Well there’s the problem, thelabdude is confusing Social Security with Sesame Street!
Good catch Tapioca Dextrin.
CMC fnord!
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I’ve been trying to communicate this exact idea to people (both on the left and on the right) for a couple of decades now, but I have not seen anyone do is so succintly and clearly.
I’m going to steal it, and test it out on my wife first. Somehow I am not optimistic…
Cite?
I’ll give you one data point: I am not happy, and don’t believe I’m likely.
Not a cite, but an argument from the facts: While people are always arguing that taxes should be lower, there is no big campaign for reduce or remove the Social Security Tax. Furthermore, the Social Security Tax does not seem to have been on the table during all the debate in Congress recently about taxation and expenditure.
You may be unhappy, but most Americans (apparently) are not.
Let’s address this through inference: why do you suppose that Social Security is widely known as the third rail of politics? Is is because the American people generally dislike the system and want to see it done away with or privatized?
Or, to deal with it somewhat more directly, only 5% of poll respondents are enthusiastic about proposals to phase out Social Security. About 68% don’t think that’s a good idea. Cite.
Thanks for the compliment.
One thing to add…some people think that because they paid into the fund for so many years, they have a claim to “their” money when the time comes. That may have been the original intent, but if Congress decides, they can take away any of the benefits you had been counting on. It’s strictly a numbers game. If the amount of income doesn’t match the outgo, one or the other or both have to be adjusted or the books won’t balance. That’s why the retirement age is creeping up.
The reverse could happen in the future, if there was another baby boom, which increases the possible income side.
Then you might try posting an intelligent, factual OP. Perhaps you are unaware of the number of people who have brayed “Social Security is a Ponzi scheme!” around here. Want to back up you assertions?
That supports the OP. A lot of people support SS, but a lot of people support it based on misconceptions about the nature of the program.
Regarding the “third rail” comment, I would also note that SS is the third rail not because of widespread support from the public at large but because of very intense support from the segment of the public that is currently receiving or about to receive benefits. These people depend heavily on SS, they’ve already paid into the system, they have a pretty high voter turnout, and they have and will vote based to a large extent on SS/Medicare issues.
So what you’re saying is, that politicians tend not to mess with Social Security because voters don’t want them to.
Why don’t YOU cough up with the cite that the public doesn’t support Social Security. I note again that I have provided a poll that shows that only 5% of the general public wants to see the system dismantled. 68% basically want Social Security to continue. I don’t understand how you get from those poll numbers to the bare assertion that “Social Security doesn’t enjoy widespread support.”
In fact, I’m willing to bet cash that it is in the top five most popular government programs ever.
More precisely, because a very powerful subset of the voters really doesn’t want them to.
Because I’ve not made this claim. The comment you quoted was a note about why SS is the “third rail” of politics. I also commented that much of the public support for SS is based on the type of misconception that Musicat noted.
I’ve not anywhere claimed that SS is not broadly popular.
You could probably add to that all the people who would be forced to support their older relatives who are currently getting social security. I know I would not be happy if my parents had to move in with me.
Let me get this straight. you don’t deny it is broadly popular, but you also said:
That either means it is only really popular with the subset, or is popular with everyone but its popularity has no impact on politicians. Neither position makes a lot of sense.
You got a cite about the supposed misunderstanding - and how it impacts support? I suspect that support comes not from the accounting principles used, but from the fact that pretty much everyone alive today has seen their parents and grandparents living a better life thanks to Social Security, which has always been there for them, unlike pensions and the stock market.
Opponents of SS aren’t trying to educate the public out of this supposed misconception. They are running around calling it a Ponzi scheme, saying government bonds are not trustworthy, and trying to drum up fear about it not being here for us. And to the level the manage to scare people, then they’ll claim the system is in trouble because people don’t trust it. Pretty slimy, if you ask me.
You had us rationalists at “Hello”, Voyager.
I was expecting more wit, however, in dealing with thelabdude’s … er … eccentric rejoinder.
Both these things are pretty close to true (I would modify “no” to “less”). It’s broadly popular with the masses who don’t pay much attention to it, and if that was all of its support, then some bolder politicians, who realize that the public doesn’t appreciate the long term insolvency problems, might be more open to sticking their necks out and confronting the issue. The reason it doesn’t happen - the reason it’s a “third rail” - is because of the fierce opposition of politically active seniors.
I obviously think it makes a lot of sense. YMMV.
No cite. But how the misconception impacts support is not hard to figure out. People like it because they want it to continue as it is today. They don’t realize that one way or another this can’t and hence won’t happen.
This is true and does not contradict anything I’ve said.
You present these two sentences as being a contrast, but in reality they mean the same thing. The public’s misconception is that the system is solvent long term and can always be there for us. In reality this is a misconception. You can call pointing this out this misconception “drumming up fear” if you want. It doesn’t change anything.
Yet during the Reagan years an even bigger problem was solved with bipartisan support and no activation of the third rail. I suspect the minor benefit cuts and ceiling increases necessary would also get a lot of broad support. What doesn’t get broad support is the attempts to kill or fundamentally change the system we’ve seen from Republicans.
Why can’t it happen? Raising the cap, even delaying retirement age lets it continue as it has today just fine.
I thought the “misconception” was the lockbox idea - that money we put in gets saved and comes back to us. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was prevalent (but have no data) but I don’t think many people would have a fit if they learned that their money was going to their parents, and that their return was ensured by the full faith and credit of the government. As for long term solvency, I wouldn’t be surprised if more people had your incorrect view that the system is doomed than the incorrect view that no changes are required for long term solvency. The problem isn’t the accounting or the need to make minor adjustments, the problem appears to be the rage the right has for a big government program that works and that people like.
I had only half my allotment of wit that day.
If the Republicans up the ante even more by proposing radical changes, then others can come off as moderates by proposing even less drastic changes.
See above. Those things are also extremely politically sensitive, without the cover of even more extreme proposals.
More to the point, ISTM that you’ve gotten a bit off track here. You seem to be attacking some hypothetical Republican proposal. I don’t recall discussing any such thing in this thread.
The point being discussed in this thread is whether people are under misconceptions about what they will actually end up getting from SS (in which case it would be similar to a Ponzi scheme) and whether some current support that the program enjoys derives from this misconception. Even if what you’ve said above is true, that doesn’t change anything in this regard. Bottom line is that, as you’ve noted, people have seen their parents and grandparents get such-and-such level of benefits and think they will too, and they can’t (unless they want to pay more, which they don’t). Your comments above don’t address this.
[FTR, my personal preference would be to address SS’s problems by raising the retirement age, as I’ve discussed in a prior thread. I think the retirement age should be linked to life expectancy, and that the ratio of working years to retirement years should be kept constant.]
That’s not what Musicat was talking about, in the post I responded to.
Well, I was thinking of changes along the lines of the ones made during the Reagan administration. which addressed serious problems in a serious and nonpartisan way.
I’m not attacking any specific proposal - just the first step to building support for a radical proposal, which is FUD. Saying we have a problem which needs to be fixed in some non-radical way (and while I don’t agree with raising the retirement age as the primary method of fixing it, it is not radical) is a lot different from saying SS is a Ponzi scheme and that the bonds are worthless. That is such nonsense that the only explanation I have for using these arguments is the desire for radical change.
I’m old enough so that my SS payments are not going to change from the estimates sent to me. Don’t you think that the average younger person who has not been reduced to panic by rhetoric more or less thinks he or she will get roughly what recipients are getting now? That may be inaccurate if politicians are irresponsible, but not really unrealistic if Republicans specifically treated the problem the way Reagan did.
To summarize, there are two ways of identifying the problem. The first is to say that conservative demographic and economic projections indicate that the trust fund will be exhausted in 25 or whenever years from now, and some adjustments must be made.
The other is to say that SS is a Ponzi Scheme, and that people starting out now should expect to get nothing. The OP was clearly coming from the second point of view.
What I don’t get is how people so stupid that they equate Madoff and Social Security are smart enough to remember to breathe.