Social Security Protects Our Children

[Joanne98]

Former Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, was on a tear when he declared that the traditional defenders of Social Security "don't care a whit about their grandchildren... not a whit." Besides being disrespectful, the logic of his assertion is all wrong. The nation's children have a huge stake in the preservation of Social Security. Even more than their parents and grandparents, they stand to gain the most from the organized efforts of older Americans to strengthen the program, not cut it. Here's why.

Social Security's protections are by far the most important life and disability safeguard available to virtually all the nation's 75 million children under age 18. Through Social Security, working Americans who are married with two young children, for example, earn life insurance protections with a present value around $400,000 to $500,000 dollars. They earn similar protections for themselves and their families in the event of a severe disability. Today:

•4.4 million dependent children -- about 3.5 million under age 18 and 900,000 adults disabled before age 22 -- received Social Security checks in May 2010, totaling 2.4 billion in that month alone!

•Another 3.4 million children who do not receive benefits live in households with one or more relatives who do.


•Social Security lifts 1.3 million children out of poverty.

As much as children need Social Security protections when young, those hoping to work, or to have children or retire one day, also need it. The Social Security Administration reports that 30% of 20 year-olds will become disabled prior to reaching retirement age. Disability insurance certainly has clear value over the course of their lives. Further, nothing approaches Social Security in terms of providing secure retirement income protection. Neither stock market fluctuations nor inflation undermine its value. As billions of dollars of pension and home equity "wealth" disappeared over the two years, no one raised the specter of Social Security failing to meet its obligations. This is because, as Nancy Altman discussed earlier in this blog series, Social Security is conservatively financed.

Ironically, Senator Simpson and others who want to cut back and transform Social Security assert that they are doing so for their children and grandchildren -- but those changes hurt grandchildren the most. These include retirement age increases, privatizing and slowly changing the benefit formula so that over time the value of benefits decreases for all but the most low-income beneficiaries. Instead of helping children, these changes facilitate the plundering of the $2.6 trillion trust fund built up over 27 years through the payroll tax contributions of hard-working Americans. But, as Greg Anrig will argue later in this series, many reasonable ways exist to address Social Security's modest projected financing problem that do not require benefit cuts that fall most heavily on the young.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kingson/social-security-protects_b_614627.html

[offog]

1. Alan Simpson is a dick.

:eyes: This post raises a bunch of points I hadn't thought of. There's something else to consider. You know that old saying about the sins of the father? Maybe there should also be a saying about the sins of the sons. Yo! All you young and middle-aged people are going to retire too someday. If your kids and grandkids get the message that current retirees don't deserve a decent standard of living, they're not likely to change their minds when it's your turn to retire.

When we're 25, we all think that we're going to be millionaires by the time we're 45. Well, that doesn't happen to most people. I once read about a poll that shows an alarming percentage of people seriously expect to get a windfall, like winning the lottery, to finance their retirement.

The issue of pensions has been in Canadian news recently. Research shows that most people are not saving enough for retirement. They can't. This is the age of middle-class squeeze - everyone working longer harder hours for less pay, struggling to make ends meet, high unemployment, low-paying temporary and part-time jobs, etc.

Some people are calling for increases to the CPP (Canada Pension Plan) contributions collected through payroll deductions and employer contributions. Naturally, the business community is hollering about how they can't afford it during this recession and how it will kill jobs. I find it hard to take that seriously given that business always pleads poverty anytime the minimum wage goes up five cents. And naturally, some younger person was complaining about "those selfish baby-boomers".

Research from the CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) found that it would cost three cents an hour to finance the CPP to a level where everyone could get a decent pension. I figure it's probably similar for American Social Security.

[Enthusiast]

3. I agree Alan Simpson is a dick!

I support the OP all the way.

[starroute]

2. And do those kids want to have to support their parents 25 years from now?

The kids who are now living in their parents' basements because they're unemployed or underemployed might find 25 years from now when they're trying to pay off the mortgage, put their own kids through college, and save for their retirements that they also have a couple of aged parents squatting in the basement because they can't get by on what they earn as Walmart greeters.

25 year olds may not be able to imagine their own golden years very well -- but they sure as hell can imagine what it would be like to have their parents on their backs forever. And that is just what phasing out Social Security would mean.