The Northwest Plan for a Real Social Security Fix was first introduced and revised in 2009. Obviously it was never adopted. Still the basic mechanism remains the same as does the rationale and working assumptions and in what follows I am going to assume a certain knowledge of the mechanics of Social Security finance and […]
The Northwest Plan for a Real Social Security Fix was introduced and then revised in 2009, explaining why the post link references ‘Vers 2.0’. What makes the NW Plan ‘real’ is that it is both permanent and contingent. To explain this mild paradox lets take an analogy. Let’s say you have a 1935 Duesenberg that […]
By request of frequent AB commenter and SS contrarian Bruce Krasting. He claims vindication of claims from four years ago that the Trust Funds would top out at a much lower level than then estimated. And there is some support to be had here. Also lots of numbers and data points. I’ll have my say […]
All of the terms in the post title have at least two usages, some of which map upon to common sense ideas from business or household budgeting, some not. Unfortunately the usages that don’t tend to be those used in federal budget reporting, and the result is untold confusion. Now one way out would be […]
‘Horror scene’ as 4 Lakewood police officers shot, killed LAKEWOOD, Wash. – Four uniformed police officers were shot and killed in a bloody Sunday morning attack at a Lakewood-area coffee shop, and investigators are seeking a person of interest in the killings, officials said.Pierce County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ed Troyer said the person they are […]
What would Social Security look like if it met all current law requirements for ‘solvency’? Well unfortunately we have to start with the most eye-glazing opening ever deployed: ‘first lets define our terms’. To which I would add ‘within an artificial economic model’. Because real life is messy, particularly right now, and that introduces unnecessary […]
Having hopefully gotten some attention with THAT post title, let me start dispelling some misconceptions and myths about the Social Security Trust Funds, some innocent and some disseminated with malice aforethought. A common narrative among the left is that the Social Security Trust Funds were established after the Greenspan Commission in 1983 to one) pre-fund […]
Okay, more jargon. But important jargon because the policy proposals are starting from different baselines themselves defined by this jargon. So while some of the following is basic, it is equally a rhetorical (in the classical definition) baseline. Under current Social Security law future benefits are set by a formula. For a given individual this […]
If my name was Harry Reid I would be reserving one question for Romney’s announcement of his VP pick: “Governor, how many years of tax forms did you request from Governor/Senator Jindal, Pawlenty, Portman?” And August 27th is not that far away. Particularly if the idea is to announce the VP pick prior to the […]
I came up with this around ten years ago to put a point on the logical trap Social Security privatizers (often unwittingly) find themselves in. It goes like this: If Privatization is Necessary, it Won’t be Possible If Privatization is Possible, it Won’t be Necessary To understand the trap we need to do some parsing […]