Social Security
kkrisberg | September 24, 2015In the U.S., the gap in life expectancy by income is getting wider. To be even clearer: Life expectancy for people with higher incomes has gone up over time, while life expectancy for people earning lower incomes has actually declined.
In “The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income: Implications for Federal Programs and Policy Responses,” which the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released last week, authors analyzed life expectancy patterns among Americans born in 1930 and compared them with projections among a group of Americans born in 1960. They found that top-…
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2011I've been remiss in my Robert Samuelson (no relation to the economist who shared the same last name) stupidity watch--the Tea Party Fort Sumter people really bring the crazy. But the idiot who inspired me to create the Samuelson unit is still fighting his long, glorious war against the elderly and the sick:
...Samuelson tells readers:
"some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more."
Let's see, we…
mikethemadbiologist | July 24, 2011A while ago, I discussed how the battle over credit and debit fees is really a battle over how much money should cost and whom you're paying that cost to: corporations or government. Well, the corporate takeover of the monetary base continues unabated, this time affecting Social Security. You see, in the name of efficiency, the Social Security Administration is moving to direct deposit, whether you like or it not. So what's the problem with that? Well, there are some interesting...features (italics mine):
If you click on the "About the Direct Express Card" link, the second paragraph says…
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2011So GOP Senator Orrin Hatch has decided to embrace his inner douchebag:
"I hear how they're so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."
...But it was Hatch whose remarks Wednesday raised the idea that the wealthy are already doing too much, even as the nation's effective tax rates are at modern lows since the Bush administration slashed rates in 2001 and 2003. In his view, it seems, the middle class and poor should be picking up the slack.
"…
mikethemadbiologist | June 25, 2011Besides, we got Bernie Sanders:
Nothing you haven't heard around these parts, but it's a nice summary.
Rock on, Bernie.
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2011The projections used by the Social Security Administration to determine when it will become 'insolvent' are notoriously pessimistic, in that they have been estimating that Social Security will be DOOOMED! in 28-38 years going on nearly twenty years. Like Zeno's spear, we never seem to hit that wall. Well, it's spread to Medicare (like E. coli O104:H4! ZOMG!!). Jared Bernstein lays out the past twenty one years of Medicare* estimates for us:
Just to make this clearer--because I like helping!--I've made a couple of changes:
If we take this year's prediction seriously--or at least…
mikethemadbiologist | June 9, 2011The economic malpractice by the Obama administration is shameful. A while ago, I argued that one of the few moves that Obama could make politically to jump start the economy would be a temporary elimination of the payroll tax for workers. This could increase consumer demand (although not nearly as much as a jobs program would. Today, Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration is considering a payroll cut, but on the employer side:
President Barack Obama's advisers have discussed seeking a temporary cut in the payroll taxes businesses pay on wages as they debate ways to spur hiring…
mikethemadbiologist | June 7, 2011I'll get to creationism in a bit, but first...
Last week, Yves Smith started a wee lil' ruckus among progressives with a post titled "Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name." In that post, she argued:
Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported…
mikethemadbiologist | May 28, 2011Given the disastrous presidency of Little Lord Pontchartrain, it's understandable why so many people look back fondly on Bill Clinton's two terms. But it's worth remembering that, in many ways, he really was Republican-lite--and he was proud of it. Dean Baker reminds us (italics mine):
In an article reporting on how the Republicans are backing away from the Ryan plan for privatizing Medicare. the NYT quoted former President Bill Clinton on the need to cut Medicare spending. Mr. Clinton was speaking a daylong conference of the deficit sponsored by Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2011So Ezra Klein, along with many other progressives, has been offering alternatives to the Republican call for the slash-and-burn of Social Security. But what's annoying about all of this is that the prediction that Social Security revenues plus the accumulated U.S. securities (yes, the U.S. government, not China, is far and away the world's largest holder of U.S. securities) will be unable to meet its obligations in 2037*, and only pay out 78 percent of benefits. That estimate comes from a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report (pdf). But that CBO estimate is based on an annual real GDP…
mikethemadbiologist | May 3, 2011Jon Walker argues that worrying about how to keep Social Security 'solvent' for 75 years is silly. After all, predicting the future 75 years out is difficult. Something like this might happen:
Epidemics caused by drug-resistant bacteria in 2020 could kill a disproportionally large number of seniors.
Or:
By around 2060, the exponential growth in computing power could result in humanity reaching the technological singularity giving us almost god-like powers to control ourselves and our environments to an extent that is unimaginable.
Walker is being facetious, but I also think there's a more…
mikethemadbiologist | March 8, 2011I like constancy. Knowing that, come spring, the forsythia will bloom is a good thing. But I don't like knowing that, when Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson writes something about Social Security, it will be error-filled and disingenuous. Sadly, this too is a constant. A few years back, Samuelson inspired me to invent the Samuelson Unit, which, like the Friedman unit, is a period of time, X units in the future, at which point something will happen. Like Zeno's Paradox, we never seem to reach that point, which, even given the past couple of years, is still 27 years away*.
Well,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2011...then maybe the middle-aged and the young in the U.S. can too? The most recent attempt to weaken the most effective U.S. anti-poverty program ever--Social Security--involves cutting benefits, but only for those who currently are younger than 55 years old. As Matthew Yglesias notes, this is...unusual:
After all, this isn't how any other kind of benefit cuts work. When Obama proposes cutting oil and gas subsidies, they propose cutting them right away. When Obama proposes a nominal freeze in federal pay, he's proposing a real cut right away. When LIHEAP gets the ax, it gets the ax right…
mikethemadbiologist | February 17, 2011One of the maddening things about the Social Security 'debate' is the assumption that Social Security will be 'insolvent' in several decades (oddly enough, every year like clockwork, the several decades prediction is renewed....). It won't be. The Social Security Trustees release three estimates of the long term health of the Social Security program. These three estimates differ in the assumptions of how the economy will perform, and can be described as: mild historical underperformance, sucky, and 'Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die!'
These estimates are mandated by law. Typically,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2011It would be for the best.
First, some general thoughts. I had the distinct sense Obama was trying to run the clock out. He knew he had to say something, but has no room to maneuver. Thanks to his mediocre first two years and his enabling of conservative talking points (which one wonders if that's not strategic, but ideological), the Democrats lost control of the House and have been boxed into a corner rhetorically. Related to that, he set the stage over and over again to box Republicans in, but then he mostly chickened out and rarely offered concrete proposals that would put them in a…
mikethemadbiologist | December 30, 2010There's a very interesting interview with William Greider about Social Security (no, really, it is worth reading). But I think part of the interview highlights why blogs and other non-traditional media forms have such power (italics mine):
TL: How does this play out in day-to-day reporting?
WG: My sense from the way stories are written is that unless you have the "facts" of pseudo-scientific evidence, editors don't want reporters making any observations on what they learned as reporters. This supposedly makes them more "objective," but it does the opposite. They become more one-sided in…
mikethemadbiologist | December 8, 2010Obama's recent tax/unemployment deal with Republicans is a lot less demoralizing once one recognizes that Obama is a Republican, albeit not a completely batshit lunatic one. So I wasn't really going to comment on the most recent Obama capitulation. But several readers asked me for my thoughts on the subject, so here they are:
1) The anger by low- and moderate-information likely Democratic voters is astonishing. Today, completely unsolicited, I had five different people who, while they are likely Democratic voters, really don't pay attention to the details, rant about how weak Obama is and…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2010Like many in the Coalition of the Sane, I'm shocked by The NY Times' willingness to run an article on the front page that states this:
If the economy grew one half of a percentage point faster than forecast each year over the next two decades -- no easy feat, to be fair -- the country would have to do roughly 40 to 50 percent less deficit-cutting than it now appears, based on my reading of budget data from the economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale.
Not that I'm concerned about the deficit in a deflationary economy, but worrying about deficits seem to be an idée fixe among our political…
mikethemadbiologist | November 6, 2010I received a email and got a link to this Daily Kos campaign to support Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's campaign to be House Minority Leader next term:
As you read this, Pelosi is mulling over whether to run for House Minority Leader. The basic process involves counting her supporters. If she is going to run, she needs to hear from her supporters ASAP that they still in her corner.
You can make her voice heard by signing this petition of support. I will do my best to deliver the petition to her personally before she makes her decision. She will hear your voice.
The Blue Dogs want her out…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2010Terrance at the Republic of T describes what should be obvious about conservative opposition to Social Security, but is not thanks to gormless Democrats and an incompetent political journalist caste (italics original; boldface mine):
Maybe that's why they fought so hard to protect bonuses and compensation for Wall Street banksters. They will likely fight as hard to reduce your paycheck and mine as they did to protect Wall Steet's excesses.
It's not hard to figure out why.
It's not just that conservatives are opposed to minimum wage. It's like with Social Security. It's not that conservatives…