Open thread Feb. 21, 2023
Open thread February 18, 2023, Angry Bear, (angrybearblog.com)
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
Open thread February 18, 2023, Angry Bear, (angrybearblog.com)
Why Medicare and Social Security Are Sustainable
NY Times – Paul Krugman – Feb 21
The G.O.P. response to President Biden’s truthful statement that some Republicans want to sunset Medicare and Social Security has been highly gratifying. In other words, the party has reacted with sheer panic — plus a startling lack of message discipline, with both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley saying that actually, yes, they do want to privatize or “reform” Social Security, which is code for gutting it.
Now Republicans are talking about slashing “woke” programs like Medicaid and food stamps. It’s going to be fun when the party realizes who depends on these programs and how popular Medicaid, in particular, is even among its own voters.
The press’s response to Biden’s remarks has, however, been less gratifying. I’ve seen numerous declarations from mainstream media that of course Medicare and Social Security can’t be sustained in their present form. And not just in the opinion pages: There’s been at least some reversion to the early 2010s practice of including anti-social-insurance editorializing in what are supposed to be straight news reports, with highly disputable claims about these programs’ futures presented as simple facts.
So let me try to set the record straight. Yes, our major social programs are on a trajectory that will cause them to cost more in the future than they do today. But how we deal with that trajectory is a choice, and the solution need not involve benefit cuts.
A good starting point on all these issues is the Congressional Budget Office report on the long-term budget outlook — a report issued every year, with the most recent report released in July. (The numbers were updated this month, but the basic picture hasn’t changed.) The C.B.O. does excellent work, without a policy agenda, and is an extremely useful resource.
The current report offers a very clear depiction of both the budget challenges facing our major social insurance programs and the sources of those challenges. …
PK’s favorite figure, showing projected changes in spending over the next 30 years
A contrary opinion posted by someone from the conservative Manhattan Institute.
Biden’s Promises on Social Security and Medicare Have No Basis in Reality
NY Times – Feb 21
It broadly disagrees with the notion that the current system is sustainable without major cuts.
This received over 2300 comments over the course of today.
https://www.socialsecurityworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Social-Security-Works_2Pclean.pdf
SOCIAL SECURITY WORKS!https://www.socialsecurityworks.org › 2015/01 › So… PDF Bruce Webb and Dale Coberly in their Northwest Plan. To be clear, as ap- pendix B discusses in more detail, this is an average annual increase of about.322 pages
NW Plan for a Real Social Security Fix Ver 2.0: 2009 Trigger
Bruce Webb | May 21, 2009 12:04 pm
by Bruce Webb, data by Coberly
Coberly has now produced new spreadsheets updated in light of the new numbers of the 2009 Report. Copies of past and current spreadsheets are available at our Google Group RealSocialSecurityFix‘s Northwest Plan page. (It should be viewable by anyone). The new Trigger ones linked below.
(UPDATE: Hot off the press, the combined OASDI Trigger Plan. Coberly has simplified and improved the labeling and data presentation)…
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/getting-facts-right-social-security
Getting the Facts Right on Social Security
Jan 8, 2014
Social Security
Note: This piece was originally posted on the Angry Bear blog.
The late Senator Moynihan once said that “everyone is entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts.” In response to our piece, “Setting the Record Straight on Social Security,” Dale Coberly calls both our facts and our opinions “lies.” In his treatise, Coberly adds several important ideas to the discussion, but much of his piece misrepresents CRFB’s views, misattributes our motives, and asserts claims which are simply not based in fact.
We pride ourselves on our fact-based, non-partisan analysis, which Coberly calls into question in his piece. Below, we review and debunk many of his claims:
Claim #1: CRFB advocates a cuts-only solution to Social Security.
FALSE. Coberly claims that “CRFB would like you to believe the only solution is to cut benefits,” that we only “pretend to be open to revenue enhancements,” and that our Social Security Reformer “is rigged so you can’t give the correct answer [of gradually raising the payroll tax rate].”…
Thanks for this link. I knew that some of Dale’s claims were false. I suspected that others were, but didn’t have the evidence. Now I know.
Joel,
What one chooses to believe about what CFRB “would like you to believe” is a matter of choice and contentiousness far more than established evidence. Neither the mind-readers nor the mind-washers should be taken as gospel. Worth noting that Dale has been the numbers guy and the late and great Bruce Webb was the capable communicator. That said, then if the CFRB really had clean hands in this, then from their well-polished establishment perch they should have been able to get the votes needed to pass the Northwest Plan.
For my part I moved over to Angry Bear after Mark Thoma retired Economist View at the end of 2019, expecting to read Bruce Webb, but found out that he had died a few years earlier. I liked Coberly on the basis of his values and commitment, but the backbiting that the two of you engage in is just one reason that Bruce is sorely missed. It detracts greatly from already poor concentration and inferior writing. I never observed any such insecurity and knee-jerk responses from Bruce. I grant that you are good at pushing buttons on the feeble-minded, but you have no such authority over me.
Ah, Ron. I haven’t replied to Dale in about a year, because he lied repeatedly about me and I don’t feed trolls. Evidently, you never noticed.
I don’t want or need authority over you; you simply don’t interest me that much. That you even suggest this speaks to your emotional insecurity. I promise I won’t reply to you ever again, too.
Ron:
You didn’t know Bruce that well then. We (I) do not know what happened to Bruce. From a person who would or may know, we can not get additional information.
There are three (or maybe more) things which can happen with SS.
– Do nothing and just print more money (MMT) to secure it going into the future. Do you think they are pulling money from some piggy bank to pay us? This is just debits and credits the head bookkeeper is doing. The Treasury prints some money to pay it. $100+ trillion and growing mostly from other things like tax breaks and wars.
– We could pose a threat to the cutting of benefits which the CRFB appears to be engaging in with much of the elderly just by simple conversation. It does not have to be direct or an indirect threat. It can just be a discussion about an issue arising from inputs and outputs.
– A letter from A SS official said the Northwest Plan would work. They reviewed it as requested by a Congressional Representative. The brief comment in response has been posted on Angry Bear. Is this not good enough for you?
Did you bother to read the comments by Bruce, Arne and myself? If there is a shortfall in Defense spending what happens the following year? Is there an immediate call to raise taxes to cover such an increase? No, during the trump years they cut taxes instead. How do you think the shortfall in expenditures and receipts was resolved?
They rip off a few $billion to cover the shortfall. Other countries snap those $dollars up in case the Fed goes on a bender and increases Fed Rates. Somehow places like the Philippines have to obtain dollars or take it on the chin in exchange for their Pesos.
Really Ron, you did all this work for what???
Run,
You are probably correct. I am driving distracted. Still trying to schedule a mohs and then my pressure tank sprang a lead yesterday. Sorry.
Ron:
You know where I am. You can always write me too. Don’t dig a hole for yourself.
Since coming to Washington more than three decades ago, I have spent much of my time working on retirement income. The biggest part of that story was defending Social Security, which leaders in both parties were anxious to cut. This defense was largely successful, as the efforts to privatize it in the 1990s and under President Bush were beaten back, and the efforts at cuts often focused on the annual cost of living adjustment, were similarly derailed.
Defending Social Security was crucial, both because tens of millions of people depend on it for most or all of their income, but also because it was a model social program. The administrative costs are minimal, with the total program’s costs coming to less than 0.6 percent of annual benefits, with the costs of the retirement program alone coming to less than 0.4 percent of benefits. By comparison, the fees from private 401(k)s run in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent of annual retirement benefits.
There is also very little fraud in the program. The Washington Post, which has long been one of the leading advocates for cutting Social Security in both its opinion and news sections, once devoted a major investigative piece to exposing the fact that 0.006 percent of benefit payments went to dead people, more than half of which were later recovered. It lately decried Social Security as a “mess” in the headline to a full-page article.
I always felt that it was essential to defend Social Security because it could serve as a model for other programs, like universal Medicare or child care. But, as necessary as Social Security is, I also recognized the need to have some additional retirement income for much of the population.
Supplements to Social Security
The traditional story about retirement income was that it was a three-legged stool. Workers were supposed to have…
In any case though, it has long been tough to beat Dean Baker for giving a factual press representation of policy choices, especially those most important to the wage class.