
of course it could never happen to you. funny that it happens to 50% of the population, and 80% of the population couldn’t get by without their SS. or that a country where the old are destitute and the young are afraid of becoming destitute would not be an easy country to get rich in.
but hey, what the heck, with a desk calculator you can compute “present value” and tell yourself how smart you are.
oops, fogot to mention
it also assumes you have the money to put in the magic bank today so it can earn the interest to pay for all those dinners.
of course this is the Big Lie. they tell you the cost of dinner for a hundred years based on the magic bank account.
then you say “but we don’t have that kind of money”. so, they say, the only answer is to kill social security. because, god knows, the country can’t afford bread if it doesn’t have 5,6, 17, 44 Trillion in the bank today.
Coberly
I received an e mail last week from SS Works asking that I sign a petition to AARP to express my concern. When I went to sign I was asked what I’d like to say to AARP. I left the following message: please invite Dale Coberly and Bruce Webb to your summit meeting. You’ll be glad you did.’They can be reached at the Angry Bear blog spot.
well, just to take the mystery out of it
The Trustees use present value for what are probably good reasons, but then they let you know that “Trillions of Dollars PV of Unfunded Deficit” is about 2% of GDP. Think of it, 2% of GDP to feed and house the elderly, and they pay for it themselves.
what a rip off. what a burden.
“Too also–z wolf, people here actually do understand present value and dependency ratios. Do try to be civil on this blog. Rudeness just won’t do.” NancyO
z wolf,
Nancy O. is our nice guy representative. Don’t take that “rudeness will not do” stuff too seriously. What will not do is the propagation of distortions and the repetition of deceitful talking points, such as, “3) If you believe that there is a trust fund I have a bridge to sell you” If that’s the best that you can offer by way of informative discussion, please f__k off!! Your ignorance is boring.
Coberly,
I recevied an e mail last week fro Social SecurityWorks asking me to sign a petition to AARP expressing my concerns regarding the “summit.” When I clicked on the link to sign the petition, I was asked, what I’d like to say to AARP. My response was: Please invite Dale Coberyly and Bruce Webb to your “summit.” You’ll be gald you did. Bruce and Dale can be found at the Angry Bear blogspot.
nanute
thanks. i’ll get my bags packed.
My thanks also.
But as it turns out I am on a first name basis with the leaders of Social Security Works and they are aware (and mostly supportive and appreciative) of Dale and my (slightly differing) takes on this. You may not see it but the two way communication between the left blogosphere and Beltway SS advocates is wide open in ways unimaginable even three years ago. In large part because Nancy Altman of SSW proactively reached out and solicited the names of bloggy opinion makers. And I did my little part in suggesting names and supplying contact info for people like Digby and McJoan of dKos who might as well been living on the far side of the moon as far as most Beltway folk knew.
But thanks again for mentioning our names so the SSW folk don’t think Dale and I are just talking to them but are doing our best to ed’icate the peepul.
Coberly: “But sadly, not one of the 3700 comments showed any real understanding of Social Security or the “crisis” surrounding it.”
Kind of painting with a broad brush here, aren’t you? The piece was about the most influential advocate for seniors potentially selling them out on Social Security, not on the financial state of the program, although the author did pronounce it “robust.”
I’ve probably learned about 90% of what I “understand” about Social Security here from you and Bruce Webb (and am glad you are being heard in the Beltway!), and do not regard the Huffington Post as a reliable source of technical knowledge, but I felt this piece had some worth in getting it out there that the AARP was still up to its old tricks.
My brief comment posted at Huffington Post:
“Something’s really wrong when you have to have to lobby your own lobbyist to do what they are supposed to be doing all along – and what the organization’s millions upon millions of supporters have been paying them to do for decades.”
Coberly: “But sadly, not one of the 3700 comments showed any real understanding of Social Security or the “crisis” surrounding it.”
Kind of painting with a broad brush here, aren’t you? The piece was about the most influential advocate for seniors potentially selling them out on Social Security, not on the financial state of the program, although the author did pronounce it “robust.”
I’ve probably learned about 90% of what I “understand” about Social Security here from you and Bruce Webb (and am glad you are being heard in the Beltway!), and do not regard the Huffington Post as a reliable source of technical knowledge, but I felt this piece had some worth in getting it out there that the AARP was still up to its old tricks.
My brief comment posted at Huffington Post:
“Something’s really wrong when you have to have to lobby your own lobbyist to do what they are supposed to be doing all along – and what the organization’s millions upon millions of supporters have been paying them to do for decades.”
Coberly: “But sadly, not one of the 3700 comments showed any real understanding of Social Security or the “crisis” surrounding it.”
Kind of painting with a broad brush here, aren’t you? The piece was about the most influential advocate for seniors potentially selling them out on Social Security, not on the financial state of the program, although the author did pronounce it “robust.”
I’ve probably learned about 90% of what I “understand” about Social Security here from you and Bruce Webb (and am glad you are being heard in the Beltway!), and do not regard the Huffington Post as a reliable source of technical knowledge, but I felt this piece had some worth in getting it out there that the AARP was still up to its old tricks.
My brief comment posted at Huffington Post:
“Something’s really wrong when you have to have to lobby your own lobbyist to do what they are supposed to be doing all along – and what the organization’s millions upon millions of supporters have been paying them to do for decades.”
z wolf:
“I will concede that SS is fixable. Medicare is not.”
Social Security is neither broke nor broken.
As for Medicare, why be pessimistic? Medical costs started their meteoric rise under Reagan, but leveled off as a percentage of GDP under Clinton. That shows that they do not have to spiral out of control. Vote Democratic!
rollo
i may have missed your comment in the 3700 i read. let me say that i saw an awful lot of false understanding based on people mixing up the lies they have heard according to their own theory of everything, but nothing that showed me that they understand that SS has not been “robbed” or that it can pay benefits forever with no “fix” at all.
That is a comment about the comments; not a comment about you or the article, which was, as you say, about the AARP selling out the people who depend on SS and those who will depend on it in future.
I’m sure you heard me the first time. Sorry about the repeats. Don’t know how that happened. (Definitely hit “Post” only once.)
I’m sure you heard me the first time. Sorry about the repeats. Don’t know how that happened. (Definitely hit “Post” only once.)
and thanks for your understanding.
It can’t be said often enough so I’ll say it here again. We need to begin to state more clearly and more loudly that Social Security benefits are an “entitlement” only because all working people have been making contributions to the SS system throughout their working lives. It is not government largesse paid out of tax revenues. FICA deductions are not the tax that the fool in the W.H. claims it to be. He did not reduce your taxes by reducing your FICA deductions. He did reduce your retirement savings plan. “Payroll taxes” are a misnomer. There are no taxes that go into the Trust Fund. The general fund owes trillions of dollars to that Trust Fund in the same way that it owes all holders of Treasury Notes. Pay backs a bitch, as they say. And that pay back process is the only connection between SS and tax revenues.
Sadly the President has, for what ever reason, decided to support the current economy at the expense of your retirement fund, Social Security. It is a cynical ploy to tell workers that their taxes have been reduced in the interest of creating current demand. That at a potentially injurious effect on your future financial well being. Income taxes could have been reduced instead, but Obama chose to make the first of the thousand cuts that are intended to bleed the only financial plan that the average American worker has been able to count on for the past 75 years, or so.
Jack
but he did it so the Liars could say, “see, SS really does contribute to the deficit.”
only it’s not SS that’s contributing to the deficit; it’s the tax holiday, which is the opposite of SS.
not that you’ll get a chance to try to explain THAT to the people.
Irony is so ironic sometimes.
Irony is so ironic sometimes.
(Seriously JS-Kit is erratic, sometimes it seems like it didn’t register your comment when in fact it is just caught in some buffer. With the result being multiple posts.)
Obama does not keep cutting the payroll tax. Congress does. The Democratic leadership in Congress has made it abundantly clear that it is not interested in the President’s views on the tax code. The President’s job is to sign legislation that is approved by his party’s Congressional leadership and passed by both houses. Period.
Obama does not keep cutting the payroll tax. Congress does. The Democratic leadership in Congress has made it abundantly clear that it is not interested in the President’s views on the tax code. The President’s job is to sign legislation that is approved by his party’s Congressional leadership and passed by both houses. Period.
Obama does not keep cutting the payroll tax. Congress does. The Democratic leadership in Congress has made it abundantly clear that it is not interested in the President’s views on the tax code. The President’s job is to sign legislation that is approved by his party’s Congressional leadership and passed by both houses. Period.
Bosh. The payroll holiday was an Administration iniative. And the truth is that for a major, major slice of government spending the Administration proposes and Congress disposes. For example the document formally called THE Budget of the United States is prepared by OMB with input from all Executive Branch agencies. Which is standard practice for almost all levels of goverrnment when it comes to ongoing spending.
Now according to the Constitution all spending bills have to originate in the House. But this doesn’t mean either the Senate or White House simply waits hat in hand for the Speaker to make a move. Instead both are involved in discussions from the very beginning and particularly so with matters of taxation.
The payroll tax holiday was an Obama Administration proposal. Period. That some stray House member-sponsor may have titular credit is neither here nor there.
Fixed, rollotomasi