Mar 8, 2023
Mar 7, 2023
Turmoil In France Over Attempt To Raise Retirement Age
From CBC:
French unions stepped up their fight against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform plans on Tuesday as most trains came to a halt, fuel deliveries were disrupted and schools shut in a sixth day of nationwide strikes.
To increase pressure on lawmakers not to raise the pension age by two years to 64, unions said there would be rolling strikes this time, which could go on for days, including at oil refineries and railways.
Street protests are expected to take place in more than 300 towns and cities. ...
Garbage collectors and truck drivers joined the strike, in a sign the protests were spreading to more sectors. ...
Rallies are planned across France after more than 1.27 million people took part in previous protests on Jan. 31. ...
There were reports of students blocking schools while BFM-TV showed footage of workers abandoning cars on the side of the road near Amiens in northern France as others blocked access to an industrial zone. ...
Mar 5, 2023
Public Servants
While I was at a concert recently, I wasn’t trying to listen in but happened to overheard a snippet of the conversation of the people sitting next to me during the intermission. One of them referred to someone who “retired after a 36 year career as a public servant.” That struck me. That term “public servant” is one you don’t hear much these days. I think it was more used when government employees were held in higher esteem. Why are they held in lower esteem now? I’d say it mostly has to do with Republican attacks on government and government employees. These attacks are often direct and angry — as in claiming that government is always the source of problems rather than the solution to many problems or that there’s some “Deep State” that frustrates Republican presidents — but they’re also indirect. Underfunded government agencies render poor public service feeding public perceptions that government employees are to blame for frustrating interactions with public employees. It’s an anarchistic approach that claims, in essence, that government is so terrible that we would be better off with no government. If you can’t directly end government, make it function worse and worse to move the public in the direction of your view, mindless opposition to all government.
We need to honor public servants. They do a super job often under difficult circumstances.
Mar 4, 2023
I Demand You Reopen That Field Office
A New York Congressman demands that Social Security reopen a field office it has closed in his district. I wish they’d get as excited about the agency’s operating budget. That’s what determines how much service that Social Security can deliver.
Mar 3, 2023
A Big Batch Of "Proactive Disclosures"
Social Security FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] Reading Room routinely posts "Proactive Disclosures." Usually, it's just a couple of posts a month but they're starting off this month with a bang. Below is what they've posted so far. I guess this is based about recent FOIA requests they've replied to. It makes you wonder why some of these FOIA requests were made. By the way, this includes a list that purports to tell you the top 500 law firms receiving attorney fees in Social Security cases. I don't know about this list but in the past these numbers have been wildly inaccurate.
Mar 2, 2023
A "Bipartisan" Plan?
From Semafor:
A bipartisan group led by Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Bill Cassidy, R-La. is considering gradually raising the retirement age to about 70 as part of their legislation to overhaul Social Security, Semafor has learned from two people briefed on their efforts.
Other options on the table include changing the existing formula that calculates monthly benefits from one based on a worker’s average earnings over 35 years to a different formula that’s based instead on the number of years spent working and paying into Social Security.
The plan also includes a proposed sovereign wealth fund (as previously reported by Semafor) that could be seeded with $1.5 trillion or more in borrowed money to jumpstart stock investments, the people said. If it fails to generate an 8% return, both the maximum taxable income and the payroll tax rate would be increased to ensure Social Security stays on track to be solvent another 75 years. ...
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a member of the group, previously said that raising the payroll tax cap was under discussion. Only the first $160,000 of employees' earnings are currently subject to payroll taxes, which help fund Social Security. If Congress fails to step in, retirement benefits will be cut roughly 20% for seniors starting in 2032, per the Congressional Budget Office.
Are there any real Democrats on this "bipartisan" group? I know that Angus King caucuses with Democrats but he's not a Democrat.
None of this has any hope of passage in this Congress.
Mar 1, 2023
Don't Panic!
Paul Krugman has an excellent piece in the New York Times about why we should not panic about Social Security. You really should read the whole thing. Here are a few excerpts:
... The thing about Social Security is that from the beginning it was designed to encourage misconceptions. It looks, on casual inspection, like a giant version of a private pension plan. ...
I’m pretty sure that it was set up to look like an ordinary pension fund because that made it politically easier to sell. But in reality, Social Security has never been run like a private pension plan. ...
For one thing, for the first half-century of the program’s existence it had almost no assets; in 1985, the trust fund was only large enough to pay around two months’ worth of benefits. So it has always operated mainly on a pay-as-you-go basis, with today’s payroll taxes paying for today’s retiree benefits, not tomorrow’s.
I often get mail from people claiming that this makes Social Security a Ponzi scheme. But it isn’t. It’s just a government program supported by a dedicated tax ...
I get a lot of mail from people saying that we should simply eliminate the upper limit on the payroll tax. That would certainly raise a lot of money. But bear in mind that there’s no fundamental reason Social Security has to be financed with payroll taxes — we only do it that way because back in 1935, F.D.R.’s advisers thought it would be a good idea to dress Social Security up to look like a private pension fund. ...
The other idea I hear a lot is that we should raise the retirement age — which has already been increased, from 65 to 67. After all, people are living longer, so they can work longer, right?
Well, some people are living longer. But one key point in thinking about Social Security is that the number of years you can expect to spend collecting benefits has become increasingly linked to the income you earned earlier in your life. ...
[C]alling for an increase in the retirement age is, in effect, saying that janitors can’t be allowed to retire because lawyers are living longer. Not a very nice position to take. ...
Feb 28, 2023
Full Retirement Age Went Up But Life Expectancy Went Down
From People's Policy Project:
In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed into law a cut to Social Security benefits. Under the law, the Social Security full retirement age gradually increased from from 65 in 2000 to 67 at the end of 2022. ...
In the lead up to the passage of the legislation, a popular argument for raising the retirement age was that life expectancy had increased, so people should work for longer. The presumption was that the increase in life expectancy since Social Security’s implementation would continue as the retirement age rose. But, in reality, something peculiar happened.
Over the same period during which the 1983 law forced the retirement age up from 65 to 67, life expectancy in the US actually declined. In 2000, US life expectancy was 76.8 years. According to data released last December, life expectancy in 2021 was 76.4 years. This was the second consecutive year of significant life expectancy decline. ...