USA Today‘s Susan Page has a front-page piece (7/20/10) headlined “Faith in Social Security Tanking: Most Expect Cuts or Lose Hope for Funds.” The piece notes:
A USA Today/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view. And a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won’t be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.
Page seems a bit puzzled about why the public holds these views, since they are “more dire than the calculations of Social Security’s trustees.” She points out that even if the trust fund were exhausted by 2037, the system “could finance about three-fourths of current benefits through the payroll tax.” Page quotes one expert who points out that public misperceptions might be a result of “all the attacks on Social Security that we have this total crisis in the program.”
True enough. Take, for example, a USA Today front-page article from February of this year (2/8/10) that was headlined, “Social Security Races to ‘Negative’: Rash of Retirements Push Fund to Brink.” That piece sounded the fear alarm by reporting that Social Security’s “annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years.” Read FAIR’s February 9 alert for all the details.
Where do people get these wrong ideas about Social Security? They read them in the newspaper, and believe them.
I was struck by this quote in that article, pointing out the bright side of a misinformed public:
In other words, since the public expects to be cheated out of their Social Security benefits, it will be easier to cheat them.
In spite of an enlightened view of SS’s condition, I’m still feeling terrorized by the outcome of the Deficit Commission. Since the commission is exploiting the misinformation, I wonder if at least some respondents were reacting to that, a possible catastrophic shift.
It is not clear – at least from the paragraph you quoted – that the public is misinformed. Any fears that benefits would be cut, or that “Social Security won’t be able to pay” benefits, may simply reflect a very good grasp of the current political situation, rather than misperceptions about the accounting of the social security trust fund.
In light of the political situation (i.e., with Obama going after social security, with the backing, of course, of the Republicans), it appears very likely that social security benefits will be cut, and that the social security trust fund will be looted. Tthe public’s pessimism about the future of social security seems, therefore, very much grounded in reality.
Where are you getting that Obama and the Republicans want to “go after” social security, or get rid of it?
> Where are you getting that Obama and the Republicans want to “go after” social security, or get rid of it?
See, for example, interview with Dean Baker on Democracy Now: Part I, Part II.
The real problem is that there has been an ongoing attack on Social Security almost since its inception. The right-wing, Repuli-cons opposed the program before it became law and have opposed it since. During the 1950s, the Social Security Trustees included an informational piece, (The Reality of the Trust Fund) to explain some of the misconceptions that were current at the time. Those misconceptions have been kept going by so-called think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute to name just two. Many newspapers such as the Kansas City Star have had a consistent record of publishing falsehoods about the Social Security Trust fund and the soundness of Social Security itself.
In short, the problem with misconceptions is not new and it has been driven by various “conservative” organizations for over 70 years.
Social Security has been described as the third rail of politics, you don’t mess with the third rail or you will get struck by a jolt of political energy that can destroy politicians who want to tear the program down. As the baby boomers become eligible for benefits, they will add to their voices to say, “Don’t mess with my Social Security.”
On countless occasions, TV news analysts have tried to tie the current federal deficits to Social Security. That is really a reach. Social Security has had 27 years of surpluses whereas the general budget has been in deficit for most of that time. Social Security has accumulated over 2 trillion dollars in United States Treasury Bonds and notes. In short, the trust fund has financed the deficits in the general budget and is not responsible for any part of those deficits. Ignorance is the reason that news commentators continue to repeat the misconceptions and to keep the myth alive. Just recently, Chris Matthews wondered if Social Security and Medicare would be on the table for cuts in order to reduce the budget deficits. Those programs have not contributed to budget deficits; they are not part of the general budget. They are financed with FICA payroll taxes and should not be reported in a consolidated budget. Social Security is well funded; Medicare will run deficits soon unless the new health care bill care bill includes financing for the program, especially for the Republican Prescription drug plan which was passed without providing for additional funding to pay for it.
When the Social Security System needs to start cashing in their 2 trillion dollars in Treasury bonds, that is repaying what is owed to the trust fund, other means must be found for paying off the debt that has accumulated due to the Reagan/Bush I/ Bush II tax cuts and to pay for the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is time for TV commentators and newspaper reporters and columnists to get informed about Social Security so that this misinformation about Social Security can finally be put to bed.
Thanks Gene. You’ve pretty much summed it up with the lines from the Cato institute…. We read about it, and believe it.
I don’t think the President will allow a commission to go beyond a recommendation. (they don’t enforce)
Just think where it would be if baby Bush and his ilk would have been allowed to “pirate-tize” it like they wanted to.
I damn well expect to collect some of the money I have had taken away for 30 years so far, and it damn well better be there or me and a couple of million Americans should be expected to break some of the promises we have made as well.
Thanks Gene. It’s rare to see a concise response on the internet. I get disgusted with the vitriol behind pseudonyms. // Jean Clelland-Morin (an old, SS recipient)
We, the People, have simply come to NObama and the rest of his lying DEM renegers!
Thank you, Gene DeVaux, for laying it out they way it really is. The PTB have been leaving IOUs in the SS trust fund and we need to demand that they be paid back.
Where does all this stuff about Social Security b eing cut come
from? From newspapers such as USA Today and Susan Page.
From the MSM, in general. From ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox
News, and CNN.
Now and then if you search carefully you may find someone,
somewhere giving the facts–Social Security is NOT about to
go broke. It has a surplus that will last for years.
Why then, do we continue to hear and read all this misinformation
about Social Security? The answer is simple. The ones giving out
this false information see tax increases coming. Every dollar that
they can take out of some poor person’s pension keeps money in
the pockets of those who got most of the benefits of the Bush
tax-cuts.
Greed is good, said Gordon Gekko. There are lots of Gordon
Gekkos out there, and they’re all saying the same thing: Social
Security must go.
NOT TO WORRY No politician in their right mind would cut social security for fear of losing the only thing that is important to them; keeping their fat ass in office. Decent cost of living increases will be manipulated into a thing of the past so that anything received will increasingly be devalued by inflation. Thanks to Goldman alumni sprinkled throughout the federal government and their engineered financial bailouts, rampant inflation is probably just around the corner.
With money grubbing politicians and unlimited campaign spending and with lobbyists eager to buy their soul, the middle class and social programs appear to have a very bleak future regardless of which party is in office.
way late to the dance, but the entire point of the msm is spreading misinformation to give comfort to their economic betters…the fact most reporters are both financially and mathematically illiterate is just gravy
Hay! The American public have been conditioned by the White House within the last years to not to ask questions. It’s the terrorists, stupid! We love just bending over! Or at least that’s what the main stream media would have us believe. And who has the platform to challenge them? Not the M.S.M!!
it seems ro me that most of the idea’s that are commented on,somehow seem to always be spawned by some current media event or another. when are we going to have a forim of debate that comprises of,not only educated dialogue, but also one with non-propaganda???
It’s worth pointing out that Social Security, along with Medicare/Medicaid and “servicing” our national debt, make up something like 92% of the expected FY2011 Federal budget. NINETY-TWO PERCENT. I’m not saying we should cut it (I’d cut military spending first), but it simply isn’t sustainable to be spending such a huge portion of our federal income on MAINTENANCE programs. Because these programs make up 92% of the expected FY2011 Federal Budget, all the rest of the budget, so-called “discretionary” spending, is deficit spending (in this case, exceeding expected revenues by 50%). I’ve noticed a tendency in these blog posts to downplay the significance of such huge amounts of deficit spending. Let me repeat: NOT SUSTAINABLE. You can have any normative opinion you like about these programs (I like them, but I think we should cut the rich off the SS rolls, e.g.), but you can’t deny the objective fact that our nation is running out of financial options, and has been for a long time.
I think our complexity has gotten to be so enormous (exemplified by the fact that it takes almost all our income to maintain, leaving zero room for expansion), that the likeliest outcome of all this is continuing economic collapse. And THEN what do we do about these programs (and all the others we love so much)? Not to mention all the other issues we face, such as peak oil and the rest of the limits to growth (e.g., ability of the environment to absorb pollutants such as CO2, water per capita, grain per capita, etc.).
We need to get real.
Hey!! wow, This is exactly different and informative blog for me as this question is also is in my mind that from where misinformation comes regarding social security.As I go through your blog. I got this.