PBS pushing hard for SocSec benefit cuts

[Tactical Progressive]

Paul Solomon did a NewsHour piece with a teacher explaining to what looked like a graduate student class on how Edda May got $23 a month and now it's like $14k annually. She promoted how price indexing instead of wage indexing was just basically looking to get something for nothing. Complete with an intense-looking brainwashed white student saying saying how this wasn't right, and the black student saying "I want more." even if we can't afford it.

Then Terry the media guy interviewed newspaper editors, two of whom are extreme conservatives with BushCo talking points, and what sounded like one moderate and one Democratic newsperson both agreeing that we need painful solutions. Only one of them even mentioned raising the cap.

The media has failed to get privatization pushed through with their rhetoric. Now it's on to raising the retirement age and cutting benefits. And they are pushing for all they're worth.

[FogerRox]

1. get the truth about SS- here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1681787&mesg_id=1681787

[Tactical Progressive]

5. Nice stats

Where did 'your' projections come from?

[FogerRox]

6. just guessing based on the Trustees and the CBO

[rurallib]

2. I've heard all the honchos at Corp for Public Broadcasting

are now all right wing republicans. The latest one was appointed two weeks ago as the COO, to make the board total Repub. Don't know how true that is. All I can tell you is that NPR and PBS are getting hard to take. Heard the NPR ombudsman interviewed by Neal Conant the other day. He kept saying that "NPR is striving for balance" Yeah like a Fox.
Now I remember, I heard it on DemocracyNow! last week.

[Zuni]

3. don't worry

raising taxes and cutting benefits to pay for years of upper class tax cuts will never be popular, it does not matter who tries to sell it.

[papau]

4. now '43 retire at age 66 -then '60 retire at 67 - it actually makes sense

to move retire at 67 up a bit to say 2018 from the current 2027 date, and then have 68 beginning in 2030.

The worn out body concept could be dealt with elsewhere. As lifetimes get longer the system must make normal returement later (keeping 62 as the first early retirement age).

No wage cap and age 68 are reasonable - IMHO.

But the key is no wage cap - if the GOP refuse to move on that we should wait until a Dem is in the WH.

[msmcghee]

7. It makes sense only if employers are willing to keep older . .

. . workers employed until retirement age. I'm sixty two. If I didn't have my own business generating some cash I'd be looking at very slim employment opportunities right now.

I might be able to compete for a low skill job against immigrants or teenagers but certainly not in my skill area. What employer would hire someone who can't do the strenuous work that younger guys can and who they figure would be quiting in three years to collect my SS? Add to that the greater likelihood of health problems?

[papau]

11. I am in the same boat as to getting job in my profession at this age

But you can not fight the math -

living longer puts a burden on the system.

But no real need to solve that now.

get the no wage cap now -


and it is likely the better than the conservative growth assumed in the projection will occur, most likely financing the growth in longevity.

[William Bloode]

13. What about the poor and blacks?

They tend to die in their 50's. Most folks who live their life in poverty may pay into the system their whole lives and die in their 50's.

[applegrove]

8. A case can be made for attaching the benefits to price index instead

of wages. That is a separate thing from Bush trying to restructure it so that it 1) destroys the bond between American & government to the Repuke advantage

2) using the trillions as a supply bubble in the stock market to put off the recession Bush has been putting off with wars and other crap (Greenspan) for years. Apparently the perpetual wars will result in perpetual markets. Apparently they decided to avoid the whole idea of recession (even though when you take your medicine as you go .. it hurts less than when you keep trying to put it off). So the SS of the average guy is the next thing to go into the market to hide recession. (Perhaps a policy of making sure all the recession belong to Democrats).

So to say that some fix is needed. And caps or tying it to an index of prices are just two. Something does need to be done. No doubt about it. But the other 3/4 of the Bush plan needs to be taken out to the back lot and shot immediately.

[Tactical Progressive]

9. Sure a case can be made

for either raising the Social Security retirement age or cutting benefits.

But that case is nowhere near as strong as the case to raise the income cap to make the Social Security trust fund solvent. Especially in a country which has become as rich as ours is now, which has been giving trillions in fiscally unwise and morally unfair tax refunds to the wealthy, which has been funding what will become a half-trillion dollar war of choice, and which has been unethically borrowing out of the Social Security trust fund to pay for these things.

I mean, if someone steals all your money, they could 'make a case' that you get a second job.

[applegrove]

10. Sorry. Absolutely. I meant that many things should be up in the air

and well flushed out. Just so long as the partisan sociopathy items are cut out completely. Now would someone please make the freaks in the WH put their plan on paper. WE have to get it on paper. Because if we win and get some other plan.. and talk about their freaky elite ideas during an election..they will deny it.

Make Bush put it down on paper.

[FogerRox]

12. NO nothing needs to be done--outlays drop like arock as the Boomers

Die off.

This graph from the CBO shows that outlays go down when the Boomers die. Page 5 from this PDF file--figure one.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/60xx/doc6068/02-03-SocialSec...


SS Trustees say
Economic growth of 1.8% means SS is good untill 2042
CBO says
Economic growth of 2.4% means SS is good untill 2052
I say
Economic growth of 3.0% means SS is good untill 2062
I say
Economic growth of 3.6% means SS is good untill 2072

The USA has averaged 3.5% growth for the last 100 years.