GETTING THE FACTS RIGHT ON SOCIAL SECURITY? CRFB TRIES AGAIN

by Dale Coberly

GETTING THE FACTS RIGHT ON SOCIAL SECURITY?

CRFB TRIES AGAIN

CRFB appears to have simply misread some of what I said.  But they also appear to believe they can argue by “assertion”  or by citing other “non partisan experts” who are members of the Peterson  machine.

i will come back to that, but there is one fact it looks like CRFB may agree with me about.  If that is true it could change everything.

i have been saying for some years now that a one tenth of one percent per year increase in the payroll tax for EACH the employer and the employee would entirely pay for the “actuarial deficit” and would fund Social Security out into the infinite horizon.   CRFB has some excuse for misunderstanding me to have said that a one tenth of one percent COMBINED increase would do the same job.   i am not sure that it makes a material difference if the tax increase needed is 80 cents per week or a dollar sixty per week,   but if CRFB is willing to agree with me, as they seem to do here, that a one tenth percent per year increase “each” (that is two tenths “combined”), over about twenty of the next eighty years, will do the job…  we can begin to talk like honest people.


One more bit of business we can perhaps get past:   i do not claim to be able to read minds,  so when I say CRFB  “wants you to believe”  i really have no certain way to know what they want you to believe.  But i think i can safely conclude what they APPEAR to want you to believe from the way they distort facts and direct your attention away from other facts that completely change the meaning of such facts as they do present.

I get into this in much more detail in the longer reply I will send you.  But i think it would be a good place to start if they will state clearly that they agree a one tenth of one percent increase in the payroll tax for each the worker and employer… either per year for the next twenty years (or so), or “whenever the Trustees project short term actuarial insolvency”… will entirely solve the Social Security funding problem.  It would even solve that part of the Budget Deficit problem they are irresponsibly blaming on Social Security.  If they are honest they will look very hard at this, as it entirely resolves that part of the Federal Budget Deficit problem they claim is due to Social Security.  And it does it “responsibly,” not by stealing the retirements  of the millions of people who have paid into Social Security and rely upon first getting their money back, and, more importantly, depend upon being allowed to continue to save their money with the help of Social Security’s protections so they can retire when they need to.