Victor Bremson's Reflections
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Things Young People Need to Know About the Coming Social Security Rip-off
I have been talking to two close friends who care deeply about the future of the family values that we were raised on. Values like making sure that people have a safety lifeline, care about future generations and that government talks straight to its citizens.
Ron and Robert both have children and grandchildren. Ron has a PHD, is a incredible teacher and a fighter for progressive social causes. Robert is a retired actuary and loves to sing in his Temple's choir. The three of us have been lamenting on how the Bush Administration is using linguistic jujitsu again, this time about social security. We also realize that they can get away with this because our youth were not really educated about why this program was necessary and how it works. It seems obvious that “separate and divide” youth from elderly is the method of choice from these linguistic experts. This piece is an attempt to share some important facts. The first group of facts is obvious. The following groups are subtler. Please share this youth that you are in contact with. It is really important that the Administration does not gets its way on this program.
The Obvious Facts
1. The Social Security System is a critical lifeline for millions of people. It is not tied to the ups and downs of the US Stock Market. It is guaranteed to be there when you reach the retirement age.
2. It is not just a pension for the worker but it helps to protect the workers family if the worker dies first or becomes disabled. For example their children would receive social security benefits till through their 17th year. The surviving spouse would receive benefits till death. This won't happen in a so-called privatized system.
3. The system was designed around the idea that people were contributing to their own pension. Both the employee and employer contributed to the plan and the employee did not get a tax write-off for doing so.
4. The social security system, but not Medicare, is very solvent. Despite the right-wing rhetoric to the contrary it can be fixed for another 100 years by simply recalibrating retirement age and raising the contribution wage limits.
5. THERE IS NO CRISIS AND YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO RECEIVE SOCIAL SECURITY IN YOUR OLD AGE -NO MATTER HOW OLD YOU ARE.
Some of the more subtle facts:
1. The social security system is actually a regressive tax. A regressive tax is used to describe a tax system in which those with low incomes pay proportionally higher taxes than the wealthy. It is actually a flat tax in that it taxes rich and poor the same rate. The only way that you can make this tax not regressive is to raise the contribution wage limits. Fixing social security means that the wealthiest wage earning segments of our society might have to pay a higher tax.
2. The benefits actually are progressive. People pretty much get the same amount of benefit based on their work years. You don't get more by paying more into the program. This helps the neediest part of our society and does not overly enrich the more successful parts.
3. The federal government use to separate out the deficit from the social security surplus. But the government back about 20 plus years ago decided that it was politically smart to make the deficit look smaller by combining the two. The Social Security System has built huge surpluses over the years that have been used to fund questionable wars, missile shields and tax cuts for the wealthiest class.
Some concepts even more subtle:
1. We have many more serious problems in this country that need to be dealt with first. We have huge under-funded pension plans in both the public and private arena. These funds are guaranteed by US Government insurance guaranties. There is very little talk about these people not getting their pension but they will have a huge impact on the federal budget.
2. Medicare is an example of a program that is in deep financial trouble. This fund is often confused with Social Security. The only way to fix this problem in the United States is to fix our healthcare system. There is no will to do that today.
3. Congress created 401 K Programs as a way to allow employers to create pension plans in which employees could make their own choices. As a result many employers were able to dump real pension plans that paid people a real pension. Employers can contribute little or nothing to 401 K's but still advertise that they offer the benefit. This is a continuation of the effort to take away peoples security blankets in order to achieve higher corporate profitability. Many people lost a significant amount of their 401k investments during the last stock market slide.
We need to be careful not to buy into their language about a crisis in Social Security. If we believe that there is a crisis then we need to do something major to fix it. It is not broken. The use of this kind of linguistic jujitsu is the way the right wing gets their work done. Think about some of the top ten of these sayings, like; death tax, weapons of mass destruction, tax relief, pro-life.....They create the slogans and we are stuck defending facts. Slogans seem more important than facts in this period of our nations life.
Please pass this on.
Victor Bremson
December 21, 2004
With help from my good friends Ron Ein and Robert Schnitzer
Ron and Robert both have children and grandchildren. Ron has a PHD, is a incredible teacher and a fighter for progressive social causes. Robert is a retired actuary and loves to sing in his Temple's choir. The three of us have been lamenting on how the Bush Administration is using linguistic jujitsu again, this time about social security. We also realize that they can get away with this because our youth were not really educated about why this program was necessary and how it works. It seems obvious that “separate and divide” youth from elderly is the method of choice from these linguistic experts. This piece is an attempt to share some important facts. The first group of facts is obvious. The following groups are subtler. Please share this youth that you are in contact with. It is really important that the Administration does not gets its way on this program.
The Obvious Facts
1. The Social Security System is a critical lifeline for millions of people. It is not tied to the ups and downs of the US Stock Market. It is guaranteed to be there when you reach the retirement age.
2. It is not just a pension for the worker but it helps to protect the workers family if the worker dies first or becomes disabled. For example their children would receive social security benefits till through their 17th year. The surviving spouse would receive benefits till death. This won't happen in a so-called privatized system.
3. The system was designed around the idea that people were contributing to their own pension. Both the employee and employer contributed to the plan and the employee did not get a tax write-off for doing so.
4. The social security system, but not Medicare, is very solvent. Despite the right-wing rhetoric to the contrary it can be fixed for another 100 years by simply recalibrating retirement age and raising the contribution wage limits.
5. THERE IS NO CRISIS AND YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO RECEIVE SOCIAL SECURITY IN YOUR OLD AGE -NO MATTER HOW OLD YOU ARE.
Some of the more subtle facts:
1. The social security system is actually a regressive tax. A regressive tax is used to describe a tax system in which those with low incomes pay proportionally higher taxes than the wealthy. It is actually a flat tax in that it taxes rich and poor the same rate. The only way that you can make this tax not regressive is to raise the contribution wage limits. Fixing social security means that the wealthiest wage earning segments of our society might have to pay a higher tax.
2. The benefits actually are progressive. People pretty much get the same amount of benefit based on their work years. You don't get more by paying more into the program. This helps the neediest part of our society and does not overly enrich the more successful parts.
3. The federal government use to separate out the deficit from the social security surplus. But the government back about 20 plus years ago decided that it was politically smart to make the deficit look smaller by combining the two. The Social Security System has built huge surpluses over the years that have been used to fund questionable wars, missile shields and tax cuts for the wealthiest class.
Some concepts even more subtle:
1. We have many more serious problems in this country that need to be dealt with first. We have huge under-funded pension plans in both the public and private arena. These funds are guaranteed by US Government insurance guaranties. There is very little talk about these people not getting their pension but they will have a huge impact on the federal budget.
2. Medicare is an example of a program that is in deep financial trouble. This fund is often confused with Social Security. The only way to fix this problem in the United States is to fix our healthcare system. There is no will to do that today.
3. Congress created 401 K Programs as a way to allow employers to create pension plans in which employees could make their own choices. As a result many employers were able to dump real pension plans that paid people a real pension. Employers can contribute little or nothing to 401 K's but still advertise that they offer the benefit. This is a continuation of the effort to take away peoples security blankets in order to achieve higher corporate profitability. Many people lost a significant amount of their 401k investments during the last stock market slide.
We need to be careful not to buy into their language about a crisis in Social Security. If we believe that there is a crisis then we need to do something major to fix it. It is not broken. The use of this kind of linguistic jujitsu is the way the right wing gets their work done. Think about some of the top ten of these sayings, like; death tax, weapons of mass destruction, tax relief, pro-life.....They create the slogans and we are stuck defending facts. Slogans seem more important than facts in this period of our nations life.
Please pass this on.
Victor Bremson
December 21, 2004
With help from my good friends Ron Ein and Robert Schnitzer
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