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Bill Keller, New York Times
The effort by the rich to take away Social Security keeps building momentum. Today Bill Keller urges his fellow baby boomers:
“FELLOW boomers, we have done more than our share to make this mess. It’s not our fault that there are a lot of us, but we have resisted any move to fix the system. We should make a sensible reform of entitlements our generation’s cause. We should stiffen the spines of our politicians, and push lobby groups like A.A.R.P. to climb out of the bunker and lead.”
“Lead” in this context means supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare. That is really brave for Mr. Keller to stand up and call for sacrifice from his age cohort. Does Keller know that the typical near retiree has total wealth of $170,000. This includes everything in their 401(k), all their other financial assets and the equity in their homes. Another way to put this is that the typical near retiree (between the ages of 55-64) could take all their wealth and pay off their mortgage. After that they would be entirely dependent on their Social Security to cover all their living costs.
Does this situation describe Mr. Keller’s finances? My guess is that it doesn’t. If that is true, how does Keller claim to speak for people who are in a hugely different financial situation than him? Is he really that ignorant of the issues that the NYT gives him a column to write about or is he dishonest? Readers will have to debate that in the months and years ahead.
This is not the only place in the piece where Keller lets ignorance and/or dishonesty get the better of him. At one point he calls for a change in the indexation formula for Social Security’s cost of living adjustment that would be the equivalent of a 3.0 percent across the board cut in benefits. (We know, got to do something about those high living seniors.)
Keller describes this 3.0 percent cut in Social Security benefits as:
“They also include technical fixes like aligning the automatic cost-of-living formula with reality.”
Is that right? Has Keller studied the cost-of-living for the elderly? Did he evaluate the Bureau of Labor Statistics elderly index, which generally shows that senior citizens experience a higher rate of inflation than the index used for making the annual cost of living adjustment for Social Security.
If he did, he shows zero evidence of this fact in his piece. It sure sounds like he is just repeating pablum that passed for wisdom in Washington elite circles, but rightly gets ridiculed everywhere else.
While Keller appeals to arithmetic it is not on his side. The arithmetic says that we have no problem affording the projected increase in retirees, just as we were able to afford a sharp reduction in the ratio of workers ot retirees over the last decade.
The problems result from the fact that we have a broken health care system that causes us to pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as people in other wealthy country. But fixing the health care system would likely mean lower payments to insurers, hospitals, drug companies and doctors.
The other problem is the sharp upward redistribution of income over the last three decades. This has meant less money for middle income families and also less money for programs like Social Security and Medicare.
These problems can be fixed but that would require Mr. Keller to appeal to his fellow one percenters, not his fellow baby boomers. He probably doesn’t have the courage or integrity to do that.
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economy and Policy Research. He also writes a regular blog,Beat the Press, where this post original appeared.
64 Comments
So, Keller has joined Pete Peterson’s team. Disappointing but not surprising.
The post-election lame-duck attack on the New Deal and the Great Society is shaping up to be something like the push to attack Iraq.
He had a similar column last week, to coincide with the story of the corporate CEOs meeting to “fix the debt.” Probably coordinated, because there were other op eds the same time.
There ought to be a special place in Hell for pundits who paint an entire generation with a broad brush.
If Keller ever comes to my hometown, I’d be glad to introduce him to people of my generation (I’m 60) whose home value and 401(k) got clobbered in the recession and were pushed out of the workforce to boot.
There are plenty of baby Boomers whose commitment to anything was bought and payed for by their parents.
This is what turned me off of the anti-war movement early on. As far as I am concerned, anyone who never had to bust their but for what they have is not worth spit, person wise.
He must be a thalidamide baby.
INdeed. Having it all handed to you, on a silver platter, tends to schew one’s perspective.
Summers in the Hamptons will do that.
“Let’s you and him tighten our belts and make the hard choices!”
“…to his fellow
one percenters, slaveholders…”fixed…..
I always liked Mao’s idea that everyone needed to spend time in the rice patties.
And, of course, the saddest part is that most of the people voting Republican couldn’t make it without Social Security and Medicare. Maybe if all the people like Keller would pay more taxes then the less fortunate could keep their “entitlements.”
Good grief, Keller looks so much like VA Governor Bob McDonnell. Maybe they are twins.
Keller has been drinking from the well of the 1% for far too long.
thanks for this, Dean. read this piece this morning and the alarm bells went off. agreed with Scare @ #2
Or…..in some cases….under them.
This is a rather unsurprising development for a tiny slice of the population, who have become so wealthy and powerful that their astronomical wealth casts huge gravity wells; millions of Americans are now in economic orbit around these "planets". Your average millionaire has no need for the social safety net and any hampering of net worth actually ties them to the last vestiges of what used to be interdependence with common America. No wonder they fantasize about being rid of it, we shackle them to human-sized egos and wealth. Millionaires and billionaires should be treated like addicts; nothing they say can be trusted and is only for getting them their next fix.
“Lead,” ingestion? Heavy metals in drinking waters has detrimental effects on, “reason.”
Since 2007, the net worth of the median U.S. household has shrunk by 40%, i.e., to $55,000.
Thoughts like that will get you branded a socialist.
Good for you!
And this Keller crap comes from the “liberal” NY Times. Oy….
I can confirm that.
Funny you should mention that. Actually they ALL look alike to me.
The complete ascendancy of the 0.001% took a long time. I have come to realize that the objectionable aspects of much (by no means all) of the baby boomer generation (mine)–their conformity, intolerance, ignorance, provincialism, ahistoricism, stupid materialism–were really an early warning signal of the 0.001% ascendancy. These same attitudes are manifested in spades by the 0.001%.
please explain to me why it is ok to reduce the benefits in social security that i and others worked decades for but it is not ok to set estate taxes at a reasonable level?
is wealth accumulated by working and building a business and investing somehow more worthy than lesser amounts earned through hard work by earners?
You dispute my thalidamide theory???????
Ahhh. Not necessarily mutually exclusive.
That’s a trick question, rght???
$55,000 won’t go very far in retirement, even if you buy your catfood in bulk.
It’s uncanny how prescient that George Carlin bit was about how their coming to take your Social Security. Miss that dude.
-limit the estate tax deduction to $3 million or $5 million and tax the rest at 55% or more on an increasing scale.
-drop the cap on social security taxes.
do that instead of other changes to social security.
yes, I know a person who had to go through that, completely against his own wishes.
He was a nuclear physicist.
Such a fine way to force somebody to do something against their wishes, and completely waste their skills at the same time.
wealth creation….
Pigeon-holing Americans into wasting .8o cents of every dollar spent on gasoline while driving to work, while working, and on the ride home? Is there something about about leveraged economic servitude to corporations that America doesn’t quite understand yet?
Answer: Guess so.
Most “pills” are washed down with water! Double whammy!
Over the weekend I got another in a long series of mailings asking me to join AARP. But why? I can’t afford to retire, and AARP isn’t going to help me.
Something tells me Mr. Keller isn’t going to have to make any of those hard choices, but he’s perfectly willing and even glad to help the rest of us jump under the wheels of Peter Peterson’s deficit cutting tank. The 1% will have their well paid shills like Keller out here day and night this fall getting everyone ready for Willard and the return of the predators or for act 2. of the phony Democrats. Same difference they’re going to cut the heart out of the New Deal and The War against Poverty programs next yr. so the .001% can have MORE. On that note I wish I had a camera yesterday. I was on the beach talking with a couple of 1% ers and the wife was sitting there in her 1000K bathing suit all Dazzled out with bling reading MORE magazine!
George had connections.
Don’t those idiots know the .01% would never let you near them?
Drop dead you self righteous stenographer.
Is Keller flat-out shilling or does he believe his own twaddle?
thanks Dean! Can we demend the NYTimes interview Dean; Eric and/or Ann to get the real facts out there about SS, Medicare and Medicad? We should push back on the NYTs and Washington Post..
Picky, picky – The median net worth of retirees is 170,000, meaning half have more and half have less. That 170000 is a net number, meaning it has already taken into account the negative impact of a home mortgage. Therefore, the sentence “Another way to put this is that the typical near retiree (between the ages of 55-64) could take all their wealth and pay off their mortgage. ” is inaccurate, those near retirees would have $170000 AFTER paying off their mortgage.
We, everyone, should be lobbying our Senators and Representatives NOW letting them know we will never forget. We should also require them to plege: NO CHANGES to Social Security. Any changes at all will result ultimately in reduced benefits / higher costs to some beneficiaries. Obama and Congress have proven they cannot / will not fix any problem correctly – look at Obamacare with its lack of fixing our high costs in the health care system. So why let them “fix” a problem 25 yrs. out that, depending on who joins the work force and how the economy goes, may never be a problem?
NO CHANGES is the only policy position simple enough to be effective. Support raise the income limit de yadaa yadaa and you have given them permission to mess with the system. Give them that permission and I bet the resulting Grand Bargain will be no bargain to the average worker.
It looks more and more like, for no good reason at all, Obama and Congress intend to pull the knives out on Social Security right after the election in the lame duck session.
AARP wise – the CEO or grand boss of AARP is out their pushing for “strengthening” Social Security by which he means doing that cost of living magic that results in reduced benefits.
Keller is full of shit. Whether he knows it or not is a question, but I don’t care. No doubt, Keller made good ‘n sure that he got HIS, so EFF everyone else.
One very much intended goal/outcome of shill like this is to pit Boomers against younger generations, who’re only too eager to paint all boomers with the same broad brush that Keller does in this editorial.
Really annoying, as I’ve had younger gens complain to me about how “greedy” etc the boomers are, and how we ALL lived too high on the hog, yadda yadda, blah blah, and now it’s time to CUT Soc Sec bc it’ll be “better” that way.
Amazingly ignorant all around, esp in terms of what it means for future Generations to cut Soc Sec, but that’s another story.
Sad that the younger gens get to see ALL boomers as if we’re all lousy lazy 1%ers, who don’t deserve the Soc Sec & Medicare that we worked hard for and have paid into for years. Most annoying, to say the least.
Yet more 1% Kabuki Show aimed at pitting segments of the 99% against one another, whilst distracting from the real “problem,” which in ongoing 1% tax cuts, breaks, loopholes, incentives, etc.
Now for the truth.
“America, this Monetarily Sovereign nation, has no excuse. The government can pay any bill of any size at any time. There is no reason for Social Security benefits to be below subsistence levels. Yet, according to the Social Security Administration, “The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,230 at the beginning of 2012.”
That’s just the average, so many people receive less. And that average comes to only $14,760 per year, which barely might be enough for a person living in a small, rural area, but guarantees starvation for someone living in a big city.
The next time you hear someone say Social Security will run out of money, know this: FICA can and should be eliminated; the tax on benefits can and should be eliminated; the benefits themselves can and should be greatly increased – and Social Security will not run out of money unless Congress and the President deliberately withhold funds.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell”
from
http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/monetary-sovereignty-for-young-people-part-4-social-security/
What a total liar this former NYT exec editor is in this piece. This is what he says:
but this is what actually happened, starting in 1983 and the Social Security Fix that was engineered by the likes of Alan Greenspan:
Social Security taxes were increased from 5.4% to 6.2% for workers making less than the Social Security income cap; Social Security benefits were subject to income taxation (over a certain limited amount); COLAs were restricted to annual adjustments no matter what happened to the rate of inflation; and there were many other adjustments to the Social Security program as a result of the Greenspan Commission recommendations. Read about it here:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/gspan5.html
Keller knows this, but he lies.
Next, the additional Social Security tax revenue was “set aside” for the purpose of funding Baby Boomer retirement; in other words, far more was collected from Boomers than was necessary to pay Social Security benefits to recipients during Boomers’ working years. The extra amount was intended to pre-fund Boomer retirement, a first for the SS program.
Of course, this pre-fund amount was actually spent on income tax cuts and other perks and benefits for the likes of Bill Keller and his ilk and more recently for various wars of aggression against brown people — and for more perks and benefits for the likes of Bill Keller.
The simple fact is that people at his income and investment level see that their free ride would come to an end if even some of the perks and benefits they have been receiving from the surplus in the SS fund were cut back. And he, like most other media personalities at his income and investment level, will lie and propagandize to any extent necessary to prevent any reduction in the financial benefits they have been receiving for years at the expense of the elderly and soon-to-be elderly.
Many, many individuals in the media, many newspaper editors and publishers among them, have been propagandizing against pensions (especially in the public sector) and for “fixing” Social Security for years.
The simple fact is they will do just about anything to ensure their taxes are not raised an iota if it means than some poor schlub of a Boomer gets anything close to the benefits promised when SS taxes were raised in the 1980′s.
please pass my Greek comments to Bill,PeePee Peterson,Bob Kerrey etc
ρώτε σκατά και πεθαίνουν (Greek)!!!!
feel free to avail yourself of babelfish
from Bing to those listed and the 3rd way types
τρώτε σκατά και πεθαίνουν
So $170,000 is a net after the mortgage–how do you know that’s true? No one I know has anything near that amount unless you add in the value of their home, and even then they still don’t come close.
Charlie Pierce blasted Keller’s column out of the park this afternoon.
And I’ve read that the average Social Security is $12,000 a year or $1000 a month (before Medicare is deducted). Which is exactly what I’m getting after 6 years of collecting. Plus, I’d like to point out that my friends get even less.
Even after the paltry COLA raises, I’m trying to decide if I give up my phone or my TV, and what else I can sell to get money for the electric bill. Yet a 3% reduction would mean I couldn’t afford to step outside the house, because I wouldn’t have the cash to go anywhere.
And a nuclear physicist is special in what way ?
its revolting…or rather we should be
always remember,the money for bullets is infinite,butter not so much
“Keller is the son of former chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corporation, George M. Keller.”–wikipedia
greasy oily scum
I get $ 704. That’s it ! Worked full time and paid in for 45 years.
Good one, cmauk. Isn’t that ironic, a nuke physicist has so much more to contribute to mankind!
I googled the net worth of retirees on the Internet and found that for people at the point of retiring, their median (means half have more, half have less) net worth is $170000. As per Investopedia,net worth is defined as “The amount by which assets exceed liabilities.” The mortgage would be considered a liability. So, the $170000 takes into account the negative impact of the mortgage.
As per both the article above and the one I was looking at on the Internet, the value of the home above the cost of the mortgage is a part of that $170000. Keep in mind, too, that in many cases the assets actually belong to two people – a husband and wife pair. So when she retires, she is counted as having $170,000 in assets. Then when he is to retire, they say he has $170,000 in assets. Actually, that money, after expenses (like the cost of selling that house) must cover the ongoing needs of TWO people.
There is also great lumpiness in the amount of assets individuals have. At the top there are multi-millions for maybe 3 – 5%. In the middle, some money. But a large percentage, around 1/3 of all retirees, have no assets.
That means that he has been “bought.” It happens to the best of them. I’m told that Peter Orszag used to be very liberal, but now he has a high-paying job on Wall Street.
Retirees are better off than the median person. Here is a chart of the per-adult median wealth in various countries. What that chart show is that the median EU resident is wealthier than the median Israeli, who is wealthier than the median Taiwanese, who is wealthier than the median German, who is wealthier than the median American.
That’s the new world order. Get used to it.
Apparently Keller cribbed his notes directly from Third Way.
I don’t normally quote digby, but she hates that we might have to depend on the teaparty to save SS
http://bit.ly/N7QQZB
those peeps need silver stakes ,where is Dr.Von Hellsing?
OTHER USEFUL BACKGROUND RELATED TO THE LOOTING OF SOCIAL SECURITY: To understand clearly the economic tar pit into which the world has been shoved by criminal bankers, take the time to watch “The Secret of Oz” – Winner, Best Documentary of 2010 v.1.09.11 It will explain the deliberate set-up for the global financial crisis, who created it, and why. If you don’t have time to watch the full documentary, go to 1:48:33 and watch the ending.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI
________________________
Today’s elected thieves, Wall Street crooks, and international banking cabal are now trying to sell Social Security’s demise to the country in the midst of this deliberately engineered depression with its accompanying 15 million unemployed and a 23% unemployment rate:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/une…
Without Social Security, millions more would have been added to the millions of unemployed.
Desperate people are malleable people if you’re trying to sidestep a Constitution and force an elite-appointed global government on them. This is what’s drives the Kellers. They covet a place at the elite’s banquet.
Social Security enables working men or women to tell corporations and companies when they approach retirement . . . “That’s it. I’m not working what years I have left until I drop dead at my desk or work station, or until I’m medically unable to function. I’ve given you my best years. Thanks, but I’m outa here.”
Social Security is the financial glue that helps hold our older society together, enabling workers to shuck their labor shackles. It keeps their homeless, sick, hungry, and hopeless to a minimum among those who’ve found employment and work throughout their lives. Social Security helps young widows and mothers raise children until the children are educated and on their own. It helps the ligitamently disabled. It allows the elderly to live in dignity after a lifetime of labor, or after being disabled.
The would-be Bill Kellers and their silver-spooned handlers don’t give a damn about any of this.
A 2010 study done by Paul N. Van de Water and Arloc Sherman for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that without out Social Security, according to the latest available Census data (for 2008), 19.8 million more Americans would be poor. Although most of those kept from poverty by Social Security are elderly, nearly a third are under age 65, including 1.1 million children.
http://www.cbpp.org/files/8-11-10socsec.pdf
The elite’s MSM propaganda outlets are trumpeting Social Security as bankrupt—it’s paying more out now than it’s taking in—and wasteful (what government-run program isn’t), but the vast millions it reaches have paid into it with sweat equity and money all their working lives. Their dues are paid up. They deserve a break and a rest if they haven’t been able to accumulate other end-of-life income; and many can’t or couldn’t. Tens of thousands more paid into the fund almost all their lives but died before they could collect.
The elite could care less. Their motivation hasn’t changed over the centuries. They’re still the same old vain, arrogant, greedy psychopaths as their ermine-draped ancestors who worked serfs to death or slaughtered them in personal wars.
When Washington helped themselves to the Social Security fund during Johnson’s administration, it was solvent and compounding enough money to carry everyone through the next century at the rate it was growing. Once the looting began, each successive administration “balanced” their “budgets” with contributors’ monies until the surplus was gone; leaving in its place worthless IOU’s “. . .backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.”
Pigs fly, too.
Marti Oakley was dead on in her article on Social Security when she said: “. . .Social Security is NOT an unfunded liability. Social Security is . . . funded by American workers. The federal government is the unfunded liability [It] covers this liability by stealing the retirement investments of workers [and leaving behind worthless IOUs] . . . [Now there] are those out there who are . . . trying to reframe this issue by claiming that there never was a Social Security trust fund, and that FICA “taxes” collected to cover your investment in that fund aren’t really investment “taxes”. . . [but are] just an additional tax levied on you for some vague reason and therefore it’s quite alright for the federal government to seize these funds for other purposes.”
http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/social-s…
No point in privatizing it now, either. The government and the thieves, liars, and crooks behind the curtain that run it have already stolen everything that was in it. Anyway, who would manage Social Security for the people? Wall Street? China? Those wonderful folk what brought us global warming, swine flu, and the economic tar pit we’re in?
Then again, if the Wizards of Oz can print out trillions—the 700 + billion TARP figure you keep hearing about is a propaganda number they want to keep fixed in your mind e.g. try $16 trillion—don’t think for a monetary moment they couldn’t print enough money to cover the fund’s almost three trillion dollars worth of genuine government “. . . full-faith-and-credit-IOUs . . .” that brother Al told us was secured safely in the fund’s lock box.
But if they did that, the Fed would have to print the three trillion (rounded up for conversation’s sake) for the government to pay back (because it’s not in the treasury and won’t be in the future), charge the government interest for the money and WALLAH! the people who paid into Social Security are now on the hook for paying the interest on the money the government stole to pay back the fund.
Is this a land of opportunity or what?
They’re now prepping the public’s mind with their The Big Debt Reduction Façade for eye-glaze and pointing at Social Security/Medicare/Medicade saying “. . gawd amighty, you see how much those entitlements are costing America!? That’s part of problem right there!” Or words to that effect.
And don’t for a second think Oz won’t toss Social Security aside like a fried chicken leg they’ve sucked clean, knowing all the while that what’s collected in taxes won’t cover what’s either going out in the future or the interest owed on the money Oz printed and sold to the government; not with America’s unemployment and the rest of the world running away from U.S. treasury bonds like they were subpoenas.
Essentially, what the propaganda outlets and these criminals are hinting at is: :“. . .hey, our banks were just too big to fail. . . We just don’t have enough money to bail out Social Security. It’ll increase the “deficit” too much . . .You may have to “tighten your belt a notch or two”. . .We’ll try to find a way. . .”
Pigs fly.
This Social Security/Medicare/Medicad propaganda scare was kicked off three or four years ago by former U.S. Comptroller David Walker whom Oz sent trotting around the country—re-enforcing Dubya’s attempt to sell privatization of Social Security at “town hall meetings”—city to city, showing his canned “Social-Security-and-the-entitlement-programs-are-going-broke” power point presentation to conventions, meetings, wherever large crowds gathered, etc.
http://himes.house.gov/uploads/Walker%20Town%…
All this took place long before Wall Street’s cabal printed and shoveled trillions to their morally hazardous bank-buddies who gambled and lost on worthless paper (CDSs, derivatives, et al) that they themselves originated.
Walker was also prepping the public’s mind for what they (the boys behind the curtain) had in mind.
In other words, the money changers knew ahead of time the inevitable financial crash resulting from what they’d deliberately done could not be stopped once set in motion, but that it could be postponed awhile with the worthless dollars they’ve printed which, in turn, would provide them and their bank buddies time enough to add another dash of cash for themselves.
Somewhere in a closed room—Washington, New York, hard to say where — there is, in my opinion, talk of phasing out the most successful government program ever initiated for the common folk because the banksters, who’ve openly taken over the government’s finances are either unwilling to bail it out or, since there’s not enough left in it to steal, are thinking about how to shut it down, impoverish another 20 million Americans, and ride off into the sunset in their limousines tossing chicken bones out the window.
Sure thing cmaukonen@4? Just where do you get your stats? I’ve worked since age 13 starting farm work and am now 60. Worked all but 7 of those years (higher education…B.S. and M.S. and worked for my food and board even then.
Hardly managed many times to get by during the republican sponsored recessions and grand thefts like the savings and loan debacles that we also have been paying for. Many of the boomers who did manage to stay out of the illegal war called Vietnam were also on the front lines like me after work protesting the stupid and insane clown posse that moved us to Afghanistan and Iraq including the last unelected commander in chief. You go get in some other line for griping about the boomers. Jerks like Romney who took as much as they wanted from the system and now talk about how I have to sacrifice for the good of the nation can just go pound sand. If you are in their camp..go do the same.