Salon writer  Natasha Lennard reports that a sticking point around Social Security stalled ‘fiscal cliff’ back and forth rejoinders between the two parties, but also points out that the topic continues to be on the table (and has been offered by President Obama before these talks a couple years ago).   Notice both parties using the […]

by Dale CoberlyFareed Zakaria on Social Security Fareed Hearts Pete Peterson Disses your mom Fareed Zakaria wrote an essay for Time, The Baby Boom and Financial Doom. Dean Baker responded to Zakaria with Fareed Zakaria is unhappy that the American left chooses arithmetic over Peter Peterson. Baker makes the point that the increase in the number […]

House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s. And many Republicans remember well when the tables were turned. After Mr. Bush’s […]

There are a number of well thought out plans to handle the problems proposed by opponents of Social Security and also those concerned about its sustainability. To have our political and media debate confined to one item like chained-cpi should make any reasonable voter pause and wonder “Is that all? How dumb can we be?” […]

There is no crisis with Social Security. Social Security is not going broke. Social Security adds NOTHING to the deficit. Social Security is not welfare. Update: Pelosi says she can live with it There are many options to address issues for the program, which are not offered as part of Pres. Obama’s  insistence on keeping […]

by Dale CoberlySOCIAL SECURITY and Uncle Sam moving parts edition Most of us have heard the “phony iou” claim about the Social Security Trust Fund, with its accompanying cartoon of a hapless Uncle Sam furiously borrowing from his left pocket to fill up his right pocket, and stuffing “worthless iou’s” into the left pocket to […]

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 […]

by Barkley Rosser  from Econospeak “The young will pay more and get less.” More Nonsense from Robert Samuelson Our old friend, Dean Baker at Beat the Press, does a good job of taking apart yet another screed by the execrable Robert J. Samuelson, faux economist for WaPo, whining about why nobody is jumping on board […]

by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITYSweet Reasonableness and Fact Checkers Apparently the Big Liars are getting worried about the fact that “Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit.” There have been a flurry of little Big Liars “proving” that in fact SS is a contributor to the Deficit. I am going to try to […]