Paul Krugman: An Unfair And Cruel Attack On Working Americans

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=1

Attacking Social Security
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 15, 2010

snip//

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

And neither wing of the anti-Social-Security coalition seems to know or care about the hardship its favorite proposals would cause.

The currently fashionable idea of raising the retirement age even more than it will rise under existing law — it has already gone from 65 to 66, it’s scheduled to rise to 67, but now some are proposing that it go to 70 — is usually justified with assertions that life expectancy has risen, so people can easily work later into life. But that’s only true for affluent, white-collar workers — the people who need Social Security least.

I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s a lot easier to imagine working until you’re 70 if you have a comfortable office job than if you’re engaged in manual labor. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society — and the growing disparities extend to matters of life and death. Life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot at the top of the income distribution, but much less for lower-income workers. And remember, the retirement age is already scheduled to rise under current law.

So let’s beat back this unnecessary, unfair and — let’s not mince words — cruel attack on working Americans. Big cuts in Social Security should not be on the table.

[fogonthelake]

1. Why did Obama appoint Simpson to head this committee? He

has talked down SS from day one!! (yes, I know there is a Dem as Co-chair). I just do not understand this at all.


"It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people — including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission — are peddling this nonsense.

And having invented a crisis, what do Social Security’s attackers want to do? They don’t propose cutting benefits to current retirees; invariably the plan is, instead, to cut benefits many years in the future. So think about it this way: In order to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. O.K. "

[Freddie Stubbs]

4. Simpson is not the " head this committee"

He is one of the co-chairs. The other co-chair is Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who served as White House Chief of Staff under President Clinton.

[fogonthelake]

6. Correct-that is what I said in my post. He has a Dem Co-Chair.

[ipaint]

13. Erskine Bowles and the Price of Ignorance: $335,000 a Year

"Erskine Bowles is one of the co-chairman of President Obama's deficit commission. He gained notoriety recently by revealing the fact that he had no clue as to the size of the country's deficit problem even after engaging in a lengthy serious of secret meetings on the topic over the last few months. He had told the National Governor's Association that annual interest payments will be $2 trillion a year by the end of the decade. The Congressional Budget Office projects that even in a worse case scenario interest payments will be less than half this amount. Oh well.

Some may wonder how much people get compensated for such extraordinary displays of ignorance. This is easy to answer. One of Mr. Bowles paying gigs is as a director of Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street investment bank that was rescued from bankruptcy by the taxpayers two years ago. Mr. Bowles gets $335,000 a year for that job.

By comparison, this is almost 25 times as much as the average Social Security benefit that Mr. Bowles has said he wants to cut. It is more than 10 times what the median household over age 65 earns. Such are the rewards of ignorance."

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/15/erskine_bowles_and_the_price_of_ignorance_335000_a_1/

I doubt Bowles has a clue as to what the 25%+ of low wage baby boomers with no retirement other than social security are going to got through once they find out they get to slave away for years more and/or face cuts to their soc. security amounts.

[TheKentuckian]

18. Bowles sucks only marginally less than Simpson

This isn't the first Bowles had been on the cut Social Security bandwagon.

I trust Bowles no more than Corker's ilk (save the ease in exploring racist tactics).

Put those Sneetches through the star (D/R) on/off machine a few times and only God and their mamas could tell them apart.

[eridani]

21. So? Bowles is also adamantly anti-Social Security n/t

[indepat]

2. If BHO is truly a progressive, the handi-work of the Cat-food Commission will not reach fruition

:)

[Enthusiast]

10. Exactly.

We shall see. But by then it will probably be too late.

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. If he were truly a progressive, then there would be no catfood commission. n/t

[uponit7771]

14. Yes there would, it would be for military spending and for the rich not the middle class though

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. I'd agree to the need for a "slingshot and pointy-stick commission" n/t

[steve2470]

3. k&r nt

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. If they package it successfully.... e.g. like "school reform"....

... ( and they are *brilliant * at packaging; come to think of it, it's pretty much the ONLY thing they're brilliant at) ... then SS as we know it will cease to exist.

"Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun". ( Auden)

[Faryn Balyncd]

7. At the heart of their attack will be a (further) RIGGING of the CPI-COLA calculation:

Simpson is peddling the lie that the CPI-W, upon which the COLA is based OVERSTATES inflation, when the fact is that it has already been RIGGED to understate inflation in general, and grossly understate inflation for those items purchased by the elderly.

[NJmaverick]

8. K & R!

[Enthusiast]

9. This should have hundreds of Recommendations.

Take Social Security cuts "off the table". Just as they did with single payer and investigations into Bush Administration malfeasance.

[ipaint]

12. Billionaire Pete Peterson's brainchild.

The commissions purpose is to get the elite in this country out of paying back their gov. loans of our retirement money they used to finance 30 years of tax cuts and resource wars.

The elite borrowed the fund they can damn well pay it back.


"The first TFT "dispatch" to appear in the Post--"Support grows for tackling nation's debt"--made no mention of Peterson's crusade. But it featured the same devious gimmick the financier has been peddling around Washington. Congress should create a special commission of eighteen senators and representatives empowered to to make the "tough" budget decisions politicians are loathe to face--slashing benefits, raising payroll taxes or both. Other members of Congress would be prohibited from changing any of the particular measures, and would cast only an up-or-down vote on the entire package, no amendments allowed. Supposedly, this would give them political cover. Look, no hands. We just cut Social Security but it wasn't our fault.

This "reform" is profoundly antidemocratic because it would strip ordinary citizens of the only leverage they have in Washington--the ability to lean on their elected representatives and exact retribution if they get sold out. Peterson has two advocates in the Senate--Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire--who are self-righteous fiscal hawks. The TFT story describes the rising federal deficits as a threat to the republic, yet fails to explain why deficits on rising. The billions have been devoted to bailing out major banks and Peterson's old chums in Wall Street or to turning around the failed economy or fighting two wars at once.


...Here is what really worries the fiscal hawks: as the Social Security trust fund built up the huge surpluses, the federal government borrowed the money and spent it. The time is approaching--maybe ten or twelve years from now--when the federal treasury will have to start paying back its debts to Social Security. The accumulated wealth does not belong to the US government, any more than the money it borrowed from China. The beneficial owners are all those working people who faithfully paid their FICA taxes for all those years. If Washington stiffs them now, it will be a bait-and-switch swindle larger than Wall Street's"

http://www.thenation.com/article/looting-social-security-part-2

Why did Obama adopt a right wing, anti-social security, billionaire's idea and staff it with anti social security right wing hacks? Why are the meetings closed to the public and why is congress only allowed and up or down vote on the recommendations?

[diane in sf]

17. You should run this as a separate article==very interesting!!!

[Zenlitened]

19. I'll second that. And add this:

Billionaires should have no say in Social Security discussions. None.

[TheKentuckian]

20. What I wonder is what brainwashing, drugs, or spell makes folks not question this

and who would take a look at the individuals on this commission and honestly expect recommendations beneficial and considerate of regular folk?

Then one step further, who would think you wouldn't have nearly a lockstep Republican party in favor?

Those original co-sponsors won't fall off again and then between the various incarnations of conservadems and those who will vote as Obama and leadership dictate the numbers seem appalling for stopping this.

A non-faith based look at this is at minimum, concerning, if your objective is protecting the program and benefits.

The Joe Cool clan either doesn't give a crap about Social Security (and who knows what hack job they want to do with Medicare) or supports the conservative mentality on this to some degree or another.

[pleah]

16. K&R

[KakistocracyHater]

22. Obama should use the Catfood Com. to justify wholesale pricing of meds

undoing the disaster of W

[Romulox]

23. Late 90s Krugman railed against labor standards and for free trade...

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/berries.html

Now he's a "Leftist firebrand"? Really? :shrug: