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AmericaSpeaks: Post-Mortem
David Dyden over at FireDogLake thought it was some big right-wing conspiracy to cut entitlements or whatever, but I found the portion of the weekend's AmericaSpeaks - which I wrote about here - that I attended and live-blogged to be a fairly constructive endeavor. (Full disclosure: After our story was published, AmericaSpeaks asked me to live-blog their Philly event for a couple hours Saturday, and paid me a modest sum to do so. They did not tell me what to write; in fact, my instructions were completely vague. So, I guess I'm now part of Dyden's vast right-wing conspiracy.) The point they emphasized is the right one: there are no easy answers, silver bullets or quick fixes. Dyden's complaint, as I gather it, is that AS's workbook spent more pages laying out potential changes to Medicare and Social Security than it did to new taxes, and supposedly hyped spending cuts and downplayed potential tax increases. Perhaps. I didn't have a chance to dig into the workbook, nor did I take one home with me, so I can't really say. My bullshit detector didn't catch the apparent propaganda, however.
AmericaSpeaks: Post-Mortem
David Dyden over at FireDogLake thought it was some big right-wing conspiracy to cut entitlements or whatever, but I found the portion of the weekend’s AmericaSpeaks — which I wrote about here — that I attended and live-blogged to be a fairly constructive endeavor. (Full disclosure: After our story was published, AmericaSpeaks asked me to live-blog their Philly event for a couple hours Saturday, and paid me a modest sum to do so. They did not tell me what to write; in fact, my instructions were completely vague. So, I guess I'm now part of Dyden’s vast right-wing conspiracy.) The point they emphasized is the right one: there are no easy answers, silver bullets or quick fixes. Dyden’s complaint, as I gather it, is that AS’s workbook spent more pages laying out potential changes to Medicare and Social Security than it did to new taxes, and supposedly hyped spending cuts and downplayed potential tax increases. Perhaps. I didn't have a chance to dig into the workbook, nor did I take one home with me, so I can't really say. My bullshit detector didn't catch the apparent propaganda, however.
Of course, I was being paid.
I will say this: AmericaSpeaks was honest about its participants demographic and ideological tendencies. As they told me last week, their goal was to match the demographics of each of the 19 host cities, and to make sure minority viewpoints were represented. Consequently, they quizzed everyone at the outset on their age, race, and ideology. The audience, as I recall, skewed a bit white, old and liberal, but not by too much. And despite the alleged propaganda at play, the audience's proposed solutions were, in fact, somewhat progressive.
Participants proposed that we should:
• Raise the limit on taxable earnings so it covers 90% of total earnings.• Reduce spending on health care and non-defense discretionary spending by at least 5%.• Raise tax rates on corporate income and those earning more than $1 million.• Raise the age for receiving full Social Security benefits to 69.• Reduce defense spending by 10% - 15%.• Create a carbon and securities-transaction tax.
(Throughout the program, at least the part I saw, the AS folks seemed to stress that we should make cuts after the economy recovers; indeed, re-litigating the stimulus doesn't seem to have been the point.)
Hi, I was at the meeting and it turned out well. However, it was very light on substance about economics. They had to give a 30-minute presentation just for the purpose giving out instructions about filling out their voting forms. That's just way too long and it shows how the ambitions of their agenda were far in excess of reasonable comprehension for anyone who genuinely does not understand policies for financing retirement in America (which is just about almost every American other than geeks or sophisticated money types). The forum was excellent for the civic engagement dynamics (although too loud) but it was not enlightening about economics. For example, when the American economy begins to actively shut workers out of the workforce in their 50's (this is true, ask any unemployed person in their 50's), to conclude it's a good idea to raise the retirement age to 69 looks almost cruel. Which workers should retire at age 69? In 1983 the age was extended to 67 and the payroll tax was increased in excess of what was actually needed to pay out benefits, designed to accrue a surplus specifically in preparation for the baby boomers. SS has been and currently runs a surplus because of those overpayments. The beneficial impact of age 67 has not even happened yet, because we're still in the workforce (the smaller, will cost-less post baby boom generation). So why should the age be raised another 2 yrs? As it is people start collecting significantly lower payments at 62 because the job market is so anemic--they take it even if they really wanted to go out at full retirement age. At the heart of the issue is profound misunderstandings about how Social Security works. For example, Social Security does not contribute to the deficit because it is self-funded through payroll taxes. There is confusion about that. It's worth learning more about it because the anxieties around Social Security have more to do with failures in the private pension system and the inadequacy of 401K style retirement plans. In America, secure retirement is expected to be 1/3 Social Security, 1/3 private pension, 1/3 retirement savings. Two of those three are profoundly insecure. The other third is the best run (SS returns 99 cents of every dollar versus around 85 or 80 cents from managed retirement funds--they take 15 to 20% in fees for example, SS does not do that). There's more but this comment is already too long. I found this article, and this website, to be helpful: http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/14/to-defict-hawks-we-the-people-know-best-on-social-security-12290/
One point to remember is that increases in life expectancy over the past century have largely occurred early in life. See excerpts below from CEPR's "Social Security and the Age of Retirement" http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/social-security-and-the-age-of-retirement/ The first half of the twentieth century saw extraordinary gains in the life expectancy at birth (for men, nearly 22 years; for women, nearly 21 years). But such improvements did not translate directly into longer retirements. Life expectancy at age 65 for men increased less than five years over this time; for women, about half that amount. While life expectancy at birth rose 22 years for men, a young adult in 1969 could expect a retirement only 5.5 years longer (13.8 years) than a 20-year-old in 1919 (8.3 years.) In part, this is due to the increase in the retirement age from 65 to 66. For women, the increase in the retirement age was more meaningful, as their life expectancy increased by less than it did for men. In fact, women born in 1960 could, at age 20, expect a retirement of 17.1 years – one month longer than the expected retirement of women born in 1937 despite more than two extra years of life expectancy. At first blush, one might think that increasing retirement lengths should require an increase in the normal retirement age. However, increases in life expectancy lengthened the average number of working years as well as years of retirement – even when holding the retirement age at 65. The average number of years a 20-year-old man could expect to work by age 65 rose from 39.0 to 42.0 between those born in 1899 and those born in 1949.4 Raising the retirement age to 66 added another ten months to the average working life. Those born in 1999 will average 45.0 years of work before retirement age. Even under current law, the younger generations will work considerably longer than generations of workers past. For many, these additional years of work needed to reach normal retirement age will be a considerable burden. While an investment banker, economist or senator may find it a small thing to delay retirement two more years, the same cannot be said for coal miners, auto workers, and janitors. Life expectancy may increase, but that doesn’t mean a firefighter ought to keep working at age 66 or 68 or beyond.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Demetrios Perdikis, philly news now. philly news now said: AmericaSpeaks: Post-Mortem: David Dyden over at FireDogLake thought it was some big right-wing conspiracy to cut e... http://bit.ly/9f0EmH [...]
It's David Dayen. And, yes, while life expectancy at birth has gone up significantly, life expectancy at 20 or at 65 has not gone up by nearly as much. More than that, increases in life expectancy were... expected... at all of the various times congress has addressed the program.
You really should get your bullshit detector re-calibrated. The source materials and questions were heavily weighted in the direction of cutting Social Security, and apparently you weren't motivated enough to actually, you know, do any actual work before you went. You might have had enough information to discern the propaganda if you weren't so distracted by your free lunch.
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