Tag: Social Security

Also posted at the Alliance for Retired Americans Blog

This week, Peter Peterson [net worth $2.8 billion] and his foundation convened a closed-door meeting of Wall Street billionaires and millionaires at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building in D.C.

Peterson is a former CEO of Lehman Brothers and former chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He underwrites the foundation with his own money, and his agenda is not a secret.

Peterson says the coming retirement of baby boomers is a threat to the economy and the federal budget. He wants to see significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits, and would prefer a stream-lined process via a commission to implement these changes to “reduce the deficit.”

After taxpayers bailed out Wall Street for over $700 billion, Peterson is worried about the deficit. And, of course the real problem is… Social Security. (The problem certainly would not be recent tax cuts, unfunded wars, and billions of taxpayer dollars  squandered as bonuses to the very financial managers who brought the economy to near-ruin.)

This is the third installment in our Social Security Works series. So far, we have seen how Social Security works for America, how Social Security works for women, and today we will show how Social Security works for people of color.

Social Security is neutral with respect to race and ethnicity; the benefits it pays are a function of a worker’s earnings history and family situation.

People of color face numerous structural inequities throughout their lives that Social Security, because of its progressive benefit structure, helps to alleviate.  

Communities of color receive higher average returns on what they have paid into the system than do other workers. Latinos and African Americans also rely on Social Security for a greater share of their income in retirement.

By Ashley Carson, the Executive Director of OWL- The Voice of Midlife and Older Women and www.SocialSecurityMatters.org

This week the New York Times decided to scare the bejeezus out of everyone by publishing several articles with slanted statements about Social Security.  I’d like to revisit some key points in Williams Walsh’s piece from March 24 – statements from her article are in bold below.

“The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.”

First of all, the real estate bubble was predicted and no one listened.  In fact, it was predicted, ignored, and it is a large cause of the economic downturn and part of the larger deficit.  We had to bail out banks and other financial institutions because everyone ignored the warnings about the real estate bubble. The bursting of the housing bubble doesn’t hurt Social Security the program, in fact, Social Security, the program, is designed to withstand just such miscalculations by our nation’s top economists.  

The causes of our deficit are approximately $1.5 trillion to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $1.2 trillion due to the Bush-era tax cuts, $0.9 trillion for financial rescues and recovery measures including TARP, Fannie and Freddie.  As indicated by the above figures, clearly Social Security is not causing the deficit.  

“…payments have risen more than expected during this downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned.”

I’m just not sure what I can add to this-

Next Big Issue? Social Security Pops Up Again

By JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times

Published: March 22, 2010, A1

By 2016, Social Security will begin paying more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, according to the annual report of government trustees; reserves in the form of government i.o.u.’s will be exhausted by 2037, after which incoming taxes will cover three-quarters of benefits.

Before his inauguration, Mr. Obama said of Social Security, “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.”

Similarly, some Democrats argue that their party should act now, while it controls the White House and Congress, rather than take the chance that Republicans will regain power and try to carve private retirement accounts from Social Security, as former President George W. Bush did unsuccessfully.

Umm… what’s the difference again?

Make sure you speak slowly and loudly like I’m “fucking retarded” and deaf, or even worse- French.

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (AP) — The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It’s time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.

 -The Associate Press.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…

Now where did this money go?  Well, we here all know that don’t we?

The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military. About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.

”Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” Kennelly said. ”They’re as solid as what we owe China and Japan.’

But, see they’re not.  The political plan is to keep on saying “Social Security is running out of money” — and to keep funneling that money into the hands of various corporate and military interests.  It has been a treasure trove to finance all these stupid wars and stuff.

So, sorry. You’re 62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70…..

You’ll always be one year late.

Even though YOU payed for it.

 

This is the second installment in our Social Security Works series. The first post focused on how Social Security works for America, and today we will show how Social Security works for women.

Since January 31, 1940, when Ida May Fuller was issued the first monthly retirement check  in the amount of $22.54, Social Security has worked for women.

Social Security is neutral with respect to gender – individuals with identical earnings histories are treated the same in terms of benefits.  But, with longer life expectancies than men, elderly women tend to live more years in retirement and have a greater chance of exhausting other sources of income.

• Women represent 57 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and approximately 69 percent of beneficiaries age 85 and older

• Women reaching age 65 in 2007 are expected to live, on average, an additional 19.8 years compared with 17.5 years for men

In 2008, Social Security provided benefits to 31.3 million women. Women are:

• Over two-fifths of the beneficiaries of disabled worker benefits

• 99 percent of the spouses receiving Social Security benefits

• 99 percent of the nondisabled surviving beneficiaries

• 98 percent of the dually entitled, that is, persons entitled to benefits as retired workers and as spouses

Women are more likely than men to be out of the work force, or to have breaks in employment. Even with the narrowing gender gap in the rates of labor force participation, women often leave temporarily or permanently for pregnancy, child care, and other family care responsibilities.

As an insurance protection for older women, Social Security provides a modest benefit. Old-age insurance in 2006 supplied such a measure for women through an average monthly benefit of $904.

This bare-bones floor of protection provides elderly women, in Roosevelt’s words, “security against the inevitable hazards and vicissitudes of life.”

The poverty rate for women would be significantly higher without Social Security, increasing from 12.4 percent to over 50 percent.

• In 2007, Social Security kept 39.5 percent of women out of poverty

• In 2005, 42 percent of women over age 62 relied on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income, compared to 28 percent of men

• In 2007, for unmarried women – including widows – age 65 and older, Social Security comprises 48 percent of their total income. In contrast, Social Security benefits comprise only 37 percent of unmarried elderly men’s income and only 30 percent of elderly couples’ income

Social Security works for women; Social Security works for America.

This blog series is a joint project of America’s Future and Social Security Works.

Also posted at OurFuture.org and The Seminal

First, they learned that financial markets are hyper-sensitive to steroids, lack of law enforcement, and time-tested shock doctrine principles, and that they can profit mightily from destroying capitalism.

Second, they learned that they “own the place,” “the place” meaning “the potemkin government,” “no longer applicable laws,” “the future wealth of all dispossessed generations of slaves, thralls, and hostages;” and “owning” meaning “complete mastery of all worldly possessions unto the end of the earth and beyond.”  Third, they learned that no lies are too big to tell.  Fourth, they now keenly understand that the religion of financial growth is the most powerful Kool-Aid invented, and now it’s just a matter of getting everyone on the plane to Jonestown.

A two part answer to the question of how McCain can fix Social Security. First, Social Security is not broken and does not need fixing. Second, McCain can’t fix Social Security.

Social Security and Medicare are often lumped together as “entitlements”, and the threat of Social Security not paying off to the current working generation is used to try to grease the wheels of efforts to allow Wall Street to gain income from Security taxes.

Ezra Klein capably addresses the point that Social Security is not “in crisis” in Social Security as Signifier, so I’ll focus on why John McCain can’t fix it. But to get the basic … look at that gentle slope in Social Security … look at that massive explosion in Medicare … Medicare, that’s an entitlement crisis. Social Security, not.