Total Security on Planet Elsinore: a Social Security Thought Game (Part 1) – Set the gameboard and initial rules for Total Security or TS for short. To recap the USE a democratic republic polity on Planet Elsinore has a long established government retirement security program called Total Security paid for by an across the income […]
Lets play a game. The ultimate point of the game is to understand certain aspects of Social Security but to keep complications from creeping in too early (wait for later parts) we are going to start with simple game play on a board far, far away. In fact on distant yet oddly Earth-like Planet Elsinore. […]
Dean Baker was polite in responding to another story from the Washington Post in the campaign to discredit the program: That’s what the headline of the front page Washington Post story might have read if the purpose was to inform readers. Instead the lengthy piece (which covers the whole back page) told readers that Social […]
by Dale Coberly How to Sound Insane by Talking Like a Bi Partisan Expert on Social Security I apologize for the next couple of paragraphs because they sound overworked and insane, but that’s what happens when you try to illustrate the way Washington talks about Social Security. Try to imagine you have to buy a medicine […]
by Dale Coberly TOM FRIEDMAN LIES THROUGH HIS GREAT BIG TEETH TELLS KIDS “KILL GRANDMA” You see, the Wolf (his friends call him Tom) had no reason to disguise himself as Grandmother. He had already met Little Red Riding Hood and talked to her like a friend. She saw him as the nice man in […]
When the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal reports on THE federal budget deficit what number do they use? When OMB gives a top line number for THE deficit what is included or not? In particular is Social Security included? Now some will immediately jump in and say, and perfectly correctly, that Social […]
Well the word out of DC this morning is that the GOP will cave on holding Obamacare hostage at least to the debt ceiling in exchange for negotiations on long-term debt with Social Security explicitly on the table. So it is time to review some basics here. First we have Public Debt and Debt Subject […]
From the Los Angelos Times comes this article on Social Security Disability and reporting: Is it possible for a major news organization to produce a story about the Social Security disability program without interviewing a single disabled person or disability advocate? That’s the experiment “60 Minutes” conducted Sunday. The result was predictably ghastly. The news […]
Having heard Senator Sander’s discussion on the floor, I thought the outing of the republican vision for this nation in total should be preserved on the net in writing. People hear bits and piece but never put the entire picture together. Maybe reading the list will help people picture the finished house the conservative mind […]
by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY AND INNUMERACY MATH HELP FOR K*ASTINGS In the open thread section last night constant reader B*uce K*asting reported: “CBO changed some variables, the result was an increase in the unfunded numbers. In 2012 CBO concluded that the shortfall was 1.9% of payrolls. In 2013 they increased that to 3.4% – […]