Priorities
Open letter to Secretary Paulson:
Social Security faces a lack of funds to pay its commitments some years after the ice caps will, under current trends, have melted, flooding Florida; after oil hits several hundred dollars a barrel; after income inequality turns America into France of 1788; after rising Asian competition eliminates the American Dream -- see my book "In China's Shadow." So let's get our priorities right.
Meanwhile, deficits do matter, and it's medical payments both private and public that are causing both firm and government deficits to soar (ask Ford; ask around your office). It's not Social Security.
Let's get our priorities right.
Democrats: don't be beguiled; don't follow the red herrings.
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But aren't you putting it backwards, Reed?
Social Security helps mask the deficit while sticking it to lower-paid workers.
Best, Terry
November 22, 2006 7:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not to worry. Today's WSJ notes that Dems will resist Paulson unless Bush (1) renounces in advance his cherished "private accounts," and (2) makes clear in advance "exactly what future benefit reductions or revenue increases he could support."
These things will happen in tandem shortly after Bush springs for an ACLU lifetime membership.
November 22, 2006 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
. . . we still have a fiscal deficit that's roughly 1.8% of GDP, and that's below the average size of the deficit over the past 40 years. Revenues are pouring in right now. The whole concern about the deficit doesn't come from the current fiscal deficit; it comes from looking ahead a number of years to the entitlement deficit we see looming on the horizon. Henry M. "Hank" Paulson (emphasis added)
Yes, indeed -- a "number of years" -- about 35 years (2041c.) or maybe, never.
November 22, 2006 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was young I resented SS taxes. I'm getting a lot closer to seeing the income from that insurance purchase and feel rather different now.
That SS surplus masks other deficits is only a reason to isolate it for accountig.
It's easy to argue that SS is regressive, but at the low end of wage earning there is little room for IRA contributions that would amount to much, and with a limited investment one can't take risks that a market position would involve.
November 23, 2006 8:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
"It's easy to argue that SS is regressive." I'd normally feel that way myself, but I realize it's part of the political genius of the system, the way it presents everyone as investing for himself or herself while also in practice creating a self-sustaining system with one generation paying for another. Thus it combines the American moral poles of individualism ("it's about time you looked after yourself") and community ("we're all in this together").
The genius of the Reagan era GOP was to redefine government as about hand-outs to the poor rather than a New Deal for all or a Great Society, so that the middle class were aligned with the rich against the undeserving poor, rather than the middle class and poor against hand-outs to the undeserving rich. I think that often when we read that it's about time we moved past New Deal liberalism, it's more that we need to shake the new myth than that we should embrace the reality of its assault on the old one.
Of course, it's also regressive in a further sense, thanks to the cap on the part of income that's taxed. There we should get angry, although I realize it's less easy to change that than to attack the Bush tax cuts, which are more recent. Still, it's a nice level to have when responsibility for saving the system responsibly comes up.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
November 23, 2006 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be mighty fine to make a more truthful statement about the actual deficit for sure.
But the problem would remain.
It's not an argument. It's a fact.
What has that to do with anything besides the obvious argument against the ultimate insanity of privatization?
Fact is that money goes from workers to retirees. There is no lockbox, no savings accounts, nothing but an unconscionable weight on workers. Your money has not accumulated. What you paid has been spent and you expect to live off the industry of others when you retire. That is fine but maybe it is best you don't burden the least of society unduly. They are called on for much besides funding retirees and the disabled under the promiscuity of government spending for the main purpose of benefiting the wealthiest while taxing the poorest most heavily.
Best, Terry
November 23, 2006 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not sure what your point is. The SS tax is regressive while being paid, but the subsequent benefits are much more valuable to the low end than the rich.
There's no lockbox for an IRA, a stock position, a certificate of deposit, or any financial instrument other than precious metals and gems. Even bonds depend on the long term existence of the issuer. So what?
The future value of all investments depends on a future market, so there is no real difference I can see, other than the classic one of security vs. yield.
What is your proposal for a replacement or alteration of SS?
November 23, 2006 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I try my best.
That's my point.
That's all there is.
There is a regressive tax on workers that is paid directly to retirees and disabled. All the rest is smoke unless you think a politician's promise is a great store of value.
Big deal.
If you give food to the poor and the rich, surely it is of more value to the poor. If you provide the poor meager rations and top off the banquets of the rich with caviar and champagne while they are enjoying a longer life, you do more for the starving but possibly there is a problem with your equation.
The rich give less and get more. They can only get anything from those currently working and paying regressive taxes.
There sure as hell is.
Money you put in a stock, a certificate of deposit, even an IRA gives you a claim on your savings.
Social Security furnishes money to retirees and the disabled and uses the surplus from the tax to fund all functions of government. IOU's from the government can only be redeemed by taxes - regressive taxes on workers under today's scheme. There is no saving, no private account, just the promises of politicians. There is some correlation with a government bond but the bond does not promise more than you paid beyond interest. A government bureaucrat or judge can determine that you do not qualify for Social Security on a whim - and have. They cannot, at least in theory, claim your government bond does not belong to you or your debtors or your heirs.
What is your proposal for a replacement or alteration of SS?Non-regressive taxation. Equalization of benefits.
The country owes us. It does not owe us more. We were not parasites and should not become such.
Best, Terry
November 23, 2006 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The benefits of SS are a bit skewed toward the those with lower wages. Also remember SS is matched by employers so increasing the SS tax is a big hit on employers and the self-employed.
The real scam is the 1982 tax increase. Following the Greenspan Moynihan commission Reagan passed the largest tax increase in history. It was the increase in FICA that lifted the cap on the Medicare portion. It was designed to have Baby Boomers prepay the money that everyone knew was going to be needed.
Republicans almost immediately, as you have pointed out Tom, used the money pouring into the SS to hide deficit spending in other arease. What makes it really outrageous is the different income distributions.
Bondholders, those lending the U.S. money then to be wealthier and a meaningful minority are foreigners. Since FICA tends to be regressive you have poorer people potentially having their earnings going to wealthier people.
Only John Edwards of major Democrats made mention of this. I do understand why the assault conducted by Republicanson earnings through work rather than investing hasn't been more of an issue.
Talk about a class war.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
November 24, 2006 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
The regressivity is by design and is an act of political genius by the New Dealers. It is nice to think 70 years later that Roosevelt could have waved a magic wand and produced a retirement system for workers funded by higher income workers and capital. But there were and are political realities in place.
Social Security as currently configured is totally funded by workers for the benefit of workers. Capital neither contributes nor benefits and so in principle should have no say. This is a strength not a weakness.
The returns from Social Security are scaled by contribution, the more you put in over a lifetime the bigger your check, with limits build in at the top end offset by the existence of the cap. On the other hand those benefits are skewed by a small progressive tilt towards the bottom. Lower income workers get a larger check than their contributions would warrent, but small enough not to give them an incentive to coast, upward mobility is rewarded.
The existence of the cap makes the whole system externaly regressive but insulates it from the competing demands of capital. The smallish amount of progressivity built into benefit checks serves to deliver a small income transfer down without alienating those making near the cap.
It is a delicately balanced machine, cleverly designed to not just be another welfare program free to be whacked away at by the Right. If it had been funded progressively to start with it probably would not exist today.
People who naively think that the 'solution' to Social Security is some combination of lifting the cap and/or folding it into the rest of government need to understand that we do not in fact live in a world of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" and you can be pretty far left and understand that is not a bad thing.
Social Security taxes are only regressive for those people earning amounts near the cap. Their last marginal dollar is being taxed at an effective additional 12.4% compared to the last marginal dollar of the guy making over $100,000. But that is a feature and not a bug.
The dirty secret of private accounts is that they would work great if you come out of college with an MBA and get a job right out of the box at $80,000. Which is why privatizers are always targeting that cohort. 'YOU could do better'. Well yes you probably could. If you had a guarantee of not getting disabled.
Social Security: from workers to workers. Maybe Terry wants to battle it out as one line item among all others, to pit retirement security up against tanks. Thanks but no thanks. Capital and the Economic Right can just keep their hands off. And yes that means a guy earning more than $70,000 ends up paying more than their fair share. Not a reason to scrap the political cover that a dedicated revenue stream offers.
November 24, 2006 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's play 5 questions:
1.Do you believe the state should help low income workers provide for old age ? If you don't , fixing the problems above is irrelevant .If you do , the question is......
2.Do you believe it's mathematically possible to do that through individual retirement accounts ? If you believe that , end of discussion. If you don't....
3. How can this be done ? Do you agree with the "insurance concept" embodied in social security under which surviving retirees benefit from the premiums of deceased contributors ?. If you believe that , the question is....................
4. What other features of ss do you think should be changed , if any ? . But if you don't believe in the insurance concept , the question is...
5. What should be changed to compensate surviving retirees for their loss of the benefit they now obtain from those deceased-contributors funds ?
November 24, 2006 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
"It was designed to have Baby Boomers prepay the money that everyone knew was going to be needed."
No it wasn't. This is the biggest joint myth out there amongst the Left and Right alike. Read the 1983 Report for yourself. Find a single word about prepayment, for that matter find a number that projects a result out past 1989.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/trust/trustyears.html
http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/trust/1983/1983.pdf
The 1982 Act was designed to kick the problem down the road. To take a Trust Fund whose Trust Fund ratio actually ended up dropping below zero (OAS borrowed from DI) and give it some security over the next 20 years or so. Which is what it did. In later reports the Trust Fund was projected to run out in years between 2019 and 2023 which is to say right before the peak of Boomer retirement. Hell of a way to prepay.
No one expected the 1982 Act to provide a fix and it didn't, not on its own. The unprecedented and unexpected growth in the economy between 1996 and 2000 with low unemployment combined with strong real wage growth combined with the extra 2.0% is what fixed the system.
If you read the 1997 Report you will see a Social Security Trust Fund in which you could dare to hope. By the 2000 Report the results were in the bag. The Boomers in effect had prepaid, Trust Fund exhaustion was pushed out to points after 2034 (2041 this year) when most of us will be dead.
Now none of this could have happened without the 2.0% payroll tax bump. But that was not its intent.
People who think that Social Security was 'looted' or 'used to pay for the Cold War' need to examine the year end balances and compare them with the General Fund budgets for those years. The day Bush I took office the combined OASDI Trust Fund from program inception was $110 billion. A chunk of money to be sure but not exactly a money pit. (2006 Report Table IV.A1 p.133) The real surpluses didn't start rolling in until 1998.
As they say: You could look it up. Social Security has always been pay-go.
November 24, 2006 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I get really pissed at people that assume an equity investment is guaranteed to outperform SS. Thay haven't considered what will happen when the Baby Boom liquidates en masse. Unless they buy fixed-rate bonds set to mature near their retirement, their market-price equities wll get hammered.
It seems that, in prinicple, the Baby Boom could have forward-paid into SS and the payout would have been covered previously. If it wasn't, that's not the contributors' fault.
November 24, 2006 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
The other problem is that comparing private accounts and SS itself is comparing apples to oranges. The stock market has its ups and downs but over time should out perform. However, SS is not an investment program but a social insurace program. Money paid today is mainly used to pay current beneficiaries.
Bush and othe proponents of private accounts never acknowledge their use of the same money twice. If current workers get to set aside money for their private accounts where is the money for current retirees, the disabled and other recepients of SS money going to come from?
Daniel A. Greenbaum
November 24, 2006 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I read the "Greenspan Commission Report http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/gspan5.html" the commissioners clearly believed they were doing more than solving the immediate problem through 1989. They thought they had reduced not solved the long term problem as well and point the way toward bringing the projected shortfall down to "close to zero." They put forward a series of proposals to deal with both the short and long term problems.
Social Security was not looted. However, after the tax increase it took in more money than it needed to payout. That surplus has been growing. That was the Bush Gore lock-box debate.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
November 24, 2006 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link. This is what I got out of it:
"3) The National Commission finds that, for purposes of considering the long-range financial status of the OASDI Trust Funds, its actuarial imbalance for the 75-year valuation period is an average of 1.80% of taxable payroll.(2)"
"The 12 members of the National Commission voting in favor of the "consensus" package agreed to a single set of proposals to meet the short-range deficit (with Commissioner Kirkland dissenting on the proposal to cover newly hired Federal employees). They further agreed that the long-range deficit should be reduced to approximately zero. The single set of recommendations would meet about two-thirds of the long-range financial requirements. Seven of the 12 members agreed that the remaining one-third of the long-range financial requirements should be met by a deferred, gradual increase in the normal retirement age, while the other 5 members agreed to an increase in the contribution rates in 2010 of slightly less than one-half percent (0.46%) of covered earnings on the employer and the same amount on the employee, with the employee's share of the increase offset by a refundable income-tax credit (see the statements in Chapter 4 for a presentation of these approaches)."
So depending on your definition of "approximately zero" I guess I'll concede the point. But in my reading of the table it would appear they left a .58% hole with a variety of different proposals to backfill it. It would be interesting to see which if any of those made it to the final bill. (Looks like it was the increase in retirement age - which the minority pointed out was a benefit cut).
But still no talk of pre-payment. And this was interesting:
"The commission settled on $150-$200 billion as the amount required in the years 1983-89 to ensure the solvency of the system through 1990. This is roughly consistent with achieving reserve ratio (reserves relative to annual outgo) of 15 percent by 1990, under the 1982 Board of Trustees' pessimistic assumptions."
Granted this is the pessimistic assumption, but a Trust Fund Ratio of 15 equates to reserves of 54 days. Not a lot in the bank.
I couldn't find a table that actually set out Trust Fund ratios under the various alternatives for future years. There was a table that set out additional resources needed to hit various Trust Fund ratios over the medium term that ranged from 9% to 50%, which hardly suggests "pre-pay" either.
Once again thanks for the link. I'll be scouring it a little more throughly.
November 24, 2006 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget the disability payments and the payments to survivors of deceased workers that are covered under Social Security. Since this includes widows benefits that go to a spouse divorced after at least 10 years of marriage (beginning at age 60) there are damn few people who die for whom no one gets a benefit.
There is NO FORM OF PRIVATE SYSTEM which can duplicate these benefits both to individuals and to the society at reasonable costs.
This is a system which protects those who are dependent on the economy through someone else, such as a stay-at-home mom with children.
The deceased workers who die and have no one left to receive benefits are still contributing to those beneficiaries whose links to the economy are broken by the death, retirement or disability of the wage earner.
As far as the poor sad deceased worker with no elegible dependents is concerned, this is a form of term insurance they are paying to participate in the economic society. Since no one is dependent on them, they can save much easier than the rest of us can. This is the equivalent of buying a whole life policy or term insurance tied to an investment vehicle instead of term policy. The private forms with savings attached require the purchaser to pay more, of course. As Heinlein used to write TANSTAAFL.
If people don't like the current system, they can move to some society without such a set of social safety nets. Somalia comes to mind.
Oh, and this is a system for all workers, not just low income workers. I have met several people who had their homes paid for and expected a pension upon retirement. Thentheir spouse became ill and they had to spend it all for medical care, leaving nothing except Social Security. I also know of at least one attorney who at age 50 took all his savings to start his own law practice, which failed. After the bankruptcy the only retirement he and his wife had left that the bankruptcy court couldn't touch was Social Security. Similarly, several of my friends retired from the military, got divorced, and their wives got half of their military pension but couldn't touch the Social Security (except for the divorced spouse benefit which does not reduce the retirement benefit of the wage earner.
With the way income uncertainty is spreading to the highest ranks of the middle classes these days, social security is a protection almost everyone needs. And it damned sure doesn't need to be invested in financial markets which add an entirely additional level of risk.
November 24, 2006 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hello All,
The big problem with Social Security is NOT that it is going broke in 35 years, it is that it has served as a great way to regressively tax the country for the last 20 years, and the point at which THAT effect changes is 10-15 years from now, maybe sooner. As the republicans failed to permanently bury the Aristocracy tax (estate tax) this year, the fiscal implications of requiring a more explicitly regressive tax in just a few more years will NOW prevent them from attaining this goal for the foreseeable future.
To pay SS obligations, we will have to go back to the general fund and tax well, which means that we will have to use a PROGRESSIVE tax in the reverse effect of what SS has done for the last 20 years.
People marvel that the spread of wealth from poor to rich has grown so much in the last 20 years. The SS surplus has EVERYTHING to do that. Now that we are on the verge of drawing down the SS surplus, we will, as a society, go back to an overall progressive tax process.
Eyes wide open.
November 24, 2006 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
big problem with Social Security is NOT that it is going broke in 35 years, it is that it has served as a great way to regressively tax the country
Could be.
My simple minded analysis goes like this.
For any individual weigh his/her ss contributions against the future benefits.
For long lived retirees there is some length of retirement at which those contributions can be seen to have been an attractive investment rather than a tax . It would be easy to calculate how many years that takes. It seems to me that for those who obtain such a benefit it's incorrect to describe that as a regressive tax.
For those who die early of course , those contributions are a tax .
For the wealthy , either way , ss is essentially irrelevant and not germane to my analysis . Could be grounds for separate calculation of the extent to which the-probably longer lived- wealthy are being subsidized by the working class.
In any event , just considering the bottom half of the income distribution what's the result: taking them as a group does ss turn out to be a tax or an investment ? One way of answering that would be to make that calculation on , say , the median retiree of the bottom half of income distribution employing average longetivity for people with that income. I haven't a clue what that would show but I'd want to know that before deciding to what extent that cohort is paying a regressive tax.
November 25, 2006 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Treating SS as an investment is, as you say, simple minded. The fact is, there is NO investment. The money that goes into SS "Trust Fund" offsets lower general fund taxes. It is that straight forward.
When the "Trust Fund" breaks even, then there is no offset. When the "Trust Fund" needs to cash in bonds, then the general fund must raise more taxes to pay for current needs and repay SS bonds.
THIS has been the problem all along. For the last 20 years, SS has been "buying bonds," which means it has been offsetting (reducing) general fund taxes. The beneficiaries of this reduction are.... hmmm.. the wealthy...
NOW, not way off in the future, NOW, SS needs to cash in its bonds. Somebody is going to have to pay taxes... GENERAL FUND TAXES... for the bonds to be cashed in... Who might that be? Well, try to shift it to the middle class and see what happens...
The republicans wanted to restructure taxes while THEY held congress, because of this train wreck. As the wreck becomes apparent, there will be NO option to reduce taxes on the people who HAVE money and who have BENEFITED from the 20 year shift the other way.
The Dems need to focus on TAX policy that keeps the whole pie PROGRESSIVE.
SS has NEVER been an investment, it is not an investment, and it never will be an investment. It is an income transfer program. The question is from whom to whom. In the past it has been a transfer strictly from the poor and middle class young to the middle class elderly. Since the late 1980s, because of the change in tax progressivity implications, it has been FROM the same people, but TO the elderly AND the wealthy.
By removing the income cap and taxing all income, but NOT removing the benefit cap, it could become FROM the wealthy to the elderly.
The simplest, easiest, most straight forward, most equitable solution and the one that most addresses the progressivity problem is removing the income cap, expanding the taxable income base, and keeping the cap on the benefits.
November 25, 2006 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm speaking loosely . But I strongly disagree with the comments- mostly from the right- that some future congress could just walk away from the government's obligation to repay the amounts borrowed from social security .
Instead of using the SS inflow , the treasury could have funded itself by selling bonds and permitting the SS administration to be buyer. The effect would be the same but with unnecessary transaction costs.
When a government disavows sovereign obligations it becomes a junk bond issuer. And all its existing debt will be accordingly discounted. If you think we have few international friends now , wait till that happens.
Personally my back-of-an-envelope calculation is that my own social security contributions
have already achieved a competitive internal rate of return , getting better with each year I hang on.
If it walks like a duck..........
November 26, 2006 7:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that:
If individuals have self-directed individual accounts there will be too many losers.
The government should not be making stock or bond purchases as investments for many reasons.
For the government to take SS payments and put them in a lockbox and hide them under the bed is no solution to anything.
But, if the budget was balanced without the use of SS payments and those payments were used to reduce the national debt, the money would in effect be invested and the return would be equivalent to the interest rate on the debt which was paid off.
November 26, 2006 7:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Over your work life, you paid a regressive tax. Because (I assume from part of your comment) most of this time, your regressive tax was in a larger environment of progressive taxes, you didn't much notice it. Until the 1980s SS was strictly cash financed, so it had NO impact on the general fund (except with respect to the fiction that it was not a tax).
That regressive tax you paid was a transfer benefit to the elderly, primarily the middle class (the genuinely poor either got SSI, which is paid through general fund taxes, or died before they used up much Social Security benefits). So from the 1930s to roughly 1990, Social Security was primarily a transfer payment from younger poor and middle class Americans to elderly middle class Americans, funded through a regressive tax mislabeled as an insurance payment.
Changes made in the 1980s tried to actually put money away (by raising the FICA payroll tax, that is increasing the regressive tax burden) for Social Security with bonds. These bonds financed SOMETHING. What they financed was a REDUCTION in general fund taxes. Take your blinders off. Despite all the noble intentions, this was a straightforward conversion of a progressive tax to a regressive tax. Who benefited? There is a lot of talk in our country about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, but no exploration of government policies that might be associated with that gap....
NOW, you seem to be retired. You are the BENEFICIARY of a transfer payment. As you realize, the benefit in old age quickly overwhelms the cost in youth (for middle class Americans with an adequate life span). So, today's youth and middle aged are transferring their wealth to you. So feel smug about it. You call it a return on investment. But it isn't true. You are a beneficiary of a transfer payment from a regressive tax system taxing people who are likely poorer than you, just as you were likely poorer than many of the beneficiaries who received payments when you contributed.
November 26, 2006 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
If individuals have self-directed individual accounts there will be too many losers.
Even the winners would suffer due to the higher transaction costs. If SS is inadequate to support retirees now , it will be even more inadequate when some of the funds are diverted for broker and custodial fees.
The government should not be making stock or bond purchases as investments for many reasons.
Certainly that's not something it should undertake lightly, if at all. Along with other more practical seeming arguments there is a theoretical question whether the "market" really earns a higher return than the benchmark interest on government debt . According to my belief in the Efficient Market (aka there is no free lunch ) theory , any higher return on other instruments is exactly the amount required to compensate for their higher risk. If we assume that A invests a $1000 in US Treasuries at 5 % and reinvests the interest , then at the end of say 10 years he will have , say $1700. If B invests in a diversified portfolio of bonds paying an overall 7% and reinvests the interest at the end of 10 years she ought to have say $2100 but in fact will only have $1700 because her portfolio included Enron which went bankrupt and never repaid the principal .
For the government to take SS payments and put them in a lockbox and hide them under the bed is no solution to anything. But, if the budget was balanced without the use of SS payments and those payments were used to reduce the national debt, the money would in effect be invested and the return would be equivalent to the interest rate on the debt which was paid off
Whether SS is used , when the budget is balanced to reduce the national debt , i.e. to purchase outstanding bonds
or
-if the budget is not balanced- to provide funds that would otherwise have to be procured on the market via new issuance
either way those funds will be "earning" a return.
November 27, 2006 2:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why should we try and reinvent the wheel here. Just read Atrios-
Atrios 6:32 PM Comments (732) Trackback (1)
No
Look, people who advocate adding "personal accounts" to Social Security are just stupid people. Really, just morons. There's no reason to do it. There's no reason to take any part of Social Security contributions and put them in a little fund account with my name on it. If you think some Social Security contributions should be invested in the stock market (I don't) to raise returns overall, then it can be stuck into an index fund or managed by a fund manager or whatever. I still think that's a bad idea, but there's a rationale for it. There's no rationale for dividing that up into millions of individual accounts. There's no rationale for letting individuals "control their own money" by letting them choose across some finite number of managed funds. Social Security is a lovely program which works just fine and really needs no changes other than extraordinarily nonurgent tweaks to the tax formula at some point. And, no, there's no need for modest benefit cuts. There's no need for means testing it. There's no need for any of these things The Serious People like Bob Kerrey want to do. There's no need to strike a "grand bargain" which combines some stupid things with some smart things[ I particularly liked this-Flavius] because there's no need to do so. Leave it alone. There is no problem with the Social Security system. People who continue to argue that there is - and that the problem can be "solved" with the magic private accounts fairy - either have broken brains or are attempting to push an agenda for ideological reasons or for personal enrichment for themselves and their kind.
November 27, 2006 5:37 AM | Reply | Permalink