In a previous post Fiscal cliff and the frenzy I pointed to the rush of reporting the day after the election. Some of these articles should be in the op-ed section instead of reporting. Lori Montgomery “Avoiding hard decisions could have grave consequences, analysts say…” … Few expect Washington to replicate the […]
The GOP’s extortion demands: cut Social Security or we’ll shoot the country in the foot The GOP created the fiscal cliff beginning with the “temporary” tax cuts passed in 2001, 2003 and 2004 under the Bush administration, all as purportedly temporary provisions with sunset dates. They hoped that the passage of the tax cuts would, […]
Three writers point to the need to maintain energy and attention to the Obama Grand Bargain. Mark Weisbrot at The Guardian writes on Barack Obama’s carefully crafted economic populism carries the day: The media are a huge factor in most elections in the US, and outside of Fox News and the rightwing press, most of the […]
Dean Baker ponders the lack of focus on Social Security via Alternet: It is remarkable that social security hasn’t been a more issue in the presidential race. After all, Governor Romney has proposed a plan that would imply cuts of more than 40% for middle-class workers just entering the labor force . Since social security […]
From the Washington Post At the top of the priority list: a promise to forge a bipartisan compromise that reduces rampant government borrowing and makes long-postponed decisions about taxes and spending. In the interview, Obama called a budget deal “one of the best things we can do for the economy.”“We’re going to be in a […]
Lynn Parramore notes the part of Social /security in the debates: Watching Wednesday night’s presidential debate, you’d have to be a crack political code reader to know what Obama was really saying about Social Security. It was quick. It was subtle. But it was one of the most telling moments of the debate. First, let’s get […]
by Dale Coberly (Dan here…Dale Coberly replies to this article (Is it Becoming Too Late to Fix Social Security’s Finances?) by Charles Blahous). Blahous, You do not seem to grasp how small “4% of the tax base” is, or how very reasonable it would be to pay that 4% for a longer, richer retirement, out […]
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 […]
Eric Larson is interviewed about Social Security and his new book The People’s Pension: The War Against Social Security from Reagan to Obama (AK Press, Spring 2012): Eric Laursen is an independent journalist who’s been covering political and financial news for more than a quarter-century. He’s been studying Social Security for the past 15 years, […]
Via Mark Thoma comes this study of the financial status of many Americans in the last part of their lives: Social Security works: Study: Many Americans die with ‘virtually no financial assets’, by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office: It is a central worry of many Americans: not having enough money to live comfortably in old […]