Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Biden Appoints Biggs to Social Security Advisory Board

I (run75441) saw this article on MSN early (AZ time) this morning and sent it off to Dale. For those of you who may not have been around. Dale Coberly, Bruce Webb and Arne would discuss Social Security and how to save it. You also may not know it; Dale and Bruce proposed the Northwest […]

Debts, Deficits and Social Security

Dan here…I noticed several articles in the NYT (here is one forcasting Trump/Mulvaneys’ Budget Proposal 2017, contrasting safety net program cuts with the Medicare/Social Security deficit busting programs. In an aside no less. Here we go again…as if deficit spending reduction was important to Republicans, and Social Security was one of the chief problems. I […]

“One neat trick to stop Social Security ‘Reform'”

Republicans constantly try to bring Social Security into ongoing debates about ‘Balanced Budgets’. But they face a fundamental problem with their math. For a variety of reasons, some quite reasonable and others nakedly political (seniors vote) nearly every ‘Reform’ proposal out there promises to hold 55 and older harmless. Meaning you can’t have any more […]

Social Security Report Tables & Figures: a Project Sample – Table V.B2

Table V.B2: Additional Economic Assumptions Well I am back and working on a new project in anticipation of the release of the 2015 Report this late Spring. The project involves extracting the Tables and Figures from the Social Security Trustees Report, in this case the 2014, and having them individually web accessible as spreadsheeets or […]

The 2015 Analytical Perspectives: OMB vs SSA vs CBO

The Office of Management and Budget annually releases the President’s Budget as a baseline proposal for the next Fiscal Year. If the Congress is in whole or in part in the hands of the opposite party this mostly gets filed away somewhere in a drawer entitled “You Wish”. But it does come complete with a […]

Fixing the Border Crisis and Social Security in One Go

Stay with me here. Because I am almost serious about this proposal. Or at least it highlights the contradictions (while not Heightening the Contradictions). The Border Crisis: tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border. Social Security ‘Crisis’: per ‘Reformers’ one that is driven by pure demography – too few future workers to […]

Social Security: Trust Fund Ratios, Solvency and the Reagan ‘Raid’

What does or would it mean to say that Social Security was ‘solvent’? Under the rules that govern the Trustees of Social Security the test for any given year is pretty simple: did or will the year end with all obligations/cost met while still retaining assets equal to the next year’s cost. To determine this […]

2013 Social Security Report

Well I am back at Angry Bear and just getting my feet wet with WordPress, so this first post won’t be ambitious.   The 2013 Annual Report of the Trustees of Social Security was released today Friday the 31st of May. The short take-aways are ‘not much change’ and ‘no news is good news’: date […]

Seven Steps to Social Security cuts via Debt Commission…following the plan

This is a re-posting of a Bruce Webb post from January, 2010.  A reminder of a well crafted plan to date: Seven Steps to Social Security cuts via Debt Commission For those of you who didn’t go the short version of my comment is that the strategy to get major slashes to Social Security and […]