Musings On Exchanging A Propane Tank

     I need to exchange the propane tank for my gas grill this afternoon. (What an exciting lead sentence!) This puts me in mind of the last time I did this. I stopped by a convenience store near my house. When I went in there was a fellow in line ahead of me whom I recognized. He is the retired chief justice of North Carolina. He had a distinguished legal career before becoming Chief Justice. He had an outstanding tenure as Chief Justice. He has an unblemished reputation for rectitude. What was he doing in the convenience store? He was buying lottery tickets.

     My point is that we should be reasonable in our expectations about any group of people who bear the title "judge", including Social Security's Administrative Law Judges. People with the title of "judge" almost always try to live up to their title but they are made of the same stuff as the rest of us.

Now You Too Can Write In Academese

     I have written in the past about academese, the opaque writing style of academia. Now, you too can write like an academic. A new website automates it.

Is The Actuarial Reduction Still Fair?

     Full retirement age for Social Security benefits is currently 66. This will soon start rising to 67. Most people go on Social Security retirement benefits before their full retirement age, a key fact that is usually lost when politicians talk of raising the retirement age. Those who go on retirement benefits before their full retirement age receive reduced benefits. This is called the actuarial reduction. This actuarial reduction was 20% when the full retirement age was 65 and is going up to 25% when the full retirement age reaches 67. Alicia Munnell and Steven Sass at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College ask whether the actuarial reduction, which was first enacted more than 50 years ago, remains appropriate. Their conclusion is that it remains pretty close to actuarial equivalence. Their study is flawed, however, by the fact that they pretended that full retirement age was still 65. I don't understand why they did that. They certainly know what the current full retirement age is and doing the projections for full retirement age being 67 should not have been that difficult.

2011 Workload Data

From Social Security via the NOSSCR newsletter.

PEBES Suspension Criticized

     Michael Hiltzik writes in his column in the Los Angeles Times about Social Security's suspension of sending out Personal Earnings And Benefit Estimate Statements (PEBES). He thinks the suspension is a terrible idea.

Taking Out The Meat Cleaver

From the Associated Press:

[Greek] Health Ministry officials say nearly one-in-six disability allowances will be canceled at the end of the month after discovering thousands of payments were based on false claims — including of drivers registered as being legally blind and bogus cases of leprosy.

Astrue Interview

     The IBM Center for the Business of Government interviewed Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue for its show on WFED radio last week. You can hear and view the interview below. There is not much new to the interview. I am incredulous at Astrue's hope that health information technology improvements will cause the length of time needed to get a hearing before a Social Security Administrative Law Judge to decrease or that these improvements will even allow the elimination of reconsideration. I see no connection at all. The problem is lack of resources at Social Security. Speeding up the acquisition of medical records does little to help.

OIG Report On SSA Reviews Of ALJ Decisions

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has done a report on Social Security's efforts to review Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) decisions. The report makes it clear that it is impossible for Social Security to target individual ALJs for review. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) would have to be changed before Social Security could do that. 

     The APA is one of the proudest achievements of American legal thinking. Amending it to allow targeting of ALJs isn't going to happen. The APA is fundamental to American government. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have any interest in touching the APA.