S.O.S.

Listening to NPR this morning and heard more of the same old shit about Social Security and fixing its problems. The so-called expert did the usual bloviating about the only solution being to make some cuts somewhere down the road because it would be so difficult to increase revenues. She did the usual tap dancing around, mentioning various solutions that all boil down to reducing benefits, but never mentioned the most obvious and easiest fix: eliminate the earnings cap. Right now, any earnings above $110,100 are exempt from the Social Security tax. Eliminate that exemption, and there's an instant infusion of cash. But do any of the "experts" ever toss that out as a possibility? Nope. It's always blathering on and on about the sacrifices we peasants, the poor saps who will never earn close to $110K, are going to have to make.

Social Security Reform

Lies, damned lies, and Social Security

It's kind of gotten lost in all the kerfuffle over the empty-headed Miss California and her wardrobe malfunctions, but that perpetual target of the right wing is back: Social Security. The latest set of estimates indicates the trust fund will be exhausted a couple years earlier than anticipated, so naturally the talking heads who read the news are busy trying to gin up some hysteria. All the usual bits of misinformation are being repeated ad nauseum, the primary one being that "OMG Social Security will be depleted in [insert year here]!!!"

Bizarre. They may read whatever is shoved in front of them but Wolf Blitzer et al apparently have the comprehension levels of a first-grader. Social Security will not be depleted in 2000-whenever (anywhere from 2037 to 2045, depending on the projections being used); that's the possible year the trust fund zeroes out and the system has to rely solely on contributions being made to the system by workers. And that's assuming absolutely no fixes to the existing system are made, such as removing the earnings cap on taxing wages or upping the age at which a person would qualify for full benefits -- I've never heard a suggestion about upping the age when we all can start collecting partial benefits, which is 62.

When I was listening to the news CNN had a clip of President Obama suggesting the first -- removing the earnings cap -- but of course Wolf et al totally ignored that particular sound bite and instead blathered on breathlessly about Social Security not being there 40 years from now. The man's an idiot.

Of course, having recently sat through a 2-day pre-retirement workshop during which everything a person could ever possibly want to know about Social Security, federal pensions, and private investments was laid out in excruciating detail, I know that Wolf isn't alone in being an idiot. Most Americans are clueless when it comes to Social Security. I heard some truly strange questions asked by co-workers, and if my co-workers (who I would hope are slightly better read and/or informed than the average American) are clueless, that doesn't give me much hope concerning the rest of the populace.

For a start, it's absolutely astounding how many people still labor under the mistaken belief that Social Security is an investment plan. No, no, no, people, it's old age insurance! The money we all pay into Social Security isn't an investment, like buying a bond or putting money into a 401k, it's an insurance premium to protect us from starving to death if we get too old or too crippled to work. When the system was first proposed, in fact, that's how it was described: Old Age Insurance. And just like every other insurance system, it's based in large part on the assumption that a goodly number of the people paying into the system are never going to have to collect, which is why the retirement age for full benefits is set where it is. Back in the 1930s actuaries looked at death rates and deliberately set the minimum age high enough that the number of people who actually collected would be low enough to make the system sustainable. In 1935 the life expectancy in the U.S. was 61; in 2005 it was 77. And there's the Social Security problem in a nutshell; people are living too long.

I could go on, but I need to get to work.