Progressives need to ATTACK on Social Security not play defense

[yurbud]

Obama's deficit commission keeps looking like it's going to be a Wall Street wet dream come true, undermining Social Security by lowering benefits and making people work longer, which will INCREASE unemployment since someone else can take your job when you retire.

Rather than just block these bad reforms, Progressives need to go on OFFENSE with some simple reforms that will be far more popular with the public and even make more economic sense. Whenever the issue of Social Security reform comes up, these talking points should be the first words out of progressive pols mouths:

• If we taxed all income equally, including the investment income of the assholes on Wall Street who destroyed the world economy, we could actually LOWER the rate and pay the same benefits forever.
  
  An added corollary to this: don't Republicans usually LIKE flat taxes? Why do they oppose making this tax flat instead leaving it as is with the poor and middle class paying a far, far higher percentage for SS taxes than the wealthy? In fact, the more money you make over the cap, the smaller percentage of you income you pay in SS tax.
  
  (this is based on the old cap)
  
  
  
• Because of Wall Street deregulation, corporations raiding their employees pensions, and even Republicans trying to raid public employee pensions, we should be looking at ways to INCREASE benefits since the private sector can no longer be trusted.
  
  This point would have the added benefit of putting those on the deficit commission who serve Wall Street on the defensive--why are they trying to make us MORE reliant on those who are so untrustworthy?
  
  
• Instead of raising the retirement age, we should temporarily LOWER it. This one aint rocket science: when you raise the retirement age, you have MORE people in the work force. When you lower it, you have less. When you have high unemployment, why in God's name would you be looking at ''solutions'' that increase the number of people fighting for fewer jobs? A lot of public and private sector employers know this. When they need to cut back their labor force, they look for incentives to get the old timers to retire early, maybe even a wad of cash in a ''golden handshake.''

The current reforms the deficit commission seem to have a couple of real goals:

• increase the economic insecurity of the middle and working class
  
  
• weaken social security to make it less popular so it will be easier to privatize or eliminate in the future

This is another issue where Democrats can't have it both ways: they can't serve average Americans and the sociopathic trust fund babies of Wall Street.

Either they are the party for protecting and enlarging the middle class, or they are the second party devoted to serving the rich, differing only in the sales pitch to the rest of us (giving us soporific platitudes instead of the GOP's fear and hatred).

If the Democrats in Congress go along with this commission shit, they will be handing Congress and even the White House back to the GOP, and their turn at power will make Baby Bush look like FDR.

[villager]

1. You could take out the phrase "on Social Security" and it remains true in all situations!

:thumbsup:

[whathehell]

6. + 1000 n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

2. It would be so refreshing to see the Dems do some of the issue framing and debate defining for a

a change.
It is time for the Dems to stop being the Charlie Brown to the repuke's Lucy!!


http://faithfulprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/02/george-lakoff-on-obama-tea-parties-and.html
George Lakoff on Obama, Tea Parties and the Battle for Our Brains

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/25_lakoff.shtml
Linguistics professor George Lakoff dissects the "war on terror" and other conservative catchphrases

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911lakoff.html
Metaphors of Terror

[yurbud]

11. Lakoff is a tremendous asset they don't use. On the other hand, even if they did good framing

the media would not repeat and sustain it the way they do corporate initiated talking points.

To use someone else's metaphor posted today, the corporate talking points are like a beach ball at a concert a lot of people in the media are trying to keep in the air.

Talking points that don't fit that agenda get popped with a hot cigar pretty quickly.

[BrklynLiberal]

15. You are accurate about the corporate media bursting any balloons that the Dems to happen to float

[yurbud]

22. do you have any insider knowledge or just agreeing? (I'm happy enough with the latter but

would like to hear more if it's the former).

[BrklynLiberal]

27. I WISH I had some insider knowledge. It just seems to obvious to me and it should be so to anyone

who is paying even the slightest bit of attention that the media is practically a wholey-owned subsidiary of the RightWingNuts.
Actually they might not even be a subsidiary.....

[yurbud]

32. as stephen colbert said to their face:

Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0501-30.htm

[BrklynLiberal]

33. Perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blue_Tires]

48. brilliant n/t

[snot]

3. K&R'd

[vi5]

4. Yeah, good luck with that.....

I can't decide if roughly 90% of elected Democrats in this country are just out and out cowards and scared of their own shadow and/or republicans, or if they are just completely and entirely complicit in what's being done to destroy the country. On my good days I think it's the former, on bad the latter. Either way we are completely screwed because it's quite apparent they aren't going to fight for shit except keeping their own hides in Washington and flush with cash.

[yurbud]

12. I think it's corruption not cowardice, but on this issue, they actually fear the people

that is why they are coming at attacking Social Security so obliquely, with this long term plan to undermine it.

But if you get people to expect MORE, then maybe we at least be able to preserve the status quo a little longer.

[TheKentuckian]

5. How are you going to make "sensible", "practical", "pragmatic" changes to "enhance" Social Security

talking like that?

[Chan790]

9. "Pragmatism" and "Sensible" need to be taken to the woodshed.

I'll bring the axe and bucket. :evilgrin:

[chill_wind]

7. Excellent points, yurbud. K & R.

eom

[Edweird]

8. An 'attack on social security' is precisely what appears to be happening....

[customerserviceguy]

10. If anyone fights it the way that you're fighting it, they're going to lose

For starters, your chart is about five years out of date. The Social Security maximum wage base is $6,621.60, 18.7 percent higher than it was in 2005, where your chart is from, and the maximum tax for both employer AND employee was $5,580.00. Using old information to try to prove your point is a good way to get people not to take you seriously.

Keeping with that idea, try to use wording that actually makes sense. The statement under the chart says, "...if you made $1 or $90,000, you paid more in Social Security taxes than someone who makes $100,000, who pays ten times as much as someone who makes $1 million, who pays ten times as much as..."

It doesn't take a math major to know that's factually incorrect. While the author of the chart was probably trying to make the point that the person making $100,000 pays as a percentage of that worker's salary ten times as much as the millionaire, the wording just doesn't match up. In the chart cited, all workers at the $90K level paid exactly $5,580.00 in your 2005 chart. Sloppy reasoning also causes others to dismiss your ideas.

Further, if you superimposed a chart of incomes on that non-linear chart (funny how wages between $1 and $100K take up just as much distance on the X axis as the distance between $100K and $1 million), just how many wage incomes would you expect to find as the line starts declining steeply, at about the 3% mark? Not a whole hell of a lot of them, I'd venture to guess.

All of the theories that say in effect, "The rich people can be taxed enough to keep Social Security solvent" seem to have the same faulty math that your chart does. I've never seen anything that is based in any kind of reality that shows that raising the wage base would do anything to deal with the coming deficits that loom because the baby boomer generation is finally coming of the age to collect for what it put in to shore the system up for the last forty years.

[dreamnightwind]

13. Care to support that statement?

"All of the theories that say in effect, "The rich people can be taxed enough to keep Social Security solvent" seem to have the same faulty math that your chart does. I've never seen anything that is based in any kind of reality that shows that raising the wage base would do anything to deal with the coming deficit"

There is absolutely nothing in your post to support this assertion. If you have the numbers, I (and others too, I imagine) would love to see them, otherwise I'm calling B.S.

There was one place (the text which is the caption for the chart) where it uses the misleading phrasing you pointed out (re rich people paying less without saying they're only paying less as a percentage of their wage income) but everywhere else in the OP it was clearly phrased correctly. And you're right about the scale of the chart being non-linear. So maybe suggest a different chart.

Instead you attack the entire post, or that was my impression. Have you seen the change in distribution in income in this country over the last 30 years or so? It has been a radical change, and it's killing us. Addressing social security funding issues by eliminating the income threshold would be an appropriate way to help with both social security and distribution of wealth. There are any number of economic voices (I believe even either the World Bank or I.M.F., I forget which) saying how the top-heavy distribution of income in the U.S. is a problem for not only the U.S both for the global economy. The case could easily be made for this change, and it should be.

I applaud the O.P., and I love the idea of being proactive rather than reactive.

[customerserviceguy]

14. I asserted nothing

other than to say that I've never seen any numbers put out there by the "we can tax the rich" faction. I don't have any numbers concerning that subject, but I'm sure that raising the wage cap is only a small part of the eventual solution.

Nobody's shown me that we have X million wage earners making over the current wage base by an average of Y thousand dollars, simple math would then apply a tax rate to the product of those two numbers, and generate a figure as to just how much more can be collected, and compare it against the size of the baby boom on the verge of smashing into Social Security. Of course, we'd have to subtract from that number, the estimated extra benefits those taxpayers would get from a raise in the monthly benefit maximum.

I'm only attacking because with faulty logic, the Repukes are going to eat us for lunch.

[tomp]

20. i think you're incorrect on the ss "problem".

sounds like you're buying the deficit lies of the politicians, both dem and repub. the boomers, of which i am one, have paid their way! the "deficits" are due to borrowing form ss to fund wars and such. the govt owes money to the ss trust and doesn't know how it's going to pay it back. they want to do that by cutting benefits that have already been paid for.

for the record, i agree with you on the wording, but it seems like you're going out of your way to miss the fundamental point of the post.

[customerserviceguy]

35. Yes, Social Security surpluses have been stolen

and used to pay for wars, bailouts, or welfare, whatever the listener hates the most. The fact remains: The only way those IOU's are ever going to be paid off is to raise taxes, cut spending, or inflate the currency. Those IOU's are as worthless as the $500K refinanced mortgage that is now secured by a house that you couldn't sell for $150K.

No politician, from either party, wants to face that problem. The only way to keep that day of reckoning safely in the far future is to raise payroll taxes and cut benefits. It also has the side benefit of providing more money in the SS trust fund to issue a few more worthless IOU's.

I understand the point of the OP, but if you don't use words and examples that are airtight, you risk being ignored in the coming debate.

[tomp]

38. i refuse to accept your limit on possible solutions.

you are only repeating memes designed to make people think there is nothing we can do.

tax the rich, cut defense spending. do not cut ss or raise MY taxes to pay back the loans.

if what you say is the limit to the options, the debate is over. why should i worry about being ignored?

you sound like a spokesperson for one of our corrupt politicians.

[customerserviceguy]

39. There are solutions

It's going to take a raise in taxes to deal with the problem, for starters. Who said that the employer and employee shares needed to be equal in the first place? You can set tiers at which the employer's share rises 1, 2, or even 3 percent above the employee's share, depending on the size of the company.

If you want to do a rise in the wage base, fine, but cap the maximum monthly benefit, as well. The current formula means that as the cap rises, the well-off get more money from the system.

Consider spinning the disability program off of Social Security. As it stands today, the needs of disabled Americans are paid for only by a tax on work, and not taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, and other types of taxable income. Make disability income part of the general budget, and apply the progressive income tax to pay its bills.

Recognize that there are jobs where people cannot work until 70, or even 67, but that there are jobs (including my own) where they can. Establish a five point scale, the most difficult jobs get to retire with full benefits at 65, the pencil pushers like myself get full benefits at 70.

Modify the formula for COLA's. If we have a low-inflation economy, everybody benefits, and in a high inflation one, nobody but the rich do.

If we don't come up with the solutions, our enemies will.

[tomp]

40. you're playing their game. if that's your answer, we're not on the same team.

your "solutions", if they involve taxing ordinary people or cutting benefits, are not acceptable. you are thinking inside the political box and that kind of thinking caused the problem in the first place. that kind of thinking is what obama used to create health care "reform".

i don't claim to be any kind of expert on economics. but i know what's fair, and this ain't.

i want the people who created the problem to pay for the problem.

[customerserviceguy]

44. And your solution

is to stick your fingers in your ears and say "nyah, nyah, nyah, I can't hear you!" when trying to talk about real solutions to real problems. That's going to marginalize you every time.

Social Security is finally taking in less money than it's paying out. It only has a few months slack in the system before it has to try to rely on those toilet-paper IOU's that have been building up in a drawer. The only possible way to redeem them is to raise taxes, cut spending, or inflate the currency, period. The very first baby boomers turn 65 in just a bit over four months from now, and for the next eleven years, we will see a rising crescendo of them hitting that threshold as we move through time to those born in 1957, the peak year. We'll see another near-decade of them coming to the doors of the Social Security Administration to collect their checks before the baby boom generation is done with the onslaught.

Laying on the ground beating fists against it, crying that proposed solutions are unfair isn't going to either solve the problem, or get you more than fleeting attention.

The people who created the problem are either safely retired, or most likely dead. If we don't develop effective solutions, the Social Security commission will simply add present politicians to the list of those who don't have to worry about this, as the can will get further kicked down the road.

[tomp]

51. thank you for that lovely characterization of my position.

that you see it that way tells me all i need to know about you. you are part of the problem. done.

[customerserviceguy]

52. And your solution is?

I'm interested in how things are going to work when you propose that absolutely nothing is done. If you want to destroy Social Security, that would be the sure way to do it.

[tomp]

53. repeat: done.

[yurbud]

21. I noted that the chart is from a few years ago, and you can see from the scale its percentages

as for the incomes listed, I'll admit I started at regular intervals then realized I couldn't get enough in to fit it on an instantly readable graph.

When I have more time, I'll grab the data and do a more complete one.

Also, the coming deficits are largely covered by the accumulated trust funds. Since the government ''borrowed'' those funds to pay for other things, I would think that not paying it back might affect our credit rating with other lenders like banks and individual investors in our T bills.

[customerserviceguy]

36. The accumulated trust funds

are nothing more than an accounting fiction. The only possible way to pay them back is by raising taxes (not just Social Security ones), cutting spending, and possibly inflating the currency. If no politicians have the guts to do either of the first two things, then the last one is inevitable as the last resort.

It would be interesting for you to figure out how many incomes are above the current wage base, and how much money taxing them would really produce, when weighed against the onslaught of the baby boomers. I don't think it will be anywhere near enough to cover the gap.

[yurbud]

43. is that true of our other debts?

[customerserviceguy]

45. We'll see when our creditors

try to just cash in their chips, instead of rolling things over for another promissory note, like they've been doing. When the Chinese stop buying Treasuries, then we'll know for sure.

[Vinca]

16. Thom Hartmann has had a guest on who proposes taxing all income

for social security and doubling benefits, the idea being it would lift the elderly and disabled out of poverty and put more money in the economy. Here's a link to Steven Hill's article -
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/18

[BrklynLiberal]

28. Thank you for that link!!!

[customerserviceguy]

37. Pie in the sky ideas without any mathematical substance behind them

That seems to be the predomininantly accepted theory around here, that taxing incomes over the wage base will magically solve all of our problems. It's wishful thinking to imagine that there are enough incomes over $110K out there that a paltry 12% extra tax will generate the trillions needed to cope with the current demands coming due on the system, let alone any "extra" benefits.

[Hannah Bell]

41. that's a welfare program, not social security. that tack is just the one the ptb want us to take.

[tomp]

17. obama put social security on the table.

the dems took impeachment and single payer OFF the table.

if you think the dems have not already decided whose side they are on, you're missing something.

if we do anything to social security it should be to ADD to it. No decrease in benefits, no increased age for eligibility.

repay the loans and guarantee the funding. period.

tax the hell out of the rich, cut back on military spending and bailouts of corporations.

[Little Star]

19. +1

[Tuesday Afternoon]

23. wonder how long it would take to repay the loans.

[yurbud]

24. a good mind trick to pay on conservatives: ask them if they think they get their money's worth for

taxes.

When they say no, ask what they'd expect to see it spent on instead.

After they answer, say ''You may be a progressive.''

(unless of course it is gassing illegal immigrants, gays, and Muslims).

[BrklynLiberal]

29. +1000

[Romulox]

18. For corporations and the rich to pay their share of our public pension plan "would be welfare"

I've read it here on DU dozens of times... :wtf:

[Greyhound]

25. Well said. K&R.

:kick: & R

[Radical Activist]

26. Hasn't Obama already been pushing to lift the income cap?

He has been pretty consistent about that being the fix needed for social security. That's a good idea you and Obama have. It's definitely something worth pushing for.

Lowering the retirement age could also open up some jobs in the market for underemployed young workers. Right on.

You have some good ideas but your post would be stronger without the commission conspiracy theories.

[nashville_brook]

30. couldn't agree more -- yes, hell!

[Hannah Bell]

31. For starters, cap on SS is now $106,800, not $90K. It hasn't been $90K for years.

Second, if you want a welfare program, fund it through the general budget. Your suggestion, however well-intended, turns SS into another animal altogether.

And I question why there are so many calls to turn SS into this other animal instead of RAISING INCOME TAXES ON THE TOP 1%.

My belief is that people calling for this fundamental redesign of SS are playing into the hands of those who wish to destroy the program.

[yurbud]

46. while it might not happen to the top 1%, some very wealthy people could lose everything

and be grateful for that Social Security check.

I agree with what you are hinting at though--Social Security has survived as long as it has because it doesn't touch the rich.

That hasn't stopped them from coveting that part of paycheck that goes to SS every month and wanting to divert it directly to their off-shore accounts.

[L0oniX]

34. Repukes want your parents to be homeless and out on the streets.

Repukes want you to die rather than supply health care and the sooner the better and especially if you are a Dem. Repukes believe all homeless people are crack addicts and or deserve it. Repukes believe that if you are out of work that you deserve it. Repukes blah blah blah...

[dajoki]

42. Repubs aren't alone...

in the attack on Social Security. Why is it even on the table when the Dems control all three branches of government?

[Better Believe It]

47. K & R

[laughingliberal]

49. K & R nt

[LongTomH]

50. Too late to rec, I'll give it a kick!

:kick: