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America Speaks: Talking Points On Social Security
Peter Peterson, billionaire Social Security hater, is opening a tiny door for actual Americans to explain to the rich why this time we aren’t going along with their plans to screw Social Security. I hope FDL readers will check out this site and make an appearance. You won’t be alone: MoveOn wants its members to show up too.
I have written several posts explaining my views, and by clicking here you can see all of FDLs posts on this subject. I have a draft paper which you can find here , which includes selected legislative history. That reading with your own stories will arm you to the teeth for a great speech. They won’t know what hit them.
Here are the points I think are most important.
1. We have paid excess Social Security taxes for 27 years to fill the Trust Fund.
2. We have $2.5 trillion in Treasury Bonds, accumulated from those excess taxes.
3. We should not have to pay twice, once to fill the Trust Fund and again to pay off the bonds.
4. This is exactly what the Greenspan Commission intended and promised: there would be money to pay for benefits, even as the baby boomers aged.
5. Anything less than full benefits is unfair all of us who paid excess FICA for years.
When they ask who will pay to redeem those bonds:
1. No body asks that question when we pay bonds held by Pete Peterson or Goldman Sachs or Japan.
2. The money funded tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, by taxing the poorest, while deficits piled up year after year.
3. Tax cuts during a deficit are loans.
4. Those tax cuts, those loans went to the wealthiest Americans.
5. Now those loans should be paid back by the people who got the tax cuts: the top 1%, those earning $400,000 per year and up.
Other points:
1. Social Security is pre-funded. Other government agencies do contracts for years without pre-funding. Why pick on the pre-funded programs instead of cutting unfunded programs?
2. Social Security is insurance, not welfare, and has been from the beginning.
3. People used to be able to save for retirement. They had pensions. And they had Social Security. In this Great Recession, savings are eaten up. Pensions were replaced with 401(k) plans, and the recession hammered those too. Homes used to be a possible source of money; that won’t happen now. Many people depend on Social Security. Taxing people more makes it harder for them to save. Making them work until they are falling down is obscene.
4. The people on the Commission aren’t poor, and they aren’t middle class. Who represents the poor and middle class?
5. The problem is health care. Congress refused to cut the future costs of health care. What does the Commission recommend about controlling health care costs? Will they have death panels?
Oh, sorry. The Commission doesn’t want any disagreeable people. Try to avoid words like death panel, fraud, cheat, liar and billionaire thug. I’d go for capitalist pig when referring to Peter Peterson, and running dog lackey for David Walker, his henchman.
76 Comments
I think you’ve highlighted your best talking point: Middle class folks shouldn’t have to pay for their SS benefits twice. No double dipping!
From an effectiveness standpoint I’d also vote for these:
1. Money meant to fund SS went to tax cuts for those making 400K or more a year, so it’s only fair for those folks to pay back into the system.
2. Social Security is insurance that people have paid into their entire lives and it’s not fair to change the terms now that they are reaping the benefits.
I’m glad to see this – keep it up!
Adding to your post: http://www.youtube.com/user/SamSeder#p/u/0/nn-O9bf01b4
Thanks, vetinari.
Thank you, Masaccio! You’ve pretty much covered the waterfront.
By the way, if the whole “Social Security once had eleventy-five billion workers for each retiree and now it has only TWOOOOOOO!!!!” hoo-ha comes up, as it will (it was a BIG part of the slideshow the catfoodies are touting), here’s how to answer that (with a hat tip to eRiposte):
Hedge Fund Hyena and Asset Stripper.
Anyway, good to see we are keeping the heat on this dangerously misguided effort to cripple our society.
I think you should have the phrase “a deal’s a deal” on #4. Other than that your talking points rock.
Thank you for summing this up nicely.
Too many citizens have drunk the Kool Aid, esp the one answered so well by Phoenix Woman (thanks for that), whereby they think there won’t be enough younger workers to support all the old farts and geezers in coming years. I keep trying to tell people that’s nonsense, but the argument about “not enough younger workers” to support the “giant boomer generation” does *sound* plausible and these goons have gone to the bank marketing that notion.
I know far too many citizens who are willing to kiss Soc Sec good-bye because the *believe* that’s “unfair” or “bad” or something??? Esp rightwing people, but even Democrats seem to go for this.
Really upsetting. Thanks for the talking points. I’ve never believed that Soc Sec was doomed, but it is incredibly regressive. The income cap could also be raised to increase collections, if necessary, but I don’t think that’s entirely needed.
Keep on pushing this out there; much needed.
Nice list!
Haven’t you noticed that, in this day and age, the two names (rightwing and Democrat) are almost redundant?
massacio — thanks for these points. I have a question about this one:
As I understand this, the Trust Fund uses pre-funding to create a “surplus,” which is then loaned back to the Government via special US bonds created for that purpose. It’s a feature.
So this gives the government an ongoing way to borrow cheaply — that’s a good thing.
And the Trust Fund earns a modest return on its surplus via the interest on the bonds — that’s a good thing. And the bonds are safe investments for the Trust Fund, since they’re backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government. Okay so far.
A drawback is that the US ability to borrow from (issue bonds to) the Trust Fund tends to obscure the total amount of US borrowing — those who worry about that sort of thing say that’s bad, but I’m not so sure this is a serious problem. I don’t see any benefit to making people even more fearful of the amount of US borrowing, and I don’t believe the total amount of borrowing is a major problem for an economy the size as the US.
So is there something else that makes you concerned about these bonds, and hence make the “pay twice” argument?
The main worry of this commission designed to give obamarahma cover to eliminate the best of the progressive aid to people is the DEFICIT! Well, it seems to me that the easiest answer to that is that reagan proved that deficits don’t matter, so why are they worried?
I’m not trying to speak for masaccio, but isn’t the “pay twice” theme a result of their desire to write off those bonds???
I mean, what they want to do, IIUC, is just default on the bonds in the surplus fund. So, if they do that, then the balance of social security goes from $2.5 Trillion to ZERO. Therefore, in order for it pay out benefits, we would have to pay in again, since the money we paid in over the years is gone.
Isn’t that where a lot of the pay twice meme comes from? I thought I understood it, but now I’m not so sure.
Great list, masaccio.
It would be nice to have quotes from the Greenspan (spit) Commission report
to see how the assurances that were given back then
calibrate with the reasons that are given now (by some of the same people) for gutting SS.
I’m in Wisconsin and the nearest meeting is Barrington Illinois 10 am
people work, so they won’t go unless I want to get their the night before and take 2 trains I have to drive.
Plus Barrington I doubt their is a richer more Republican town in the state these guys are cherry picking to make sure their crowd is in force.
Can’t we get Dems to hold town meetings on opposing this subject I bet we get bigger and more crowds. The anti Social Security rallies are limited to the few the very few places where cutting Social Security is popular.
There is a meeting on Sat. in West Sac. West Sac is the red headed step child of Sacramento. Very working class. It surprised me that it was being held there. I am going, I think. I have to study up on my facts tomorrow.
Can we get the political campaign people to identify the towns these rallies are in I bet they are all white, rich, vote GOP and are Corporate Wing of the GOP Republicans.
These are the GOPers who think Sarah is White Trash.
Interesting is the meet during working hours? Maybe the GOP wants to claim they have a few regular towns as meeting places but they want to make sure the locals don’t go.
Sorry Sat my bad maybe their is a festival or something to draw off the working crowd?
Does anyone really think Pete Peterson and his little cabal gives a rat’s ass what the working (or what used to be working) folks think? The GOP and now Democrats need to “starve the beast” so there will be assloads of money for really important stuff like wars, billionaire socialism, and corporate tax cuts. They didn’t listen to us on healthcare, bank bailouts, executive bonuses, outsourcing our jobs, war spending, cuts to education, killing the enivironment, or any other damn thing. Why the hell would they listen now. We’re pissing up a rope. No one is leading this goddamn country except for the Pete Petersons of the world.
My question if you want to cut my benefits who says me and everyone here will pay any taxes next year? Please take us all to court you can’t jail us all.
Massacio Posted This Above, It’s The List
Just click around, make a list. Bingo.
Looks like the meeting in West Sac is at 8:30 in the morning on Saturday. Sort of a strange time.
If that were true, it would be an argument against a default, but not necessarily an argument against creating a pre-funded surplus and issuing/buying interest-paying bonds to use that money until it’s needed.
Looks like Dallas is the closest to me. That’s a five-hour drive.
That page is a little weird – “enter your zip code below” – when I finally found a box in which to enter my zip, it wouldn’t search without also entering a “radius”, so I entered “100 mi” and then “100 miles”; each brought back error messages, and no city.
They are not making this easy, are they?
Of course, there wouldn’t be a meeting in Austin, even though it’s the state capital.
Pay twice. People have to eat. We all paid the government FICA withholdings with the promise that we would get it back so we could use it to eat if needed. If they keep the money we still have to eat.
There is nothing good about the government ‘borrowing cheaply’ if said government claims it’s ‘borrowing’ from it’s own people under penaltly of law, and then doesn’t pay them back. Nothing good about that at all.
The government is not your friend here, they are trying to rip you off.
The money is needed now! They don’t want to pay back the bonds so they’re trying to change the law so they don’t have to!
C’mon!
Josh Mull is upstairs!
McChrystal’s Revenge: Everyone Hates Karl Eikenberry
It is a mistake to assume honest intent from the Greenspan SS reforms. After all for 15 years he has been on the new crisis bandwagon. A crisis caused in large part by the ambiguous nature of the Treasury IOU’s given to the trust fund. So ambiguous that the Treasury had not even paid one cent of interest on them as the interest itself becomes a book entry promise.
Let us not forget that Greenspan was just smart enough to know in 1983 that the deficit was going to be a huge political problem for the GOP. The odd nature of the SS surpluses masked and hid the annual fiscal deficit number reported every fiscal year yet was instantly added to the total debt figure on that day. A neat trick. A trick that was a great gift to the Regan administration.
From my experience in the financial world, admittedly indirect, it has been the assumption in the financial sphere for 20 years that a default of the Treasuries SS obligations would be engineered. Just imagine the orgasmic joy in the world of finance if $3 trillion dollars was lopped off Americas debt.
If SS would have been directed to buy ordinary Treasury securities the entire fun house mirror campaign about the ‘not there’ surplus could not exist. If SS held normal bonds like the Peoples Banks, well those are not totally normal either the politics would look a lot different.
One oddity is it turns out that the Trreasury has actually for all this time been issuing the IOU’s in the form of a paper certificate. At the very same time that all other Treasury bonds bills and note became book entries. When Bush went to the little office of the Trust Fund and declared there was no there there, in fact there was, those certificates. Unlike his entire portfolio of financial assets, 100% Treasuries and 100% book entry, No there there.
Barrington, Ill. One of the richest communities as you said.
10:00 a.m. Most people have to work at that hour, those of us who need the SS anyway.
you are so right in your assessment.
When I saw this post earlier today about voters being open to independent candidates I thought it was about time. The Democratic party leadership only seems to come together effectively anymore when it’s to screw people, or, at best, take half measures that don’t address the real problems or they’ll leave well designed loopholes in place so that their wealthy constituents can continue to do whatever it is they do. To hell with them.
The people need to make it very clear that we will not accept bullshit framing from the Catfood Commissioners.
Capitalist Pig! Running Dog Lackey!
Work for me.
It really is galling to have hit wage slave Americans up back there in the 1980′s with the SS ramp ups and now not even thirty years later Pete Petersen is getting the pole position on this Gut SS Attack.
It would be refreshing to see Barack Obama have to explain Pete Petersen getting this spot under his — Obama’s WH — a Democrat — the Party of FDR and Truman.
Any working BS-O-Meter goes off the scale on this level of baldfaced BS Barack Obama and his sock puppet Pete Petersen are trying to peddle about SS. Let’s cut Congress out of it’s self dealt pay outs. Same for POTUS — current and past. No healthcare. No pension. No butter smooth benefit loading up.
It’s so good for us then it’s good for them too. Start taxing all income no matter what or where for SS. Capital gains? SS taxed. This is the real solution. Not Pete Petersen’s BS. Not Barack Obama’s BS.
Getting damn sick of these rich buttholes like Pete Petersen who did not pay the kind of taxes he should have been paying while trying to screw over we Americans who paid into SS all these years.
Idea– everyone pays into SS on all income no matter what kind or where it comes from. Everyone is in. No one gets to slide around SS payins.
Stop this BS.
I thought they tax cuts for the wealthy were supposed to enrich everyone. We were supposed to see more jobs and higher treasury revenue because everyone would be doing better. That was the reason given for the tax cuts and it sure as hell didn’t work like they said it would. Why would anyone who advocated for that failure of a policy be listened to at all now that we have to fix this mess.
Would it be impolitic to ask whether Mr. Peterson has a conflict of interest viz his ownership in say, Purina, Breeders Choice, IAMS, et al?
Funny and sad at the same time.
I called the democratic party today in Sacramento and spoke with Sean Donaho Chairman of the Sacramento County group who is meeting tonight. He said he would address it. They were not aware of the “America Speaks” meetings this Saturday. I asked him to call our Senators, Representatives and get his members over there. He found the FDL website as we spaoke and the prior blogs and the Move On recommendation for their members to show. My local Dem clubs had no clue either. Everyone should take action now that Masaccio has collected the data for us we have the ammo. This should grow into a progressive push to demonstrate the power of the people. Please call you local orgs. Thank you Masaccio for this work!!!!
Kick ass! I’m going to do that too!
What has happen to USA is pretty obvious.
The USA is not a center right nation, it never has been. (The USA has a center right MEDIA, that protects the Center right puppets “Politicians” from the masses.)
When you outsource most of your high paying jobs, the idea of being conservative dies quickly.
The current depression, plus the crazy policies that only benefit the rich, are starting to destroy the illusion of the american dream. (the american dream for a lot people died with reagan, bush 1, bush 2, clinton, Obama,)
revolutions and problems begin when middle class people are force into poverty. (the poor accept being poor, so they usually don’t complain much)
Obama is making a huge mistake,
1st he campaign as a progressive, this gave people hope
once he got into the white house he became Bush, and now all the hope he spoke about will become ANGER.
Obama and congress are underestimating the hurricane headed there way.
the BP oil spill in an indirect way is showing people that the idea of govt by the people for people is DEAD.
Maybe someone else can do a better analysis, but what I figure is that while social security taxes are regressive ignoring the earned income tax credit, benefits are progressive.
But for the wage earner or small business owner it did not take much income for social security taxes to be progressive in the sense that they dont see much monthly benefit from the taxes.
How for example wage earners of over say 55,000 a year subsidized social security by getting an increase in monthly benefits of only 30 dollars a month for every 10,215 dollars in Social Security taxes collected.
Take your top 35 years ( 420 months) index adjusted income on which social security was collected, and compute the average monthly income. The maximum AIME is about 7781 for those reaching age 62 in 2009 computed on earnings from 1975 through 2009.
Up through 761 90% of AIME
762 — 4,586 684.90 plus 32% of excess of 761
4,587 or higher 1,908.90 plus 15% of excess of 4,586
Top income earners, earn say another 84,000 in 2009, increasing their average income by 200 dollars. Social Security gets 12.4 percent of 84,000 or 10,214 dollars. The benefits increase 30 dollars a month. Social security could put that 10,214 in a 30 year Treasury bond and never touch the principal while paying out the marginal social security increase of 360 a year.
The 15 percent break point comes at about 55,000 dollars of earnings.
Every dollar earned over 55,000 reduced the Social Security “debt”.
Prophetic words, amigo.
Some of us from Correntewire and here tried to get a movement started with an answer to the Peterson Fiscal Summit on April 28th. We did held a Fiscal Sustainability Counter-Conference and Teach-In on April 28th that got a good bit of blogosphere coverage.
Many of the posts are available here, and presentations and audio are here, at selise’s site. The focus is only partly on SS, but much more on the illegitimacy and silliness of the central premise of the Catfood Commission, namely that the deficit/national debt is a problem at all.
Bookmark this one,firedogs.
thank you masaccio – great resource
Hmm, The Peter Peterson CFR town meeting or USA World Cup Soccer. Like I will get an demographic/wealth/politics correct slot registration anyways.
I agree with your points on the Trust Fund and the use of Treasury Bonds to hold the money, and for the reasons you give.
The Cat Food Commission doesn’t want to pay off on the bonds held in the Trust Fund. That is problem one. We should pay the bonds off to fund the difference between FICA revenues and Social Security benefits.
Problem two is that they want to increase taxes on working people to avoid paying the bonds without increasing the annual deficit. That is taxing us twice, once to fill the fund, and again to pay the benefits we have already paid for.
An alternative way to see this is that we would pay off the bonds, and use increased FICA taxes to do it. That is taxing us twice, once to fill the Trust Fund and the second time to pay off the bonds.
The plain fact is that taxes are going to have to go up if the Cat Food Commission is going to make a difference in the deficit. I don’t have a problem with the deficit. Running a deficit makes perfect sense in response to the Great Crash, as every competent economist says. If we are going to increase taxes anyway, the we should increase taxes on the people who caused the Great Crash, and reaped all the benefits of the tax cuts, namely the richest 1% of the population. They are the people who will be hurt least by increased taxes.
Nice work masaccio. It’s a great defense of SS in the form of talking points. But what if the discussion at the meeting focuses mainly on showing that there is a deficit problem and that the United States faces serious consequences down the road if we don’t put in certain structural changes to produce decreasing deficits and eventually surpluses down the road?
Then I see a scenario where some at the meeting will suggest changes to SS and Medicare, some will suggest higher income taxes for the wealthy, some will propose a VAT tax to kick in after the economy “recovers,” some will suggest cutting back on the defense budget and ending the wars, some will suggest reforming the tax code, and some will want to reduce income tax deductions and tax credits.
Of course, I see those of us who are worried about SS using all your talking points and others, and making it clear that there’s not much sentiment in these meetings for doing anything serious to SS. My problem at this point is this.
What then comes out of the meeting is a result where there’s no disagreement about the basic premise of The Catfood Commission, specifically that there is a deficit problem that has to be solved, and that we need to put aside partisan considerations to solve it, which means, of course, that there will be recommendations coming out of the Commission for a solution that will share the pain. It will be promoted as everyone giving a little. The rich will have higher tax rates, maybe there’ll be a VAT, maybe FICA will go up a bit, maybe the age for full SS retirement payments and Medicare eligibility will be raised a bit for those who haven’t already reached 50 or 65, maybe a few more things will be proposed to raise revenue.
Then the proposals will go to Congress and there will be a big 2000 page bill that no one can understand and that the lobbyists can write. The bill will, of course, write the sacrifices that working people are making in stone, while creating all sorts of loopholes for the rich to avoid their share of the pain supposedly written into the bill for them. After a stiff fight and a lot of posturing by veal pen groups and progressives such a bill will pass because something is better than nothing and we do have a deficit/debt problem don’t we?
And so the end result will be that SS, and Medicare, and working people won’t be destroyed, but they will be hurt, and we will be one step closer to plutocracy.
So, after all this my question is; Why aren’t there any talking points above that attack the whole premise of the Catfood Commission? Why are we walking into these meetings in a defensive posture. Why are we agreeing that the United States has a deficit problem that could eventually lead to solvency problems and to default? Way aren’t we walking in there and telling them that SS does not have and can never have a solvency problem because the payment obligations of the Government are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government?
Why aren’t we going in there and asking them why they’re wasting everyone’s time with deficit/debt commission, when what we really need are National Commissions on Full Employment, and National Commissions on Re-building the Energy Foundations of our Economy, and National Commissions on constitutional reform that would make our broken Government functional once again and free from corporate domination?
Masaccio and everyone, the whole Catfood Commission complex of activities including the AmericaSpeaks effort is not just about attacks on SS and Medicare and more outrageous shots that the elite wants to take at working people. What it’s about, most importantly, is shackling the Government so that it can’t provide solutions to problems that cost money.
It’s also about treating Government spending and budgeting as if we were not on a fiat monetary system and sovereign in our own currency, but were still shackled by a gold standard environment in which Government spending has to be limited, regardless of the need, to what we can either tax or borrow. What it’s also about is the old struggle between rich people who have money who don’t want to see any new money enter the economic system, for fear the new money will make their own less valuable, and working people who know that there’s not enough money in the economic system to buy the products the economy is capable of producing, because if there were, everyone, including them, would be fully employed.
So, for those of us who go into those meetings on Saturday, let’s keep this broader picture in mind and let’s talk about the illegitimacy of the whole effort, about the fantasy problem, and about the need to rebuild our nation and our lives.
Oh, and btw, there are more talking points here.
Nicely put.
As Scarecrow suggests, it made perfect sense to pre-fund the payments we knew we would have to have to pay benefits when the baby boomers started to retire, and the mechanism of special US Treasury bonds to hold the funds made sense as well. In fact, that was in the Social Security Act when it passed in 1935.
The problem is that the Catfoodies want to welsh on those bonds, either by not paying them off and increasing Social Security taxes on workers, or by increasing Social Security taxes to pay them off. Either way is taxing us twice.
Thank you for pushing!
Do it, and thanks for taking action!
Those are excellent resources as well.
Btw.
“In his latest column, the Daily Telegraph’s A. Evans-Pritchard does a good job of recapping all the various reasons why Bernanke has now completely cornered himself, and facing a newly collapsing economy, is left with just one recourse: the printing of more, more, more paper. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has read even a few posts on Zero Hedge – the only response the Fed is left with as deflation accelerates, and as the Fed and the banking cabal refuse to do an orderly reorganization whereby financial firms grow into their balance sheets via a debt restructuring (and equity wipe out), is the spewage of more, inflation-stimulating, fiat. Ironically, as this newly printed and rapidly diluted monetary representation (because it increasingly is not equivalent to money) makes its way only and almost exclusively to those with direct discount window access, i.e., the mega banks (and for some ungodly reason, the clearinghouses soon), the assets that will be bid up are all tangible commodities, while secondary assets, which are contingent on a properly functioning reserve banking (money multiplier) system, collapse in a deflated heap of liquidations.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/evans-pritchard-announces-fed-contemplating-5-trillion-qe-expansion
So this says Bernanke is going to print up a bunch ($2.6 trillion) of money, and hand it to the banks to pay bonuses, and speculate on OIL, Food, and Metals, driving up their prices for the rest of us. Meanwhile, the government ripps us off of our social security.
Thanks here are some more.
Warren Mosler suggests the following question:
And:
R.J. Eskow’s piece.
Also, here and here.
Mosler is full of semantics. Auerbach consults for a GOLD FUND. Do you really think it’s a good idea to try to communicate to people what the government is trying to pull off with this bond scam by jibber jabbering magical monetary theories at them?
Sheesh.
Let’s not forget who put this commision in place, the president.
Need to take this up with the WH.
Instead of going after Simpson or someone else, as was done with healthcare, where every few days the who shifted so there was this continual game of opposing Lieberman then Nelson, Lincoln, etc.
They have already proven that this strategy of shifting targets worked very successfully with health reform.
The push for the social security reform is coming from WH when they appointed staunch opposers of social security.
It’s a game and they are hoping progressives will again be fooled.
Absolutely correct, I certainly won’t forget it. I’m baffled that dailykos is such a shithole there is no mention of this commission or it’s intent over there. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Instead they’re reccing paid shills for “Obama is NOT a punkass! No really!” threads.
Fuckin A.
This is an excellent point. I don’t think current deficits are a problem. Most economists, like Krugman and DeLong, agree that eventually they will be a problem, but certainly not now.
That makes attacking the premise of the Commission a complicated problem. It is one thing for Krugman and DeLong to attack the premises of the Commission, they can handle the idiocy easily. It is quite another for me to do it.
The easiest way for progressives to do it is to call it what it is: an example of disaster capitalism. The forces of money use the disaster to accomplish goals they have held for decades, in this case, hurting Social Security and raising taxes on the middle class. That isn’t going to play at the meeting, because only progressives have figured out their game. In fact, deficit hysteria is easy to whip up, using that household argument that we know is a pile of nonsense.
Social Security is a toehold on the argument, something everyone can grasp. The ads are simple: an old couple is at the door with suitcases. The kids answer the door. Mother says, sorry, we can’t make it without our Social Security benefits. Kids are miserable.
Getting from there to fair taxation and a rational use of Government spending seems easier to me than trying to start with the deficit issue.
Read next post without the edit concatenation feature.
Are you afraid? You should be.
http://usabudgetdiscussion.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Federal-Budget-Options-Workbook.pdf
The 50 some odd multiple choice options include some glaring arithmetic errors. Here is the first one I found.
For example we know the 12.4 percent SS payroll tax brought in 665 Billion in FY 2009. For 2025 they assume SS is 1.28 Trillion. The option to raise the tax by about 8 percent is said to bring in an additional “10 Billion”. Someone slipped a decimal point and
What is that a trick question? If it is so painless, lets jack the withholding rate?
Well the pdf is hot off the presses. June 24, 4:25 PM.
Raise the 12.4% payroll tax gradually
to 13.4% by 2025
Revenue increase in 2025: $10 billion
Option 9 Raise the 12.4% payroll tax gradually
to 14.4% by 2025
Revenue increase in 2025: $21 billion
Transparait re fiat increase.
I agree Bernanke would do anything to maintain the status quo. But there some who say any credit bubble correction goes through a deflationary phase. Some wag said it will be deflation in wages and the assets we own and inflation on the things we need to live.
Letsgetiitdone @46: Good thought.
Here they are.
Another source material used by America Speaks
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10294/08-06-BudgetOptions.pdf
Great post. Thank you. Interesting. They are having meetings in Columbus and Cinci but not Cleveland.
That is quite telling.
Here’s a blast from the past, courtesy of Warren Buffett:
Something to keep in mind when the Catfoodies whine about deficits — most of them advocated tax cuts for the rich, and of course most of them are very, very rich themselves.
Haven’t learned a thing, have we? The man you have to tell what you think of gutting Social Security is Obama. What you need to tell him is that you won’t vote for him if there is any change made at this time.
Anything else is you going for the distrations. Then you will be part of the problem, not part of the solution. See Afghanistan war, see Medicare for all.
Social Security was not meant for the guy who retires with 100k or more a year. It was meant as a backstop for people who did not have other retirement funds. The rich have a responsibility as humans toward less fortunate humans. It should be a crime to draw SS if your retirement from other sources is 100k or more. This is not a point of entitlement, it is a point of humanity.
regarding the video….yup..
I don’t know why you say that “Mosler is full of semantics.” If you don’t like his arguments then let’s debate them and see what substance there is in your own. Labeling won’t do. As for Marshall, I don’t care if he consults for Satan, you still owe him a critical review of what he has to say rather than the ad hominem attack you just offered.
Well, how do you propose we tell him now, before the election? Is it more effective to send him a note, demonstrate, write a negative blog, or perhaps go to these AmericaSpeaks meetings and introduce some perspectives that will communicate the unacceptability of this to us?
I am reluctant to comment on that site because I don’t want to sign up for more endless crap political email, especially from the likes of Pete Peterson….Also I wouldn’t want to be counted as a member of that movement by virtue of signing on to it. Maybe I will set up a new junk email account for their crap to go to. My inbox is so swamped with stuff that I don’t have time to read that I just had to mark all the political orgs as spam, and those are all groups I like.
Q: If all the loaned money were paid back would Social Security be in good shape or not?
I just tried to sign up for the meeting in West Sacramento. It is full. This is what they said: “This event is at capacity and will not accept additional guests.” The capacity is EIGHT people. I guess this is how they are going to say that the meetings where filled to capacity.
!! Eight People?!
Yep. Eight people. The one in Fairfield, CA is a total of 40 people. I have been looking through the rest of the meeting places and most of them are still open. I don’t know if that means they are letting more people in at those locations or if they cannot find people to attend. I think they are trying to pack the meetings with non-trouble makers. Ron and I are going to demonstrate tomorrow in front of the meeting in West Sac. My protest sign-”Keep Your Greedy Hands Off My Social Security!”
Thanks Masaccio for this most excellent post! I am an old fart who is bookmarking this so I can share it with my friends!
If the bonds are redeemed like they’re supposed to be, SS is solvent until 2037. After that payouts will drop to the level of payins, about 75% of where they should be as I understand this. There are several options for solving that, as well.
2037, that’s 25 years from now. The reason this is such a big manufactured emergency now is because they have to start paying for the bonds, and they don’t wanna. I read somewhere that the trust fund bonds have been used four other times in the past, so this is not something unusual.
We have debated this. The last thing I want to do is derail this thread with discussions of your pet theories on monetary theory. This issue is too important.