Interesting Stuff from My In-Box
I am late in posting “In-Box” due to other things going on at home. Talk of Healthcare? I fractured a tooth. It now has to be replaced with a bridge. I did not like the idea of a Sears Best drilling a hole in my jaw-bone for a stud to mount a tooth. Next up an eye operation which Medicare will cover. Then down to the VA to make contact again.
This week there were a lot of interesting subjects to read. So many of them, I could double the length of this post on Angry Bear. Anyway, have a good one and keep in touch.
Healthcare
Millions of children are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage starting in April, CNN Politics, Tami Luhby. At risk are 6.7 million children of losing coverage once states restart their reviews of recipients’ eligibility.
How States Are Holding Payers And Providers Accountable For Health Cost Growth, Health Affairs, Authors. Consistently healthcare exceeds growth in the gross domestic product. The rising costs of health care impose an increasing burden on consumers, employers, and federal and state budgets. It crowds out other critical public investments, such as education and housing.
State-Level Variation In Low-Value Care For Commercially Insured And Medicare Advantage Populations, Health Affairs, Authors. Low-value care and associated spending remain prevalent among commercially insured and Medicare Advantage enrollees. The aggregated prevalence of twenty-three low-value services was 1,920 per 100,000 eligible enrollees. This amounts to $3.7 billion in wasteful expenditures during the study period.
A Road Map For Action On Health Care Spending And Value: Part I – Administrative Waste And Inefficiencies, forbes.com, Bill Frist. Estimates attribute 15 – 30 percent of total national health spending to administration, with at least half of that spending demonstrated to be ineffective or wasteful. That means as much as $300 – $600 billion is wasted each year.
Medicare Advantage Ads in Your Patient Portal? CMS Says They Shouldn’t Be There, MedPage Today, Cheryl Clark. at the top of his inbox was a message opens in a new tab or window suggesting he should enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan. “Review your 2023 Medicare Advantage coverage options,” it said. The annual enrollment period began Oct. 15.
Health Care Reform and Equity for Undocumented Immigrants — When Crisis Meets Opportunity, NEJM, Authors. Expansion of the current public health insurance system could narrow gaps.
Workers in 4-Day Work Week Test Report Fewer Sleep Issues, businessinsider.com, Britney Nguyen and Morgan McFall-Johnsen. The results are in from a large four-day work week trial in the UK, and the responses from employees who participated highlight several reasons why it could be a preferable alternative to the status quo — including better sleep.
Fact Sheet: State Fiscal Incentives for Medicaid Expansion Continue After End of Public Health Emergency, Center For Children and Families, georgetown.edu, Adam Searing, Edwin Park. The end of the continuous coverage requirement will exacerbate and highlight the coverage gap in the 11 states still refusing the federal Medicaid expansion. Importantly, generous federal fiscal incentives are available to states that newly expand Medicaid.
Law and Politics
Fraud, Abuse, and Financial Conflicts of Interest, NEJM, Zack Buck. The next day, she receives a “double payment” in error from Medicare for a procedure she recently performed. In this hypothetical scenario, which of these actions should cause the physician the most concern, from a legal standpoint?
Simone Gold Accused by California Medical Board, MedPage Today, Cheryl Clark. The MBC’s accusation lists two causes for discipline: “conviction of a crime substantially related to the qualifications, functions, or duties of a physician and surgeon, and general unprofessional conduct.”
Companies Can’t Ask You to Shut up to Receive Severance, NLRB Rules, vice.com, Maxwell Strachan. The board reverses two previous decisions that held that such severance agreements were lawful. Limits on free speech have become increasingly common aspect of many severance agreements.
Which labor laws has Packers Sanitation Services Inc broken? qz.com, Ananya Bhattacharya. The US Department of Labor (DOL) on Feb. 17 fined Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) $1.5 million for unlawfully employing child labor to use caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws as well as handle other high-risk equipment, often during graveyard shifts.
Third Doctor Arrested for U.S. Capitol Riot; Pediatrician Sues for ‘Anti-Male’ Bias, MedPage Today, Kristina Fiore. California anesthesiologist Austin Brendlen Harris, MD, was caught on surveillance cameras inside the Capitol comparing its police officers to Nazis.
Bank Lobbyists Hired by Congress to Oversee Banking Regulations, theintercept.com, Lee Fang. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. hires to run the committee are mostly former lobbyists who served the very banks, lenders, and brokerages seeking to combat regulations.
Roberto Clemente book removed from Florida public schools, nbcnews.com, Jonan Winter. “books removed from Duval County, include 30 by Latino authors and illustrators or centered Latino characters and narratives. Removed were “Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa” by Veronica Chambers and Julie Maren, “Sonia Sotomayor (Women Who Broke the Rules Series)” by Kathleen Krull and Angela Dominguez, and Winter’s Clemente book.”
Black History
A family tree with roots in the start of slavery and Black History Month, Code Switch, NPR, Authors. 1 side owned slaves. The other side started Black History Month. How a family heals.
The history and future of African-American wealth, altruist.com, Najja Parker. While some pioneers helped Black Americans fight for the right to vote in elections, obtain a proper education, and use public spaces, some of them also pushed for economic equality and cooperative economics.
African American Workers Built America, CLASP, Asha Banerjee and Cameron Johnson. Black labor has been foundational to the growth of America and our economy. Enslaved people built the country’s early infrastructure and produced lucrative commodities such as cotton and tobacco.
Economics and Business
Congress Passes Bill to Allow Americans to Save More for Retirement, businessinsider.com, Ayelet Sheffey and Juliana Kaplan. it still tilts the scale towards wealthier retirees — and allows them to accumulate more money untouched by taxes. For people who are already financially stable, the higher age might mean they can stow away more untaxed funds in their 401ks, or even “transfer more of those tax-subsidized funds to their heirs,”
How neighborhoods fare when institutional investors buy homes, Journalistsresource.org, Clark Merrefield. In a comprehensive analysis published last year, Tim Henderson of Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline news service crunched property numbers from data firm CoreLogic and found nearly a quarter of all single-family homes sold in the U.S. in 2021 were bought by investors. This was up from about 15% annually since 2012.
Waiting for home prices to fall so you can buy? You may have a long wait, consumeraffairs.com, Mark Huffman. In spite of a doubling of mortgage rates over the last 12 months, pricing millions of people out of the housing market, home prices have yet to crater. In fact, an industry report shows they’re still going up.
Industrial Production Monitor: February 2023, employamerica.org, Alex Williams. Three things to note: Automotive will remain an inflation risk, Production increasing in Machinery, despite rising prices and shortages in upstream Metals and materials, suggest demand for capital goods remains strong in response to pandemic-era shortages, and the real Capex boom is related to agriculture, construction, and manufacturing; oilfield capex is only starting to tick up from depressed levels. Chart depicts the various. Click on to enlarge.
Fish sticks: What you need to know, qz.com, Liz Webber. Thanks to coronavirus, a simple trip to the grocery store was suddenly a harrowing experience. Many homebound diners turned to their freezers to find comforting, easy-to-make meals. Those (we) hapless souls pulled out the unlikeliest of frozen heroes: the fish stick.
Jan PCE & Core-Cast Recap: Upside Driven By Seasonality, Airfares, and Revisions To Opaque Components, employamerica.org, Skanda Amarnath. January PCE thus proved to be hot (for reasons we warned) and Q1 inflation upside risks remain.
Environment
Operation Pangolin: New Initiative Launched to Save World’s Most Trafficked Wild Mammal, treehugger.com, Melissa Breyer. “Enough pangolin scales have been seized in the past decade to account for at least 1 million pangolins … at least 250,000 are estimated to be taken from African and Asian forests every year for consumers in China, Vietnam, and even western Europe and the United States,”
Architect Renovates Small 1950s Apartment Into Modern Residence, treehugger.com, Kimberly Mok. Many are opting to renovate older homes that cost less to buy upfront, rather than purchasing more expensive, newly built homes.
What’s the Difference Between Cage-Free and Free-Range Eggs? treehugger.com, Hayley Bruning. The “cage-free” egg label indicates that the hens producing eggs are, indeed, not confined to battery cages. However, this label alone does not guarantee the hens have access to the outdoors or, more broadly, experience positive states needed to uphold animal welfare standards.
Inside the New Right’s Next Frontier: The American West, Vanity Fair, James Pogue. Preppers, techies, hippies, and yuppies are converging on the American West, the safest place to “exit” a society gone haywire.
Inside California’s Tiny-Home Takeover: How ADUs Transformed the State, businessinsider.com, Kelsey Neubauer. Over the past two years, tiny homes, known as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, have filled backyards from San Jose to San Diego after state lawmakers began breaking down barriers for homeowners to build on their limited acreage.
Blogs
Infidel753: Authoritarianism: a formula for failure, Infidel753 Blog. Anthony Blinken: “One of the Achilles heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems that speak truth to power or have the ability to speak truth to power, and I think that’s what we’re seeing in Russia.”
Saturday Swath …,, Homeless on the High Desert, g’da said. U.S. cities most vulnerable to climate change.
Substacks:
Hannity and Carlson Admit Lying to Audience (Then Try to Fire Fact-Checker), DeSantis Hires Sexist Educator, NYT Writers Protest, Roald Dahl Gets Sanitized, Roberto Clemente Bio Banned, and More, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
DeWine’s Toxic Railroad Ties, levernews.com, Matthew Cunningham-Cook. Norfolk Southern PAC donated >than $20,000 to DeWine’s gubernatorial campaigns and his 2019 inauguration. DeWine has refused to issue a disaster declaration that would send much-needed federal resources to East Palestine and draw attention to the Norfolk Southern accident.
Letters from an American, February 22, 2023, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson. Last week’s court filing in the Dominion Voting Systems case proved Fox News Channel personalities knew Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. They pushed Trump’s Big Lie of voter fraud anyway, afraid they would lose viewers to right-wing networks that were willing to parrot that lie.
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Interesting Stuff from My In-Box, Maybe? – Angry Bear angry bear blog
(I could share a not-so-interesting tooth story, having also recently broken a molar. But I won’t, except to say that I have lost three altogether, and simply not replaced them.)
War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe for Good
NY Times – Feb 26
No event has transformed the continent more profoundly since the end of the Cold War, and there is no going back now.
A year ago, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion a devastating European ground war, President Sauli Niinisto of Finland declared: “Now the masks are off. Only the cold face of war is visible.”
The Finnish head of state, in office for more than a decade, had met with President Vladimir V. Putin many times, in line with a Finnish policy of pragmatic outreach to Russia, a country with which it shares a nearly 835-mile border. Suddenly, however, that policy lay in tatters, and, along with it, Europe’s illusions about business as usual with Mr. Putin.
Those illusions were deep-rooted. The 27-nation European Union was built over decades with the core idea of extending peace across the continent. The notion that economic exchanges, trade and interdependence were the best guarantees against war lay deep in the postwar European psyche, even in dealings with an increasingly hostile Moscow.
That Mr. Putin’s Russia had become aggressive, imperialist, revanchist and brutal — as well as impervious to European peace politics — was almost impossible to digest in Paris or Berlin, even after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. An increasingly militaristic Russia might swim, quack and look like a duck, but that did not mean it was one.
“Many of us had started to take peace for granted,” Mr. Niinisto said this month at the Munich Security Conference after leading Finland’s abrupt push over the past year to join NATO, an idea unthinkable even in 2021. “Many of us had let our guard down.”
The war in Ukraine has transformed Europe more profoundly than any event since the Cold War’s end in 1989. A peace mentality, most acute in Germany, has given way to a dawning awareness that military power is needed in the pursuit of security and strategic objectives. A continent on autopilot, lulled into amnesia, has been galvanized into an immense effort to save liberty in Ukraine, a freedom widely seen as synonymous with its own.
“European politicians are not familiar with thinking about hard power as an instrument in foreign policy or geopolitical affairs,” said Rem Korteweg, a Dutch defense expert. “Well, they have had a crash course.”
Gone is discussion of the size of tomatoes or the shape of bananas acceptable in Europe; in its place, debate rages over what tanks and possibly F-16 fighter jets to give to Kyiv. The European Union has provided some $3.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. …
War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe for Good
NY Times – Feb 26
No event has transformed the continent more profoundly since the end of the Cold War, and there is no going back now.
… The 27-nation European Union was built over decades with the core idea of extending peace across the continent. The notion that economic exchanges, trade and interdependence were the best guarantees against war lay deep in the postwar European psyche, even in dealings with an increasingly hostile Moscow. …
… The war in Ukraine has transformed Europe more profoundly than any event since the Cold War’s end in 1989. A peace mentality, most acute in Germany, has given way to a dawning awareness that military power is needed in the pursuit of security and strategic objectives. A continent on autopilot, lulled into amnesia, has been galvanized into an immense effort to save liberty in Ukraine, a freedom widely seen as synonymous with its own. …
Gone is discussion of the size of tomatoes or the shape of bananas acceptable in Europe; in its place, debate rages over what tanks and possibly F-16 fighter jets to give to Kyiv. The European Union has provided some $3.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. …
War in Ukraine has Changed Europe Forever
NY Times – Feb 26
… Gone is discussion of the size of tomatoes or the shape of bananas acceptable in Europe; in its place, debate rages over what tanks and possibly F-16 fighter jets to give to Kyiv. The European Union has provided some $3.8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. …
So far, the US has provided some $75 billion to Ukraine.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
CFR – Feb 22
War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe
NY Times – Feb 26
So far, Europe has taken in 4 million refugees from Ukraine.
4 Million Refugees in Europe
… The EU stands in full solidarity with Ukraine and its people. In response to Russia’s aggression, the EU has shown unity and strength and has provided Ukraine with coordinated humanitarian, political, financial and material support. …
NY Times:
… In Mr. Putin’s telling, with his self-image as the macho embodiment of Saint Russia, Europeans were part of a decadent West, stripped of any backbone. He was wrong, one of several mistakes that have undercut a Russian invasion that was supposed to decapitate Ukraine within days.
Still, if Europe has held the line, its acute dependence on the United States — nearly 78 years after the end of World War II — has been revealed once more. America has armed Ukraine with weapons and military equipment worth some $30 billion since the war began, dwarfing the European arms contribution.
Without the United States, the heroic Ukraine of President Volodymyr Zelensky may not have had the military means to resist the Russian invasion. This is a sobering thought for Europeans, even if Europe’s response has exceeded many expectations. It is a measure of the work that still needs to be done if Europe is to become a credible military power.
So, as a long war looms along with a possibly protracted stalemate, the European Union will grapple with how to reinforce its militaries; how to navigate tensions between frontline states intent on the complete defeat of Mr. Putin and others, like France and Germany, inclined toward compromise; and how to manage an American election next year that will feed anxieties over whether Washington will stay the course.
In short, the war has laid bare the path before Europe: how to transform itself from peace power to muscular geopolitical protagonist. …
Had a one tooth dental implant since 1994. Very good results and I would hope technology is better now. If your jawbone is in good health, you might want to reconsider, particularly if the cracked tooth was more an accident than general loss of tooth strength. Not sure what I would have done if it had been 4 adjacent teeth, but the one tooth implant has been really trouble free.
Eric:
My gums are fine. Had a USMC/Navy dentist who got on my ass about brushing better than what I was doing. We were not born with silver spoons in our mouths. Indeed, a bricklayer’s trowel would have been more apt. The dentist did me a favor. And my dad who never graduated grade school told us all, do not do what I did. We all graduated with advanced degrees.
Wandered off there. You are right. I probably should have asked. I did not for precisely the reason I stated about Sears Best. The bridge is ~$2400. Not sure what one implant would cost. I will find out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war.html
February 26, 2023
War in Ukraine Has Changed Europe for Good
No event has transformed the continent more profoundly since the end of the Cold War, and there is no going back now.
By Roger Cohen
[ The New York Times excitedly and happily anticipates Europe leading yet another World War, possibly led by another Reich or at least anticipates the recreation of the European colonial empire. ]
ltr:
Maybe the European Union had a similar impact?
Clarifying:
The New York Times excitedly and happily anticipates Europe leading yet another World War, possibly led by a German replica, or at least the Times happily anticipates the recreation of the European colonial empire.
[ The Times article is a slanted analysis by a writer who is a long-time Europe-hawk who has been purposely let loose by the editor. ]
ltr:
That type of news sells for sure. Europe/Germany will never make that descent again.
Have had three molars removed. Most recently two weeks ago, a broken one.
Have not replaced any of them. Currect dentist is an implant specialist, wants to charge several thousand bucks for each replacement. Am choosing to ‘gum it’. I’m cheap that way.
At one time, with the first two, learned from the dentist at that time that implants were the most difficult dental procedure for anyone to endure.
Eye surgery? Cataract surgery is the most common surgery done in the US.
Takes about ten minutes & is painless, having had one eye done a few years ago. The other one will probably need to be done this year. Recovery is awkward, takes several weeks, lots of eye drops, will require new corrective lenses most likely if you already wear them. Your vision will continue to change for some months after, so hold off on new lenses. I see haloes around lights in the repaired eye at night; this is not uncommon, but somewhat annoying. Made me hesitate all the longer for the 2nd eye.
Fred:
Not a cataract. It is a Macular Pucker. It is settled on the retina and is starting to limit my vision. Usually, they do not interfere much. Except, I am not typical. It has to be removed or I will lose the vision in my right eye, my shooting eye. My eye may take a while to recoup which will make my commenting here difficult.
Fred:
Have you checked into some of the University dental schools? Far less costly and the students are well on their way to becoming dentists and supervised closely by their instructors who are dentists. We used the University of Michigan Dentistry school well in Michigan.
Fred, spring for the implants if you feel like your jaw can accept the studs without complications. Look around: people lose teeth and they are very frequently heading downhill in a significant manner, including mental health impact. Teeth are a quite good leading indicator for overall health. I know money is a finite resource, but don’t kid yourself that gumming it is without risk. If not implants, then some other serious care.
Have read many “first anniversary Ukraine-Russia war” articles. Many I think are edging towards more realism as to the likely path of continued active warfare. After the obligatory “Russia badly performed and probably was shocked by how poorly the SMO was executed”. True, that. But the second part frequently is “Ukraine needs a much higher level of offensive firepower or…(they are gonna lose here)”. Okay, I provide the parenthetical interpretation, but I think it is pretty fair for many of these. It’s like the saga of committing to main battle tanks was a sort of insignificant bit of theater. Now the ask is really for ATACMS and aircraft and the alert reader will notice the term “multirole” is popping up where the term “fighter” was the standard vocabulary just a month ago. Multirole as in air to ground missions. The third common element is to pooh-pooh the reaction of Russia to actually providing Ukraine with a lot more offensive firepower. “Putin is the worst of the worst since 1945 and already desperate and sort of delusional, but it’ll be fine, trust me.”
Right on cue my browser (on other sites) is providing dental implant ads aimed at seniors, with financing available. They are paying close attention out there somewhere.
Eric:
It is not us. We get by on a little funding which helped us update the site. Dan is also generous in how he aids the site too.
Thank you run, things are getting exciting … warming up, as it were.
My days of pulling my own teeth are well behind me, but my eyes are another story. For a year now I’ve been getting shots in my eye ~ yes, you read that right: shots in my eye ~ to dry up a burst blood vessel. I’ll never squint down the barrel of a rifle again. Totally weird/cool sensation, I swear you can see it coming down the tube, and when it spreads out over the lens it’s like those old candle-wax projections from the sixties. Inagaddadavida …
Ten Bears
Where I go it is packed with people getting those shots. One doctor there on one day and a different on the other days.
I go to the same one. He is Japanese and I understand them. They drain the eye and then peel away the abnormal membrane on the surface of the retina that is causing the wrinkle which distorts my vision. The operation is called vitrectomy.
One of the first things my eye doctor asked about was my blood pressure (which is actually pretty good, given circumstance). Apparently burst blood vessels in eyeballs is common to high blood-pressure. Given how interesting the times are …
Ten Bears
I was pretty healthy in my 40s.
In other ‘news’ … (That’s actually in the ‘Believe it or Not’ category?)
The U.S. Supreme Court is reportedly reconsidering hearing the Brunson v. Adams lawsuit, after previously dismissing it earlier this year. The lawsuit appears to be seeking to remove President Joe Biden, 80, from the White House and reinstate former President Donald Trump, 76, as President of the United States, as it claims that lawmakers violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate the allegedly fraudulent 2020 general election which it claims was rigged in Biden’s favor. …
Supreme Court thinking about hearing Trump Re-instatement Case?
Yahoo News – Feb 26
Since the Supreme Court decided about two years ago that this was nonsense, there’s most likely nothing to this ‘news’.
Supreme Court formally pulls the plug on election-related cases
Reuters – February 22, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday brought a formal end to eight lingering disputes pursued by former President Donald Trump and his allies related to the Nov. 3 presidential election including a Republican challenge to the extension of Pennsylvania’s deadline to receive mail-in ballots. …
The high court, as expected, also rejected two Trump appeals challenging Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin based on claims that the rules for mail-in ballots in the two election battleground states were invalid. The court also turned away separate cases brought by Trump allies in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona – all states won by Biden.
It already was clear that the high court had no intention to intervene in the cases because it did not act before Congress on Jan. 6 certified Biden’s victory. That formal certification was interrupted when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. The court also turned down motions to expedite the election cases. …
Also in other news…
US Energy Dept: Lab Leak Released Covid
NY Times – Feb 26
NY Times – Just In
China Dismisses Latest Claim That Lab Leak Likely Caused Covid
How US claim could strain China relations
U.S. intelligence agencies haven’t reached a consensus about the origins of the virus, and the Energy Department’s finding threatens to cause partisan bickering. It could also further roil U.S.-Chinese relations at a time of heightened tensions between the superpowers.
New evidence changed the Energy Department’s conclusion, officials said on Sunday, leading the agency to identify the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the likely source of the coronavirus. (What that evidence was is unclear, but it likely came from the department’s network of national laboratories.) Previously, the department was undecided on how the pandemic began. It’s worth noting that no agency believes the coronavirus was a bioengineered weapon, and some officials say the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with “low confidence,” The Times reports.
The finding runs counter to what many American agencies believe, with some saying there’s not enough evidence to form a firm viewpoint and others laying blame on natural transmissions, probably from a market in Wuhan. (One exception: the F.B.I., which has also pointed to the Wuhan lab as the likely source of the pandemic.) …
Anthony Fauci interviewed by thwe Boston Globe…
The pandemic’s true origin may never be uncovered, despite a new opinion favoring the lab leak theory from the US Department of Energy, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in an interview Monday. …
Fauci, stressing the importance of keeping “an open mind,” noted that four other intelligence agencies don’t buy the lab leak theory.
Meanwhile, evolutionary virologists have published two peer-reviewed articles showing biological evidence that “rather strongly suggests it was a natural occurrence,” he said. These virologists, using DNA evidence, demonstrate that the virus most likely jumped from animals to people at a live-animal market in Wuhan.
Asked whether investigators will ever get to the bottom of it, Fauci said, “We may not ever know.”
Fauci, who stepped down in December as NIAID chief and also as President Joseph R. Biden’s chief medical advisor, was the kick-off speaker for the Globe’s first Health and Biotech Week, a series of online seminars celebrating advances in science and technology. …
(Fauci may be referring to peer-reveiwed article published a year ago.)
Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin
NY Times – February 27, 2022
Scientists released a pair of extensive studies over the weekend that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.
Analyzing a wide range of data, including virus genes, maps of market stalls and the social media activity of early Covid-19 patients across Wuhan, the scientists concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus spilled over into people working or shopping there on two separate occasions. …
How Not to Panic About Social Security
NY Times – Paul Krugman – Feb 28
… that Social Security and Medicare are in the news, makes this seem like a good occasion to write about some common misconceptions about the program, mostly on the right but to some extent also on the left.
The thing about Social Security is that from the beginning it was designed to encourage misconceptions. It looks, on casual inspection, like a giant version of a private pension plan. You pay into such a plan during your working years, contributing to a pension fund, and when you retire you receive payments from that fund in proportion to the amount you put in.
That, by the way, is also the reason the payroll tax only applies up to a maximum income, currently $160,200: There’s a limit to how much you can contribute to a tax-advantaged pension plan, so there’s a seemingly analogous limit on contributions to Social Security.
I haven’t studied the detailed history of the program’s origins, but I’m pretty sure that it was set up to look like an ordinary pension fund because that made it politically easier to sell. But in reality, Social Security has never been run like a private pension plan.
For one thing, for the first half-century of the program’s existence it had almost no assets; in 1985, the trust fund was only large enough to pay around two months’ worth of benefits. So it has always operated mainly on a pay-as-you-go basis, with today’s payroll taxes paying for today’s retiree benefits, not tomorrow’s.
I often get mail from people claiming that this makes Social Security a Ponzi scheme. But it isn’t. It’s just a government program supported by a dedicated tax, which is fairly common — for example, that’s how we pay for roads and bridges, which are funded by gas taxes.
The other way Social Security is unlike a private pension is that what you get out isn’t at all proportional to what you put in. Workers with low earnings get a much higher share of those earnings replaced than higher-wage workers. In the past, this made the program strongly redistributive — a much better deal for workers with low pay than for workers with high pay. …
By the late 1970s it was clear, however, that Social Security was facing financial trouble down the road. The baby boom ended in 1964, so the working-age population, which grew rapidly as long as boomers were still entering the labor market, would grow more slowly in the decades ahead; this meant that the program’s tax base would grow more slowly than the number of beneficiaries, especially once the boomers began retiring.
So in 1981 a bipartisan commission set out to secure Social Security’s future. It tried to do so with two measures. First, it increased the payroll tax rate; the idea was to make Social Security a bit more like a “real” pension fund by taking in more than it was spending, building up a serious trust fund that could help defray costs once the baby boomers hit the system. It also set in motion a gradual rise in the age of eligibility for full benefits, which started at 65 and will reach 67 for those born after 1960.
All of this was supposed to secure the system’s finances until 2060. It did in fact buy the system a number of decades, but the Social Security Administration currently expects the trust fund to be exhausted by 2035. The main reason for the shortfall, as I understand it, is that taxable wages have grown more slowly than expected, which in turn is largely the result of rising inequality: A growing share of overall income has gone to people with really high earnings, and much of that income isn’t subject to the payroll tax with its limit.
So what happens once the trust fund is exhausted? The system doesn’t collapse — but payroll tax receipts are expected to be only about 80 percent of promised benefits. So if nothing is done, benefits will suddenly have to be slashed by 20 percent.
That, however, almost certainly won’t be allowed to happen. These programs are both immensely popular and deeply relied upon, after all.
One obvious course of action would be to provide the system with more money. I get a lot of mail from people saying that we should simply eliminate the upper limit on the payroll tax. That would certainly raise a lot of money. But bear in mind that there’s no fundamental reason Social Security has to be financed with payroll taxes — we only do it that way because back in 1935, F.D.R.’s advisers thought it would be a good idea to dress Social Security up to look like a private pension fund. And Social Security isn’t the only program that’s going to need more money unless we cut expenses. So we should be trying to figure out the best way to raise a few more percentage points of G.D.P. in taxes. To achieve that, raising the payroll cap may not be the best way to go.
The other idea I hear a lot is that we should raise the retirement age — which has already been increased, from 65 to 67. After all, people are living longer, so they can work longer, right? …
Well, some people are living longer. But one key point in thinking about Social Security is that the number of years you can expect to spend collecting benefits has become increasingly linked to the income you earned earlier in your life. Here’s a chart everyone discussing retirement ages should know about, although many don’t. It shows how life expectancy at age 65 has changed for Americans with different levels of income.
graph: Life Expectancy at age 65 for male workers
Life expectancy has indeed risen a lot for the affluent, but for the less well-paid members of the working class, it has hardly risen at all.
What this means is that calling for an increase in the retirement age is, in effect, saying that janitors can’t be allowed to retire because lawyers are living longer. Not a very nice position to take.
Growing disparities in life expectancy also mean, by the way, that Social Security isn’t as redistributive as it used to be. Low earners get more of their income replaced than high earners, but this is increasingly offset by the fact that they have fewer years to collect benefits.
In any case, I hope we don’t raise the retirement age further. As I wrote last week, what we need is medical cost control plus moderate tax hikes.
And meanwhile, don’t worry too much about your future benefits. Social Security isn’t a Ponzi scheme, it isn’t going bankrupt, and it will probably continue much as it has.