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Social Security
Okay, that’s not exactly what Robert Samuelson said, but pretty close. He actually told readers:
What frustrates constructive debate is muddled public opinion.
I just thought I would make a small change in the interest of accuracy.
Samuelson is very upset because almost no one, Democrat, Republican, or independent wants to go along with his crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare. He tells readers with disgust:
In a Pew poll, 87 percent of respondents favored present or greater Social Security spending; only 10 percent backed cuts.
He then demands that President Obama rise to the occasion and insist that people accept lower benefits.
President Obama’s time can probably be more productively spent teaching economics and arithmetic to people who write on budget issues in major news outlets. Most of the main assertions in Samuelson’s piece are misleading or just flat out wrong.
First, the budget is only constrained at the moment by superstition. There is no obstacle to the government borrowing more money to meet needs and put people back to work. We are not spending more money because we have superstitious people with large amounts of power who are making claims about the dangers of deficits that they cannot support with evidence. Rather than lecturing seniors, who have a median income of $20,000, on the need for lower Social Security and Medicare benefits, Obama could try to confront the people spreading superstitions about deficits.
Samuelson’s complaint about the size of spending on the elderly is also highly misleading. He complains:
In fiscal 2012, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and civil service and military retirement cost $1.7 trillion, about half the budget.
That sounds really outrageous — those damn old people. Samuelson case is considerably weakened by the fact that the vast majority of this money was paid into these programs through designated taxes. He might think it’s fine to tax people for Social Security and Medicare and use the money for the military or to pay interest on Peter Peterson’s government bonds, but the less educated public might not share this view.
In fact, according to the Social Security Trustees projections, Social Security is completely funded by its designated tax through 2034 with no changes whatsoever. While Medicare is projected to face a shortfall after 2024, the size of this projected shortfall has fallen sharply in recent years. If the path of slower health care cost growth over the last five years continues, then Medicare will be largely funded throughout its 75-year projection period with few changes.
Insofar as Medicare and Medicaid do pose cost problems the issue is that we pay too much money to doctors, drug companies and other providers, not that seniors are getting too much health care. If we paid the same amount per person for health care as people in other wealthy countries we would be looking at long term budget surpluses, not deficits. But Samuelson and his friends would much rather beat up on old people than on rich doctors and powerful drug companies.
One final point on which Samuelson is apparently confused is that the public does understand that there may be a need for money to pay for these programs and in fact is prepared to pay more for them, according to a recent poll conducted by the National Academy for Social Insurance.
Hey, but what can you do? We have a punditry that just won’t accept reality and prefers to beat up on old people. If only President Obama could show some leadership and try to educate people like Robert Samuelson.
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 originally appeared.
Photo by 401(k) 2013 released under Creative Commons License
38 Comments
Robert Samuelson Another flamining jack ass and total prick heard from.
Coincidentally, *I* insist that Samuelson’s publishers rise to the occasion and reassign him to a job for which he’s actually qualified. Perhaps scrubbing toilets, given that he’s so adept at producing crap.
Sure, the pay is less and the work is physically repetitive and probably damaging, but hey, don’t worry, Bob! Social Security and Medicare will take care of you in your retirement…after all, the Democrats would never, ever, ever let those Mean Ol’ Republicans hurt seniors!
Thanks Dean. It is reassuring to know that Medicare spending is on track.
The folks at the WaPost are using the prospect of even more draconian cuts to SS through the Diamond-Orszage Plan (9% across the board cuts for current 20 yr olds) and progressive index cuts (36% cuts through Simpson-Bowles version of this) in order to manipulate folks by playing down the impact of the Cypriot Haircut like effects of the chained cpi.
Everything you say about the state of Social Security, Medicare, and Samuelson is inarguably true. Even your last sentence, ” If only President Obama could show some leadership and try to educate people like Robert Samuelson,” is a nice thought.
Unfortunately, Obama will do no such thing because he is owned by the same people who own Samuelson. His financier buddies on Wall Street want to gain control over Social Security and Medicare funds so they can place bets on them and enrich themselves further.
And that is what Obama is moving towards. His incessant plea that “all options are on the table” is strong evidence of that.
As in most of life, timing is everything. Samuelson is being careful to not be prematurely right about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He has made a career of that sort of thing.
Ideally our activism and the activism of others will keep Obama and Congressional Democrats and Republicans from doing what their corporate paymasters want them to do with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
P.S.: I heard a great term from Christine Fair on the Ian Masters show on KPFK yesterday, in the context of saying that Obama should get us the hell out of Afghanistan right about now: He needs to show some scrotal fortitude.
Hey, Obie: show some scrotal fortitude!
“Scrotal fortitude?” Ugh. And Wendy Davis was tired of “kabuki.” You are a starry-eyed idealist if you really think public “activism” will outweigh corporate campaign contributions, especially when so many Americans are as ignorant as they are about these matters.
But go ahead and try. Don’t mind me.
Odd. I was under the impression that “Medicare” has faced a shortfall from day one. In fact Medicare Part B was established to only collect 50% of what’s paid in benefits, and now only collects 25%.
“If only President Obama could show some leadership and try to educate people like Robert Samuelson.”
Thing is though, Obama subscribes to the “New Democrat” worldview in which privatization of the commons is desired. So, Obama won’t be educating anyone otherwise.
Robert Samuelson is a pundit, not an economist. (Don’t confuse him with Paul Samuelson.) He only has a bachelor’s degree in government. Thus, he does not do any serious economic analysis. His job is to regurgitate the “conventional wisdom” (group-think) from inside the Washington beltway on behalf of the plutocrats that try to steer public policy to suit their own selfish needs.
Then all the olds take a 25% cut in SS because no one wanted to make any changes whatsoever.
Samuelson must not be reading the papers: O ia already all over cutting M & M (and SS). He could have gone fishing and enjoyed himself instead of writing the column.
Unfortunately, Obama is EAGER to cut Social Security – that’s why he keeps offering the cuts to Republicans. Recently, he urged the Senate to reform the filibuster – likly to prevent any progressive Democrat from filibustering the “Grand Bargain” he is planning to present to Congress.
May I borrow your crystal ball?
I mean surely if it’s figured out what wages look like in 2034 and what employment rates we have then it can spit out some lotto numbers for me for tomorrow.
If it wasn’t for that pesky public opinion, we could reinstitute slavery and make lots of money for ourselves. Child labor too.
87% of the people in the U.S. just don’t get it. The ” superior thinkers ” of America have spoken for all of us. These ” superstars of thinking ” must hate representative democracy and polls like this. Samuelson should first rail about and try to end all polls. Then end the rights of citizens to talk to each other about politics and policy. That should get him to where he and his ” superior thinkers ” can get pretty much everything they want. All that should only take about 4 cordial meetings between The Prez, Harry, Mitch and The Speaker.
It’s a little more sciency than crystal ball.
But hey, who needs to do the hard work when there’s lotto?
Medicare is “designed” to get money from general funds, just like every other item in the budget, and more can be allocated, either from existing tax receipts or a dedicated progressive tax such as a Wall Street transaction tax, if people think medical care for the elderly is important.
Medicare could also pay out less in benefits compared to what it collects, if it were to negotiate prescription drug prices, or open the program to a buy-in by younger, healthier people.
Just because the elite political and media class only present self-serving solutions which would result in those who have the least having less, and those who have the most continuing to accumulate more, doesn’t mean those are the only solutions.s
Beautifully stated. Thank you.
That’s what I thought. I guess then “Medicare is projected to face a shortfall after 2024″, should be Medicare is “designed” to have a shortfall every year since it’s inception.
And how well did those captains of the science brigade do in “predicting” the economic collapse we experienced?
Oh that’s right, the who could have imagined brigade did the sciency predicting for that economic model.
And I should totally trust that THIS model is accurate.
It may have been “designed” to have a fake crisis or two every year (like the doc fix) to serve as an excuse for fake hysteria. Other than that, it’s no different than any other expense. It’s a matter of the country’s taxing and spending priorities.
As opposed to what?
Remind me again how much money has been wasted blowing things up, buying off warlords,overpaying fraudulent contractors, and buying planes that can’t fly?
God forbid we spend money on things people actually need. People might get the misimpression that we’re a society that values the contributions our elderly made.
Only the Defense Department that is larger than 10 countries combined should be allowed to carry shortfalls from its inception.
Remind us again how much of the war in Iraq was “subsidized” by the Social Security Trust fund?
I don’t know how many times mary needs to repeat that ANY line item in a budget can be changed to reflect the value that our society places upon it.
What appears to get in the craw of the MOTU and the pundits who represent them is that society IS saying they value these programs and would prefer items like this to spending infinite amounts of money on war and they don’t mind taxing people more to preserve them.
How befuddling to a bunch of sociopaths that some of us might CARE for others and wish to preserve the social contracts we’ve created? Perhaps if they actually understood empathy it wouldn’t be befuddling. Then again,if they understood empathy,they wouldn’t be sociopaths.
Whatever someone did or said about it in the past, how it should have worked, how we wish it worked, how it would have worked if one factor or another had been different, etc., when it comes to taxing and spending, it’s still a question of our priorities.
60 Percent of Health Spending is Already Publicly Financed, Enough to Cover Everyone
LINK
And what you said. :)
remember when soc sec and medicare were the ‘third rails’ of politics?
we need to get back to that and the only way is to make it electoral poison again. ironically, the gop was smart enough to capitalize on this in 2010, yet obama continues down the primrose path
So, what’s the Economist equivalent of manplainin’?
Congratulations to all liberal subscribers of the Washington Post who help pay the salary that results in Samuelson’s anti middle class propoganda.
Correct. Sociopaths have no empathy. That’s why they make such great capitalists, er, financiers, er, what was that term they like about themselves again?
Oh, yeah. Job creators. I keep forgetting that. And here we are, the ungrateful, unempowered masses, selfishly wanting to hold on to less than $200 a month in food stamps or the staggeringly overgenerous $1100 a month or so in Social Security.
Evil people we are.
Bite me Samuelson. I didn’t tell the government to thieve my Social Security Account to the tune of 40Billion dollars and I certainly am not going to just let them walk away with my money. If they want to cut the program, return all of my money with daily compounded interest from 1975 and tied to the Dow Jones Industrial average for the last 35 years.
They technically haven’t thieved it yet. It’s all safe and sound in Treasury bonds. That’s why they need to convince you that it’s for your own good that they’re reneging on paying out those bonds plus interest owed.
I’ve got a better idea for Samuelson, have the Fed tell the bankers that THEY aren’t going to get THEIR bonds paid out as promised,when promised. If someone holding public debt has to be left holding the bag then I can’t think of a more deserving bunch then the banking sector and at present the Fed owns almost as much debt as the Social Security trust fund.
Let me guess: Robert Samuelson is not now, nor has he ever been, one of the 99%.
He started out as a reporter before becoming a columnist, so he must have been in the 99% at one time and may still be.
His parent’s wealth, and indeed, his early life, appear to be a well kept secret. Other than the fact he was born in NYC and raised in White Plains, I couldn’t find anything about his childhood. He is a Harvard alum, which explains a lot.
Harvard seems to be particularly gifted at producing a never ending supply of dangerous sociopaths with ready access to the levers of power. A Harvard degree is something to be ashamed of, not to be proud of.
R S was looking in a mirror when he said those words!!