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[Mandark]

It slightly boggles my mind that the recent election was fought over Iraq, jobs, and Vietnam (Vietnam!), yet the major policy push afterwards is on Social Security, a blip on the radar during the campaign itself. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson in here.

I considered a SS explanation thread that would cover the basic information and the issues being debated right now, but I'm not sure how many people would need it, and an argument's always more fun. If there's enough interest I'll have Hito do one.

So to start off, the problems with social security aren't near as bad as Bush makes them out to be, not near as bad as the general budget problems which are a result of his administration's policies, and wouldn't be solved by setting aside private accounts anyway.

Fire away.



edit: Closed since it seems like a lot of people want the basic info, so I'm doing a new thread, and I'm an admin and can be fickle and mulligan things like this. Hooray!

 

[kumanoki]

It slightly boggles my mind that the recent election was fought over Iraq, jobs, and Vietnam (Vietnam!), yet the major policy push afterwards is on Social Security, a blip on the radar during the campaign itself. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson in here.

I considered a SS explanation thread that would cover the basic information and the issues being debated right now, but I'm not sure how many people would need it, and an argument's always more fun. If there's enough interest I'll have Hito do one.

So to start off, the problems with social security aren't near as bad as Bush makes them out to be, not near as bad as the general budget problems which are a result of his administration's policies, and wouldn't be solved by setting aside private accounts anyway.

Fire away.

Agreed. I have no idea why the Prez is focusing on SS so hard. Neocons blame Dems for not realizing the problem, but how bad is it, really? Can we drive on the spare until we get the tire patched, or does it really need a complete and utter overhaul?

 

[Joe]

i wouldnt mind if someone summarized it all, i havent paid attention at all to it.

whats going to happen to the retired/elderly? what about the 30-40 year olds and what about the young people?

 

[AntoneM]

if the govt. would just quit borrowing from SS, everything would be fine. Sure, taxes may have to increase a little for a while, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with SS.

 

[Dan]

One of last week's Daily Shows had a really good little piece on this whole business. They showed a clip of Bush telling people to ignore the scare tactics of Democrats regarding his thoughts on opening up Social Security, and then they flashed to one minute and ten seconds earlier and Bush was harping about how the whole thing was going bankrupt and was doomed unless something was done immediately. Classic Bush.

 

[Incognito]

He's focusing on SS because that is the bedrock of the Democrats, and him, along with Karl Rove, are deadset on destryoing the Democratic Party.

Social Security is a problem, but it's far, far from a "crisis." BTW, if any of you are interested in how the GOP plans to attack SS and present their plan to America, here's their 103 page "playbook", authored by House Republican Chairman Deborah Pryce and Senate Republican Chairman Rick Santorum.

It's a step-by-step guide on how to frame the issue, deal with "facts", and consult with the media using talking points and favoring the phrase "personal," accounts over "private."

It's quite the treat:

http://www.dailykos.com/images/user/3/GOP_SocialSecurity_Playbook.pdf

 

[Drensch]

Agreed. I have no idea why the Prez is focusing on SS so hard.

Wall Street types were a large part of Bush Campaign base, as is the whole finance industy. They stand to receive the bulk of the 2 trillion dollars of taxpayer dollars from Bush's corporate welfare.

 

[Phoenix]

The problem is very real. The problem is that people are living a lot longer. We're becoming a society that is in its 'more old people' cycle. Because there are so many more people getting to retirement age than there are people paying for them - we have a real problem. That point isn't really up for debate. The point at which the system collapses altogether is contested, but without some change of some sort - the social security system will collapse under its own weight and the more medical advances we have that allow people to live longer, the worse it gets.

 

[Mandark]

If productivity and real wage growth grow at 3% annually, there is no problem. Remember that medical advances are balanced out by other technological advances that allow fewer workers to support more retirees.

 

[Drensch]

90% of the so-called problems would be alleviated if Buh's dumb policies would be counteracted.

I.e we need to stop cutting taxes, we need to stop wasting money on frivolous wars, we need to stop giving hand outs to corporations. If we had an adequate healthcare system, actually paid for stuff, healthcare costs and the like would drop, deficits and debt would stop, and we'd actually have money and self-sufficient government.

 

[boredJonathan]

The problem is very real. The problem is that people are living a lot longer. We're becoming a society that is in its 'more old people' cycle. Because there are so many more people getting to retirement age than there are people paying for them - we have a real problem. That point isn't really up for debate. The point at which the system collapses altogether is contested, but without some change of some sort - the social security system will collapse under its own weight and the more medical advances we have that allow people to live longer, the worse it gets.

We need to act now before the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud!

Oh...
Wait, got my arguments crossed.

Honestly though, I understand that we are a booming population, and that when the current crop of "baby boomers" goes into retirement there will be a shortage. But why is that? Didn't we have a surplus a few years back with a plan to put that surplus into the SS fund to pay for this shortfall?

I do think that things need to be looked at, but the President's approach to this is a little to close to how they tried to sell the American public on WMDs.

 

[Incognito]

It's going to be a mirror of how they sold the American public on the Iraqi War: mass repetition, scare tactics, and militant message control.

 

[kumanoki]

From a very simplistic standpoint, it's painfully clear that the US doesn't have enough money for everything on its plate. Partisan attacks aside, it doesn't make sense for the President to focus on yet another thing at which we need to throw tons of cash. At the very least, I'd figure it would be in the best interest of the President to keep as quiet as possible on domestic issues until...well, until....uh.....

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html

The grain of truth in claims of a Social Security crisis is that this tax increase wasn't quite big enough. Projections in a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (which are probably more realistic than the very cautious projections of the Social Security Administration) say that the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won't become "bankrupt" at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run financing problem.

But it's a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That's less than 3 percent of federal spending - less than we're currently spending in Iraq. And it's only about one-quarter of the revenue lost each year because of President Bush's tax cuts - roughly equal to the fraction of those cuts that goes to people with incomes over $500,000 a year.

Given these numbers, it's not at all hard to come up with fiscal packages that would secure the retirement program, with no major changes, for generations to come.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh121004.shtml

IT’S SO EASY: While we’re on this general topic, let’s see how Baker and Weisbrot approach it. How easily can Social Security be made solvent? What follows is the kind of analysis that the Bruce Mortons (and the Aaron Browns?) always seem to deep-six. Remember—Baker and Weisbrot were writing in 1999. They refer to the standard, 75-year SS shortfall projection—a projection which, as they note a bit earlier, is based on conservative assumptions about economic growth:

---
BAKER/WEISBROT (page 24): [E]ven that shortfall, which may never materialize, is hardly anything to worry about. If we were to ignore the problem completely for the next 13 years and then fix it by the most politically drastic means—raising the payroll tax—future generations would not be greatly burdened. For example, an increase on the payroll tax of one-tenth of one percent each year (split between employer and employee), beginning in 2011 and continuing until 2046, would close the gap. This would still leave future generations with an after-tax wage far higher than that of today’s employees. For example, the average worker in 2030 would have an after-tax wage that is 28.7 percent higher than today, in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Without these payroll tax increases, that employee would have an average wage 30.7 percent higher than his or her counterpart of today.
---

Baker and Weisbrot discuss raising the rate of the payroll tax, not eliminating the “ceiling” on income to which it applies. But note the general shape of their argument. Krugman noted how easy it is to make SS solvent through the next century. In this passage, Baker and Weisbrot make the same general point. But typically, this type of info is missing-in-action when the “liberal” press corps discusses this topic. Morton knew not to go there last night in crafting his absurd, fake report.

 

[Vinzer Deling]

Also remember when SS was introduced in 1935 the life expectancy was around 62 years old, even less for blacks (53YO). The retirement age was 65. You betcha they were suspicious of the whole thing.

 

[Fix]

I'm just amused by the irony that he wants to put stock investment into a system that was designed to dig the country out of a depression caused by the crash of the stock market.

 

[Vinzer Deling]

You don't have to play the stock. You can buy gold, bonds, mutual funds, land.. whatever you want to invest. Doesn't have to strictly be stocks.

 

[Incognito]

I'm just amused by the irony that he wants to put stock investment into a system that was designed to dig the country out of a depression caused by the crash of the stock market.

Actually, there's been some debate whether the crash had anything to do with the depression at all. I'll copy and paste some text regarding the issue from the Oxford History of the United States: Freedom From Fear in a few minutes...

 

[samus4ever]

am I the only person that has a problem with investing some of my ss in fund for when I retire I don't have to leave the burdon on the tax payers at the time?

 

[Incognito]

...Much mythology surrounds these dramatic events in the autumn of 1929. Perhaps the most imperishable misconcpetion portrays the Crash as the cause of the Great Depression that persisted through the decade of the 1930s. This scenario owes it durability, no doubt, to its intuitive plausibility and to its convenient fit with the canons of narrative, which require historical accounts to have recognizable beginnings, middles, and ends to explain events in terms of identifiable origins, development, and resolution. These conventions are comforting; they render understandable and thus tolerable even the most terrifying human experiences. The storyteller and the shaman sometimes feed the same pyshic needs.

The disargreeable truth, however, is that the most responsible students of the events of 1929 have been unable to demonstrate an appreciable cause-and-effect linkage between the Crash and the Great Depression. None assigns to the stock market collapse exclusive responsibility for what followed; most deny it primacy among the many and tangled causes of the decade-long economic slump; some assert that it played virtually no role whatsoever. One authority states flatly and summarily that "no casual relationship between the events of late October 1929 and the Great Depression has ever been shown through the use of empirical evidence." ...

I didn't include the footnotes.

 

[Fix]

No offense, but that reads like utter academic drivel.

 

[Incognito]

Are you referring to the actual way the passage is worded, or the explanation themselves? If it's the way it's worded, well, it's basically an academic book.

 

[Fix]

Certainly the first, but a bit of the second as well. They're claiming no causal relationship, but the large amount of debtors who bought on margin through the middle-late part of the 20s defaulting on their loans and bringing those loaners down did a large share of harm.