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Open thread August 14, 2012

Dan Crawford | August 14, 2012 7:48 pm

Tags: open thread Comments (2) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
2 Comments
  • PJR says:
    August 16, 2012 at 11:52 am

    I will not be surprised if Social Security becomes an issue as we get closer to the election. I have two questions and AB experts might have answers.

    First, what would Paul Ryan’s Roadmap do about Social Security survivor’s insurance? Ryan received these benefits as a teen, although his family probably didn’t need them to support his eduction. He chose not to include the Roadmap’s Social Security privatization plan in the budget that he introduced in the House last year–probably because he and others aren’t confident that the Third Rail no longer exists as he claimed. I understand that his Roadmap would turn the retirement part of the system into a defined contribution plan (vice a defined benefit plan) investing in private sector stocks and bonds, but has anyone looked for his intentions regarding Social Security’s other features?

    A second question: how does the Roadmap differ from Ryan’s 2005 legislative proposal? Specifically, according to Dylan Matthews at Ezra Klein’s blog, the SSA estimated that Ryan’s 2005 proposal would have resulted essentially in a government takeover of most of the means of production in the US. That is, government managers of the privatized accounts would own most stock by 2050. I can see how they reached that conclusion, but not see how Ryan’s privatization plan can easily avoid giving government appointees immense power over the market. (See http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryans-non-budget-policy-record-in-one-post/ )

  • Anonymous says:
    August 16, 2012 at 4:37 pm

    PJR

    good questions. I am not an expert, though people sometimes think i claim to be.

    all i “know” is that the Trustees Report projections still show that Social Security can be made fully “solvent” (by their definition) by raising the payroll tax one tenth of a percent per year for an average of about one year out of four over the next eighty years. and i can calulate, based on other Trustees projections that that would leave the average worker with twice as much money in his pocket AFTER paying the tax, AND a benefit that is worth, each month, twice as much as today’s benefits, and last the many more months that the workers paying the tax will expect to live.

    That said, I can’t see much point in examining the details of a dishonest plan to privatize Social Security.. that is, turn it into what it had to be invented to save us from.

    But, yes, I can also calculate that the recent “meme” “you will pay more into Social Security than you will get back” is a lie. It depends on the idea that there is a Magic Bank called Present Value which always pays 2% over the inflation rate, has no risks, and HAS NONE OF THE INSURANCE FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL SECURITY… with that Magic Bank, IF you earn over your whole life more than most workers, you may indeed get back more than you might from Social Security. On the other hand there is no such Magic Bank, and even if there were, most workers would get back less from it than they will
    from SS.

    But I am curious too. What does Ryan plan to do about Survivors Benefits and Disability Insurance?

    coberly

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