It seems to me that what makes social security the "third rail" of politics isn't any effort to sustain it or address solvency issues, as Reagan did in 1983 by increasing payroll taxes. It only becomes the third rail when you try to mess with the basic structure of the program.
Bush is claiming that private accounts aren't dead on arrival, that he's still in the early stages of the process. But that doesn't seem to match his clear expectation that he'd have legislation this year, this spring even. So it's spin, pure and simple.
If I understand the issue correctly, the driving force behind the social security funding shortfall is the size of the retiring baby boom generation vs the size of the working population that will be providing the funds to pay out social security benefits. If that's the case, isn't this a temporary problem? Has anyone seen any information on population projections that show a balancing out of retirees/workers after the baby boomers have died?
In an online discussion about social security, two representatives of the Heritage Foundation stated that their goals for social security were to make it solvent without increasing taxes and to make it a better investment than it is now. Solvency without tax increases means benefits cuts, either by actual reductions in benefits or by extending the retirement age. Let's not be coy about that. As for making it a better investment, that's not about solvency at all. It's an ideological perspective that views social security as an investment instead of an insurance policy/safety net. In the online discussion, the two Heritage Foundation women state outright that while social security "is seen as insurance program, it is not." It's interesting, however, that they see disability payments made under social security is exempt from this privatization scheme since "disability is an important insurance program that is separate from Social Security." A discussion participant from Vienna, VA responds and sums up quite nicely the argument that this is an insurance program.
"There will never be agreement on how to improve Social Security if the terms cannot be agreed upon. You dismiss calling it an insurance program by saying that there are many people that rely on it for their retirement income, and therefore it is a pension program. But if I die before retirement, I don't expect to get anything, just like I don't expect my car insurance company to owe me anything if I never have an accident. Social Security insures that I will not retire in poverty. If I never retire, then what I pay helps others, and I at least don't have to worry about being destitute if I do live to 100. That is the way it should work, and, wow, it does! There is no need to break it by getting the government in the business of investment brokerage--there are plenty of private companies for that!"
The response? Private accounts are voluntary so you don't have to use them to build up real assets if you don't want to. Think about it-private accounts mean that if you die before you retire, your family still gets that money. Apparently, "this is particularly the case for low-income workers whose families are left with little or nothing after the death of a loved one." Huh? Why is it particularly the case for low-income folks? Do they tend to die at an earlier age? Actually, I'm sure they mean that the ability to leave money to family is more critical for these folks since theoretically they don't have other funds to leave behind. But I'm imagining the case where a poor person on the verge of retirement, facing a requirement to use their private account funds to buy an annuity, offs themself so that the cash goes to their family. Far fetched? Maybe. But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened one or two times. Just a thought.
What people really need to understand about HF is that it's NOT, contrary to popular belief, a 'think-tank'. It's a radical-conservative propaganda generator.
- It generates bogus studies that decide in advance, ideologically, what the study is going to find and then goes seeking proof, making it up if the proof doesn't exist. (Check out their 'poverty studies' for classic examples.)
- It generates speakers on the lecture circuit.
- It generates propaganda memes and tropes for the RW Noise Machine.
- It generates trial PR balloons to see how certain arguments are going to fly.
The one thing it emphatically doesn't do is spend time actually 'thinking' about issues. As far as the ideologues of the HF are concerned, they already know the answers. The problem they're working on is how to convince us to believe them. That makes them a 'propaganda tank', and no argument they come up with should be considered as having any real-world validity. Everything they say is spin. Period.Posted by: Mick | March 04, 2005 at 04:36 PM