GOP Social Security – the Phasing Out
Katie Porter on Social Security. Can you spare a bit more than three minutes?
Three of the many Republicans who are absolutely not for the People.
Social Security & the Debt Limit, Angry Bear, Bruce Webb.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
The point that really needs to be made is that Republicans plainly lie about social security so why would working people believe them about anything else? There is a reason the GOP wants to engage in culture wars because they have no policies that appeal to anyone except the morbidly wealthy
Terry
they also appeal to the morbidly stupid.
Dan
you mention Bruce Webb in the byline, making me hope he was still with us after a long silence. ??
Coberly:
I try to associate old posts with current one to show a continuum of the message. Not heard from him.
Meanwhile, this bears repeating.
Warning…regular readers will have seen a very similar argument last week. It still bears repeating.
“France Is Furious”: Anger Grows at Macron for Raising Retirement Age as Millions Strike and Protest
Democracy Now!
https://www.rsn.org/001/france-is-furious-anger-grows-at-macron-for-raising-retirement-age-as-millions-strike-and-protest.html
This is what happens when you let “the government” (“rich” taxpayers of a “progressive” tax) pay for your Social Security. American Social Security was created “worker paid” by FDR exactly to avoid this (“so no damn politician can take it away from them.”)
and for more than 80 years that has worked. but lately the Left has been calling ..”demanding” “make the rich pay.” this is suicide. If the rich pay, they willl own it and they will decide when you can retire, but if we keep paying for it ourselves, then we can decide when to retire…when we need to, or when we want to, whether we have “hard” jobs or just want to do something with the rest of our lives besides make more money for the boss.
the actual cost to close the “huge unfunded deficit” in Social Security’s future finances would amount to about a dollar per week increase in the payroll tax each year for the average worker. this is because that worker will be living longer and is exactly what living longer wold cost him anyway, or will cost “the economy” anyway with or without Social Security. Social Security just provides insurance against inflation, market losses, or even a lifetime of wages too low to be able to save enough for retirement.
it’s the best deal workers have ever had. don’t spoil it by getting greedy over an extra dollar per week.
note: the Right has been calling for cutting or otherwise destroying Social Security for their own reasons ever since it was invented. they claim it is a cause of the Federal Debt. that is a lie, SS is entirely paid for by the workers and has no effect on the Federal Budget.
I don’t know why Democrats have let them get away with this lie. My guess is that they all..just like the Republicans are in the pay of the “wealth establishment” which has been conducting a world-wide campaign to destroy all forms of Social Security using the “aging population” scam to say “we can’t afford it.” We can afford it. And we need to understand that. [it is not “the young paying for the old.” The young are paying for their own future needs, exactly the same as if they were putting the money in the bank, except with far better security.
Coberly:
Coming to AB, shortly. Too many doctor visits
run
i was afraid it was that. take care of yourself.
The GOP is telling us that Social Security adds to the deficit because we need to take out loans to pay back what we owe. They say it quickly and count on the fact that, although it is pretty much the same as saying “we have a problem because 2 + 2 = 5”, people don’t actually listen closely. Thinking about what 2 + 2 equals is hard. Getting upset because someone said we have a problem is easy.
Arne
yes.
of course we don’t need to take out loans…we could just raise taxes (either the payroll tax which would stop the need to draw down (pay off) the surplus, or the general tax to pay for all the other things the Congress has bought over the years with the money it borrowed from Social Security.
of course we all stood by while Bush told his commission that everything was on the table except raising taxes. which is like telling your mechanic to fix your car by doing anything except putting gas in the tank.
i will add that they …and the journalists who cover them…say “it’s just the math” while none of them have done any math since the third grade.
by the way, it’s not that the math is hard, it’s just that you have to understand the problem to know what math to use.
Sometimes accounting labels obscure what otherwise would be pretty easy to see. You are getting “dangerously” close here to saying that regardless of accounting labels, the SS program affects the deficit. Either we perpetually strand billions of workers’ dollars that bought Treasury debt for decades or we must raise general taxes or else it will require borrowing or, unsaid, spending cuts. Exactly how this is very different from trying to decide how to fund one more squadron of F-35s, or expand ACA subsidies or provide federal funds for pre-K education is unclear to me. “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit, got that? Now depending on how we decide to meet its obligations we’ll need to raise other taxes or borrow more or cut spending. But it is off budget, got that?”
Eric
since you are right, and agree with me, who is the “you” in your first sentence?
Coberly, he is talking about you.
run
does that make sense?
They’ll do anything, say anything, to lay hands on that surplus …
Ten Bears
I don’t think it’s the surplus, though the Congress is stupid enough to think that by not paying back what they owe, they are somehow saving money. I doubt may of them think at all.
I don’t really know what the motives of the hate Social Security forces are, but they hated it long before there was a surplus. I think it is just possible they really believe that it is “socialism” and “socialism is evil.” But they have told so many lies about it over the last eighty years or so, it is possible that they theselves have long forgotten the original lies, but they themselves believe the last lie they heard. What frustrates me is that “the Left” who ought to know better, assume the lies at the same time as they think they are refuting them.
And I think I was treated quite badly by “the Left” when I tried to point out their contradictions, including their not realizing their call for “make the rich pay” amounted to helping the rich convince the poor that Social Security was somehow a bad deal for them, and of course, that it “must be reformed.”
I think they’re hating it for the sake of hate. I don’t know how we would count political ‘generations’, but there’s been a lot of them since FDR, they’ve been hating it so long they’ve forgotten why they hate it. ‘Socialism’ has always been a boogyman: at the time there were running street battles between ‘socialist gangs’ and the NAZIs; the media already corporate, already Fascist, already in position to sensationalize and hysterasize, to manipulate the rubes in some sort of ‘grand game.’
They don’t know why they hate it, they just do …
Ten Bears,
yes, I agree with that.
Half the Social Security tax is paid by employers. Of course, if SSI were killed, that half would be added to employee wages instead of accruing to the employer…Sure.
Force
I’m glad you put in that note of sarcasm. nine out of ten new york economists say the employer’s share is “really” the employee’s money. but they never worked for minimum wage with a reserve army of the unemployed waiting to take their job. of course, when it suits them, they turn around and say that Social Security ir “really” a jobs killing tax, which i guess means they wouldn’t pay the employee “really” his money if the evil government didn’t make them.
on the other hand, when they are alone they say it’s “really” ALL their money: their names are on the check.
thing is it doesn’t matter. before the worker gets paid, it’s the boss’s money. after he gets paid it’s the workers money. what matters it what it does: solves the poverty in old age problem, which is very good for the workers, and also very good for the employers though they are too stupid to know it. SS money is paid back into the economy as fast as it is “taxed” by retirees buying the things they need. and if the retirees had no money the employers would find it really hard to make as much as they do, not least because people would be afraid to spend their money and not have enough for their old age. employers as a class have never noticed that it’s hard to get rich when the people are poor.
you will find that no one thinks this through. they all just free associate on a few words colored by the emotions they carry around with them from the last set of lies they believed, which in most cases is the first lies they heard.
RW actully SSI is a welfare program for people who don’t get enough from Social Security…because they didn’t pay enough into it. The “Social Security folks forget about SSI when they demand that SS..OASDI be expanded to take care of every need for every perwon for every reason. like all welfare programs SSI can be ugly. it could be a lot less ugly if the people weren’t be told all the time that people on welfare were just lazy cheats.
Social Security posts always get more comments than welfare posts. Only one on John Oliver about TANF. The people who hate SS hate it for the same reason they hate TANF. It might help someone that does not deserve it. Giving long term help to anyone not part of their own congregation makes them uncomfortable.
The clear fact that SS is not welfare is lost on them.
The clear fact that the need for welfare is way bigger than what they can do personally is lost on them.
We do need to solve both these problems. We do need to be willing to be “socialists” to help people out of poverty.
To “solve” SS we need to be clear eyed that it is not the solution for welfare. It just needs Congress to do its job of adjusting to economic conditions.
It might help someone that does not deserve it.
THAT’S THE BEAUTY OF SOCIAL SECURITY. since the people pay for it themselves there are no questions about “deserving” it. of course, everyone with a forum relentlessly ignores that, and have taught “the young” to not believe it.
One might guess that once/if the Donald gets back into office, after he’s locked up all his enemies it will then be time to shut down Soc Sec, or at least insure that only the right people collect benefits. So, let’s try to keep that from happening.
the only people who collect benefits are those who have paid for those benefits.
and the only person i know who was denied benefits he had paid for was unfortunate enough to be an immigrant and a communist at a time of “commie hysteria” in America.
recently the people with unpaid student debt may be being cheated out of their social security by an egregious law that allows lenders to garnishee SS benefits.
stupid stuff happens. we need to fight against it. we don’t fight it by printing whatever nonsense comes into our heads when we don’t know what we are talking about.
SS…OASDI… Old Age, survivors, and disability insurance was created to help americans insure themselves against poverty in old age…the biggest part, destitution from death of the family wage earner, and destitution from becoming disabled. the rest of Dobbs comment is pure fantasy of his own imagining. it does not help.
Coberly, I am with you on the suggestion that adding a few bucks a week to keep Soc Sec going is worth doing, particicularly because me & Mrs Fred and other family & friends are all receiving Soc Sec benefits. Either that’s sufficient, or it’s not, so it’s worth doing.
But I’m more interested in doing something about Income Inequality, even if it costs us more money, because it’s a more serious problem IMO. It is also an ‘apples & oranges’ situation however.
The GOP does seem to believe that it’s a ‘slippery slope’ to set about ‘fixing’ Soc Sec however. A Slippery Slope on the path to European style ‘Socialsism’, and you seem to agree.
BTW, the fact that current Soc Sec recipients get far more out of the system than they put in is essential, but it also makes us more tolerant of Income Inequality.
After all, if recipients only got what they put in there would be (even more) riots in the streets.
Furthermore, I am doing my part by spending a large percentage of my IRA benefits on extra income taxes, more than making up for the fact that I/we no longer pay anything into FICA.
i am sure this means something to you.
it is not a “fact” that SS recipients get far more thqn they paid it. they get more or less exactly what they paid in adjusted for inflation and a real interest rate that matches the general growth in the economy.
Indeed. I get the notion that the higher benefit amounts are required because of inflation. I started out with a minimum wage (summer) job and ended up making probably 10x that in a high-tech salary (which was not particularly high, really.) And paid 10x more than my parents did for their house. And 10x more for the last car I bought than the first one. I get it!
So what? They/we are still getting far more out than we paid in.
It just doesn’t seem like when you’re paying your bills.
You seem to like to look upon inflation as a good thing.
exactly why do you think i like to look upon inflation as a good thing?
what happens with social security is like this [simplified the numbers to make the arithmetic easier]:
in 1960 you are making 10 thousand a year and paying 1 thousand in payroll tax. that’s a 10% tax. you retire in 2000. by then with inflation a worker doing the same job you did is making 20,000 per year (simplified. remember?) and paying 10% tax…same as you…which is 2000 per year. the 2000 becomes income to Social Security which can now pay you twice as much as you paid in. (leaving out some complications regarding number of taxpayers per retiree and number of years of life expectancy in retirement vs number of years in employment paying the tax. just note that you are getting twice what you paid in, but the guy paying the same tax rate for his eventual retirement is paying the same in “real dollars” as you paid in… you take out the same in real dollars as you paid in.
i hope that is clear enough for you to understand. remember it’s only a simplified picture, putting in all the details would not change this fact.
in addition to automatically cover inflation…which happens whether you or i think it is a good thing or a bad thing… over the 40 years the economy has grown and workers are making more in real dollars than you did. so when they are taxed at the same rate you were, there are more real dollars available so SS can pay you “interest” on the money you paid in…so you get more ..more even than inflation…that you paid in. this is the same way bank accounts or stock investments are able to pay you more than you paid in, but most people think they paid for their interest or dividends or profits.. and they did. it’s only with Social Security that they suddenly start saying “it’s the young paying for the old.”
Dobbs
Income inequality has nothing to do with Social Security. For what it’s worth I think income inequality needs to be addressed by things like a real living minimum wage, and fighting predatory businesses practices. I hear the Left sounding like they’s be happy if we just taxed the rich to provide welfare for all. And I don’t like the sound of “inequality,” it sounds like “everyone should have the same amount of money as everyone else: first, i don’t think it would work. second, i don’t like the greedy poor as much as i don’t like the greedy rich.
what the GOP believes is lies and nonsense. SS has been here for 80 years and has not slippery sloped anywhere. I certainly don’t agree. GOP wants to fix (destroy) social security and replace it with taxing the people to force them to invest in wall street. the left wants to destroy social security by turning it into welfare for all.
i want SS to keep doing what it has always done: workers put aside a small percentage of their own money in an insurance policy called social security that will pay them enough to live on in old age or if they get disabled or, if they die with dependents, pay the dependents enough to live on. it’s very simple, very fair, and it works.
Soc Sec benefits are insufficient to retire on. The guv’mint warned about that back when Carter was president. IRAs & 401ks came about, for those without ‘wealth’. Perhaps the problem currently is that not enough people put (or were able to put) sufficient funds into them, and even withdrew them for non-retirement purposes. Thus, the ‘insufficent retirement funds’ problem continues.
I seem to recall that there was a vaguely goofy scheme to make IRA/401k contributions mandatory, which I guess didn’t work out too well.
Another alternative is to do something about rampant Income Inequality.
It would seem that keeping Soc Sec alive is essential, but not enough.
i could live comfortably on the “average” social security check. but i don’t have the “needs” a lot of people think they have. if there is a real need to increase social security benefits the answer is just to increase the amount we save via the social security “tax.” people need to be taught how to do that instad of being lied to about the “inadequacies” of social security.
yes making investing in the stockmarket mandatory gives the lie to “personal freedom” propaganda about social security: they want your money . they don’t want to let you buy “security” with it.
The GOP is perpetually channeling the Marlboro Man, of which there were several, and most died of lung cancer. They are all about Self Sufficency and (other people) not depending on guv’mint handouts.
That isn’t going to change, unfortunately. They will always be with us.
that’s why it is so important that people understand that Social Security is not a government handout. it’s what makes self sufficiency work in a capitalist economy.
Coberly,
Although “it’s what makes self sufficiency work in a capitalist economy” would be true under those circumstances, it is an anachronistic concept under the existing rentier capitalism regime. In a corporatist economy self-sufficiency of the working class is not a goal. The political armada of corporatism requires economic dependency and social strife to render the electorate vulnerable to pandering and political triangulation, while the economic paradigm has its foundation resting on financialization, globalization, and debt peonage. Self-sufficiency works cross purposes to corporatism.
The nexus linking corporatism to rentier capitalism is that the capitalist means of production cannot make profits without dealing with the concerns of labor and social responsibilities such as environmental conservation. Corporatism avoids such social burdens in the pursuit of profits as much as possible. For the better part of a century now corporatism has been consolidating, financializing, and exploiting global price arbitrage for labor and natural resources in the pursuit of economic rents.
…and of course laws and trade agreements that provide international protection for corporate IP rights are the cornerstone of this successful strategy.
Ron
you are right about all that…and that is probably the reason the big money hates Social Security.
now, can you say what i was trying to say in a way that includes all that you said?
Coberly,
You did well enough yourself about what people should understand about social security. I just added the motives of why the establishment invests so heavily in insuring that people do not understand those things. We both know how the Fox and Friends living to the right of the limousine liberals’ investment banks work together to guard the hen house.