# Obama lies about Social Security- tries to scare senior citizens **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 22, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606 "2008-09-22T00:15:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/61 "2008-09-22T18:19:27Z")
> [@Plan\_B](#): > > Well his refusal to consider something that the vast majority of economists support… It seems you ignored the request for cite. May I up the rhetorical stakes to “bullshit!”? ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/62 "2008-09-22T18:23:06Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > If I recall correctly, back when the Reps were talking about privatization, wasn’t it just a small percent, two percent, I think? No. It was two percentage points, not two percent. Say you had 6% of your paycheck going to SS for a $100 deduction. They proposed that 2% of your paycheck, or $33 would be privatized, not that 2% of your SS payment, or $2, would be privatized. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/63 "2008-09-22T19:04:37Z")
> [@muttrox](#): > > No. It was two percentage points, not two percent. > > Say you had 6% of your paycheck going to SS for a $100 deduction. They proposed that 2% of your paycheck, or $33 would be privatized, not that 2% of your SS payment, or $2, would be privatized. Thanks for the explanation. The 2% didn’t seem right, too small to really make a difference I thought. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/64 "2008-09-22T19:41:15Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > That’s **Mr. man** to you. 😉 > > I know he supports privatization. He has supported legislation that would privatize accounts for younger workers. Unless you can find some actual evidence that he wants to privatize accounts for the currently retired, you’re just making shit up. Or, in fancier terms, constructing a straw man. > > I have been on record before as saying that we should allow politicians some leeway in off-the-cuff comments. Extemporaneous remarks are rarely as accurate as scripted statements. So if Obama was speaking off the cuff, I’ll give him some slack. But he said to the group that millions of Americans would be scrambling to give their grandmothers and grandfathers a secure retirement, and half of elderly women living in poverty. (See OP’s cite.) > > Obama was talking about old people losing Social Security benefits because of the market crash. Your insistence that he was only speaking in a general sense about SS is delusional. He referred to retirees several times in just a few lines of his speech. > If you can’t talk about the specifics of what Obama and McCain’s positions are on Social Security, and you must resort to using analogies, you’ve lost the argument. Both Obama and McCain have clear positions on the issue. I think Obama’s is correct. That doesn’t mean that I can misrepresent McCain’s views in order to score political points. I “resorted” to analogy because it seemed that you couldn’t otherwise grasp my position. And if you truly believe that using analogies means I’ve “lost the argument” then I’m confident that the communication problem was with you rather than me. (Because, ya know, it means no such thing.) ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/65 "2008-09-22T19:53:59Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Thanks for the explanation. The 2% didn’t seem right, too small to really make a difference I thought. They were coy about the phrasing. Why, one might think they didn’t want people to fully understand the proposal. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/66 "2008-09-22T20:18:48Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > I support full privatization of Social Security. As in, you have to put money in an account, but you can put it anywhere (maybe require it be put in a bank or spread over a broad area to keep idiots from screwing themselves). And with a minimum payout for people who’ve never had opportunity to put money it the account. > > Actually, I wouldn’t mind much if it were eliminated entirely for people less than halfway to retirement (followed by a large payout to those people to give them any extra money back.) It was never meant to be a permanent dependency of the government, anyway. The money would be much better spent in completely private accounts, (and again, I challenge anyone to give me a time since 1929 when net savings have gone down without going back up even higher in short order.) > > Valete, > Vox Imperatoris You are a fucking moron. Social Security was meant to be and IS a basic safety net and never a permanent dependency on the government. I makes no difference if the trends in the stock market go up, there are still winners and losers. It’s not the financial winners that need SS in the first place. If there is full privatization of SS in the future when the market crashes again will you support the bailout of millions of peoples SS accounts? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/67 "2008-09-22T21:25:43Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > I do feel for those in the US who will be reliant on SS benefits for retirement. For those who don’t know, here’s what happened in Canada: > > In the early 1990’s it was recognized by the Chief Actuary of the Canadian pension plan\* that the “pay as you go” system was due to run out of money by 2015 due to changing demographics and birth rates (sound familiar?) > A review in 1996 led to an increase in the CPP rates payable by employers and employees to 9.9% of earnings (to a maximum), and the creation of the CPP investment board, that tries to get the maximum return on CPP investments. > The net result is that the CPP is pretty healthy in Canada, and is expected to be this way for the forseeable future. > > In a nutshell, we had similar demographic problems as the US, but we took the hard medicine in the early 1990’s and we are now fine. We had similar problems in the '80s and Reagan, bless his heart,. convened a bipartisan committee which reformed Social Security and put it on a sound footing. The “crisis” today is actually fairly minor, and only exists under very conservative assumptions on growth. It could be fixed very easily by raising the cap on payments slightly. That’s why Bush’s attempt to “reform” it in 2004, at the height of his popularity, flopped so badly. In fact, since current SS payments go to current recipients (the surplus gets put into bonds) having payers put their money into investments would require that the government borrow the money needed for current payments. That was dumb 4 years ago but it is idiotic today, with the bailout possibly requiring extra borrowing. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/68 "2008-09-22T21:31:53Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Wow, lots of ignorance in this thread. Hard to know where to start. > > I’ll just start with this. The stock market has returned 10% annualy over every rolling 20-year period since 1929. The “return” on social security is around 1%, which doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. > > Privatization doesn’t have to mean that everyone’s social security is invested solely in the U.S. stock market or any one type of investment over the course of a person’s contribution period. Because many Americans don’t know that you are supposed to scale back your risk as you get old, it would probably be best to have a social security privatization plan that does this automatically. > > Therefore, the current stock market downturn doesn’t mean that privatization of social security would have been bad or would be bad. It’s just an object lesson in why any privatization strategy needs to force Americans to scale the risk back as they approach retirement. The point of privatization was to give people the freedom to invest their own money. How does forcing them into a strategy do this? And who picks the investments? Who gets the commissions on hundreds of billions of dollars of investments? What matters isn’t ten year averages but what the state of the investment is when it is needed. I have a friend who worked for IBM, and made the terrible mistake of putting almost all his 401K in IBM stock. Over 20 years IBM was a great investment on average - but when he got laid off IBM had tanked, and he had to sell his shares low in order to live. What would happen with privatization is obvious. The market would go up, the rules would be loosened, and everyone would have a great party - until it tanked, and those who are retired and need to sell see a big loss in their “sure thing” retirement. And we’d have to bail it out again. Don’t you people ever learn? ---
**Author:** ![quixotic78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/3ab097/32.png) [@quixotic78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quixotic78)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2008, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/69 "2008-09-22T21:32:59Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I’d say that “who rely on it” means current retirees by any fair definition. People who haven’t yet retired can’t fairly be called “people who rely on Social Security.” Perhaps they will be some day, but they aren’t. I’ve never been in an accident, but I rely on my seat belt to keep me from flying through the windshield if I were to plow into the back of a semi. I think a person not yet collecting Social Security can, in the same sense, still rely on it. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/70 "2008-09-23T00:53:06Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The point of privatization was to give people the freedom to invest their own money. How does forcing them into a strategy do this? And who picks the investments? Who gets the commissions on hundreds of billions of dollars of investments? > > What matters isn’t ten year averages but what the state of the investment is when it is needed. I have a friend who worked for IBM, and made the terrible mistake of putting almost all his 401K in IBM stock. Over 20 years IBM was a great investment on average - but when he got laid off IBM had tanked, and he had to sell his shares low in order to live. > > What would happen with privatization is obvious. The market would go up, the rules would be loosened, and everyone would have a great party - until it tanked, and those who are retired and need to sell see a big loss in their “sure thing” retirement. And we’d have to bail it out again. > Don’t you people ever learn? I’m talking about privatization in general–not anyone’s specific plan. The point of privatization should be so people get a retun on their investment, not just investment choice. People should be allowed to invest only in one or more broad mutual funds or etfs. Their investments should switch to bond funds and then CDs as they age. This plan avoids the problems you bring up in your post. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/71 "2008-09-23T03:16:30Z")
It’s not that often that a Washington Post reporter - Ruth Marcus, in this case - agrees with me about how Obama’s lies about SS are over the top: > **[Ruth Marcus - Closing the Whopper Gap](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/21/AR2008092101207.html)** > > Obama's cartoon version of private accounts is not what Bush or McCain suggested. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/72 "2008-09-23T03:22:43Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > People should be allowed to invest only in one or more broad mutual funds or etfs. Their investments should switch to bond funds and then CDs as they age. So they would not be free to invest their own money, as they see fit? I can imagine there would be many people who would be just as disatisfied with how you invest their money as they are with the current plan. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/73 "2008-09-23T03:26:21Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > So they would not be free to invest their own money, as they see fit? I can imagine there would be many people who would be just as disatisfied with how you invest their money as they are with the current plan. Well with my plan they would get more when they retire, so I bet they’d get over not having any choice in how it’s invested. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/74 "2008-09-23T03:30:43Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Well with my plan they would get more when they retire… So there would be a guarantee to that effect? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/75 "2008-09-23T05:36:28Z")
So, you make people do what they don’t want to do, but after thirty or forty years, you’ll be proven right and then they’ll be grateful. By a curious coincidence, we are told that GeeDub believes that history will prove him right about Iraq, and then everybody will be saying wow, what a smart guy he was… Smells like leadership. Gotta tell ya, gotten to be real suspicious of leadership. ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/76 "2008-09-23T11:58:06Z")
Near the tailend of the 2004-5 push to privatize, Bush and Cheney publicly stated that their ideas would not help with solvency. If needed, I’ll try and dig up the cite. So even the proponents admit it wouldn’t fix whatever problems you think there might be with SS. You might want to do it for philosophical reasons, or because you think that the people will be better off, but that’s one big reason removed. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/77 "2008-09-23T20:32:01Z")
Yep, Obama has made false statements about McCain and Social Security, and has distorted/lied about his opponent’s stands on other issues. This does not cast Obama in a good light, and he does have to be held accountable for these things. We also have to maintain perspective on [the dimensions and chief sources of lying in this campaign](http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-22-ads_N.htm): \*"So far, several analysts say, most of Obama’s ads mislead and misrepresent in familiar ways — twisting a statistic or a snippet of video to make a questionable point, for instance. They say McCain has been in a different league, epitomized by Education (the ad which included the claim that Obama wants “comprehensive sex education” to be taught to kindergartners). “McCain is making no effort to be truthful,” says Farhad Manjoo, author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society. “The lies aren’t routine political lies where they stretch the truth of what a candidate might have said, or take a candidate out of context.” [PolitiFact.com](http://PolitiFact.com), a fact-check team from the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times and Congressional Quarterly, rates 22 statements and ads from McCain as barely true, 23 as false and six as “pants on fire” (absurdly, ridiculously false) out of 117 analyzed. For Obama, the score is 14 barely true, 18 false and one “pants on fire” out of 120 analyzed."\* In other words, the edge on achieving sleaziness thus far has gone to McCain. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2008, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606/78 "2008-09-23T20:57:48Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > In other words, the edge on achieving sleaziness thus far has gone to McCain. I wholeheartedly agree. Although I would provide a somewhat different citation for this claim: [video link.](http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/mccain-approves-open/669582/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-lies-about-social-security-tries-to-scare-senior-citizens/464606.md?page=3)